The shooting down of airliners

In 1983, a Korean airliner got astray on its way from Alaska to Japan. Eventually it reached Russian territory, first flying over the Kamchatka peninsula, and then over the island of Sakhalin. At this point the airplane was shot down by Russian fighter planes. As soon this sequence of events became clear, there was outcry of indignation: what a barbarians these Russians, communists, were, to shoot down an innocent airliner full of civilians.

Since this event was part of the propaganda war, which is in itself part of the Cold War, the factual information about this event was piecemeal and lagging, where as the disinformation and emotions were quick and many. But after about two years most of the facts were known, and most of these from American sources. What happened was this:

In 1983, a Korean airliner went astray by an undetermined cause. Some have pointed to the possibility that the pilots had programmed the navigation computer with the wrong data, other have argued that this might be true, but that it was very remarkable that experienced pilots having navigation radar equipment in their cockpit, could have missed the fact they had being flying over Kamchatka and the island of Sakhalin.

Both Kamchatka and Sakhalin, being one of the outposts of the Russian territory facing the United Sates and Japan, are areas bristling with defence facilities, including radar shields and air bases housing lots of military aircraft, and therefore one of the most secret places in the Soviet Union.

This part of the Soviet Union was, of course, also heavily surveyed by the Americans, in activities that one party calls intelligence gathering, and the other party calls spying. A routine part of this effort was the flight of spy planes for the coast of Sakhalin, the planes being of a military version of the civilian type of Boeing 707, filled with radar and electronic eaves dropping equipment. These planes flew continuously in a circuit, more or less shaped liked as an eight. After a given amount of flight time, one plane is relieved by another, etcetera.

These flights are in turn watched by Russian radar operators. So at one time these operators see this spy plane leave their screen, to be followed shortly by another spy plane. Except that at one day, after one spy plane had left, its successor, when it turned up, did something remarkable, in that it continued towards their territory instead of starting its circuits. The operators at Kamchatka were very surprised by what they saw, and alarmed their bosses. These were of course also flabbergasted what this meant, and probably took some time to realize this was a serious situation. At the time they alarmed the air bases and fighters went up to intercept, but the time lost meant that the spy plane had already passed, and re-entered international territory. However, the troops on Sakhalin were now alerted, and this time the fighter interception succeeded. When the spy plane was again nearing international territory, a quick decision had to be made. Since the spy plane might carry lots of valuable information on Soviet defences it had gathered by its flight, the decision was made to shoot it down while still over Russian territory.

As history knows, the spy plane was in fact our Korean airliner gone astray. Also in fact, it was soon known to the American government that the Russian view of the incident as described above was correct, following a report by American military intelligence. However, at the time, the second day of the incident, it was ruled imprudent by the American Government, including president Reagan, not to let know of this second fact, since it considered the incident with only the first fact too good an opportunity to smear the opponent and went claiming the shooting down had been on purpose.

One of the arguments to underline the claim of Russian guilt was the claim that it would have been impossible to mistake a civilian airliner for a military plane, which was generally accepted by those not being aviation experts. In fact, it had already been pointed out by the experts firstly that the interception of the plane had taken place at night, with very limited visual clues for the pilot of the fighter plane, and that he would have used his radar for almost all of the procedure. Secondly, it was pointed out that even if he would have had an half clear look of the plane he would have been having a problem: the civilian Boeing 747 is a scaled up version of the Boeing 707, with a very similar visual outline. The 747 is considerable bigger than the 707, but in order to notice this, one also has to see the distance of the object, which is notoriously difficult when one doesn’t have another object in sight to make a reference. So, in fact, it would have been very difficult for the Russian pilot to see it was a 747 instead of a 707, even if he saw it in the middle of the night. In an interview with this pilot shown later on television, he indeed said that in the darkness he had seen the outlet gases of the engines, but not much of the plane itself. He fired a missile at a distance of a few hundred meters from behind, so he could not see the lights. Later this was confirmed by aviation experts as a reasonable description of the incident.

In 1988 the drama got into a second stage. The United States was involved into the war between Iran and Iraq, and had several warships in the area, including the air-defence frigate Vincennes, equipped with the most modern equipment for fighting aircraft in the American fleet. The Vincennes was on patrol in the Persian Gulf, when it spotted an aircraft flying towards it, coming from the direction of Iran. Knowing that there were no American planes in the vicinity, it was immediately marked as hostile, and followed closely. Since any communication with the opposing enemy failed, and it continued on its course towards the Vincennes, it was considered a direct threat, and shot down. Almost immediately it became clear that in fact it was airliner full of civilians, soon thereafter identified as an Iranian Airbus 300

Of course this was a great embarrassment. Immediately the attempts at damage control started. It was contended that the Vincennes had gotten responses from the airliner making it look like an F-14 military fighter, planes that were known to be in the possession of the Iranians. When faced with the obvious question how a small plane like a fighter could be taken for a big Airbus, it was contended that the advanced radar equipment could not distinguish between the two, and one relied on the so-called transponder in the airplane to make this identification. On the question why the aircraft, though being unidentified, was considered a threat, it was answered that firstly it had been at a place and time when no other but military aircraft could be there, and that while continuing on its course, it had made a diving movement, which could be interpreted as the start of an attack.

These statements were made in the direct aftermath of the incident. Of course, any military or aviation expert knew there were large gaps in these statements, but these experts were all western, so no open comment could be made at this stage. In the course of time, the actual state of affairs still became known.

The first fact is that while completely legitimate in the eyes of the Americans and the rest of the western world, the American warships were stationed in the waters bordering Iran, where it was against the wishes of the Iranian government, meddling in Iranian affairs. The Iranians had no control or knowledge of the precise location of the Vincennes, and were leading their own live independent of the American presence. In this independent life, regular civilian flights were still going on, and according to the well-known regular, civilian flight schedules, an Airbus departed from an Iranian civilian airfield towards Saudi-Arabia. This flight took it directly over the Vincennes, but the important thing to note is that this was the responsibility of the Vincennes, not of the airliner. The aircraft was still in its climb towards cruising height, when it was shot down by the Vincennes. At the moment of the interception, it was pointed out by experts, it was so close to the Vincennes that a sailor with a pair of binoculars could have spotted and recognized the Airbus with ease. The actual pictures showed sailors making a celebration on their victory.

So none of the claims of the Americans were justified, or in common language: it was a pack of lies.

Now compare the Russian incident with the American incident. In both cases the information supplied by the “enemy”, the Russians and the Iranians respectively, turned later to be more or less correct. In both cases the information supplied by the Americans turned out to be mostly incorrect, to be lies. In the Russian case, the true information exonerated the Russians for a large part of the guilt in the incident: the airliner had in fact violated Russian airspace at a location of the highest military sensitivity. In the American case, the shooting down was over the home territory of the airliner, by a vessel having unfriendly intentions towards the country it was lying in front of. So any mistakes at that point were completely the responsibility of the party that had put itself in this position: the United States.

So one may conclude that in the Russian case, there was no great moral responsibility on the Russian side, while in the American case there was a great moral responsibility on the American side. Needless to say that in the view of the general public, and most politicians, this is seen the other way around. One may wonder in how many other, less factual and verifiable, the moral high ground taken by the West is equally less justified.

Sources: KAL 007: 1, 2; Iranian Airbus: 3, 4; comparison: 5 .


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