HL7442, the aircraft that was shot down, at Zurich Airport in 1980
Shootdown
Date
September 1, 1983
Summary
Shot down by the Soviet Air Defense Forces due to navigation error by the pilots, leading to in-flight breakup
Site
Sea of Japan, near Moneron Island, west of Sakhalin Island, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union 46°34′N141°17′E / 46.567°N 141.283°E / 46.567; 141.283 (KAL007)
Aircraft
Aircraft type
Boeing 747-230B
Operator
Korean Air Lines
IATA flight No.
KE007
ICAO flight No.
KAL007
Call sign
KOREAN AIR 007
Registration
HL7442
Flight origin
John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York City, U.S.
Stopover
Anchorage International Airport, Anchorage, Alaska, U.S.
Destination
Gimpo International Airport, Gangseo-gu, Seoul, South Korea
Occupants
269
Passengers
246[1]
Crew
23[note 1]
Fatalities
269
Survivors
0
Korean Air Lines Flight 007 (KE007/KAL007)[note 2] was a scheduled Korean Air Lines flight from New York City to Seoul via Anchorage, Alaska. On September 1, 1983, the flight was shot down by a Soviet Sukhoi Su-15 interceptor aircraft. The Boeing 747 airliner was en route from Anchorage to Seoul, but owing to a navigational mistake made by the crew, the airliner drifted from its original planned route and flew through Soviet prohibited airspace. The Soviet Air Forces treated the unidentified aircraft as an intruding U.S. spy plane, and destroyed it with air-to-air missiles, after firing warning shots. The Korean airliner eventually crashed into the sea near Moneron Island west of Sakhalin in the Sea of Japan. All 269 passengers and crew aboard were killed, including Larry McDonald, a United States representative. The Soviet Union found the wreckage under the sea two weeks later on September 15 and found the flight recorders in October, but this information was kept secret by the Soviet authorities until 1992, after the country's collapse.
The Soviet Union initially denied knowledge of the incident,[2] but later admitted to shooting down the aircraft, claiming that it was on a MASINT spy mission.[3] The Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union said it was a deliberate provocation by the United States[4] to probe the Soviet Union's military preparedness, or even to provoke a war. The US accused the Soviet Union of obstructing search and rescue operations.[5] The Soviet Armed Forces suppressed evidence sought by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) investigation, such as the flight recorders,[6] which were released ten years later, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.[7]
As a result of the incident, the United States altered tracking procedures for aircraft departing from Alaska, and president Ronald Reagan issued a directive making American satellite-based radio navigation Global Positioning System freely available for civilian use, once it was sufficiently developed, as a common good.[8]
^Aviation Safety Database
^Young & Launer, pp. xiii, 47
^Cite error: The named reference Sputnik was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Pearson, p. 145
^Congressional Record, September 20, 1983, pp. S12462–S12464
^Soviet news magazine, Izvestia #228, October 16, 1992
^Cite error: The named reference tapes was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^"United States Updates Global Positioning System Technology". America.gov. February 3, 2006. Archived from the original on October 9, 2013. Retrieved June 17, 2019.
Cite error: There are <ref group=note> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=note}} template (see the help page).
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