KAL 007 (again) - on ABC's Nightline
Ed Falk
A number of people have written to me, asking for references to Shootdown
by R.W. Johnson...
Shootdown is an in-depth look into the Russian downing of Korean Airlines
Flight 007. The book itself is
Shootdown
R.W. Johnson
ISBN 0-670-81209-9 FPT
There's far to much detail to even summarize, but here's a few tidbits from
the first chapter....
I The raw details:
The flight started at Kennedy on 31 August, 0405 GMT. At 1130 GMT
it arrived at Anchorage. It was scheduled to depart for Seoul
at 1220. While the plane was being prepared for the next leg,
KAL flight 015 arrived, scheduled to leave for Seoul almost
simultaneously with 007. 007's route to Seoul is known as
Romeo 20.
During the stopover, Captain Chun and his crew loaded the route
into the Inertial Navigation System's computers. The INS is
loaded from a pre-recorded tape and then manually verified. The
tape was re-checked after the disaster and found to be completely
accurate. The waypoints along the route are Bethel, NABIE,
NEEVA, NIPPI, NOKKA and NOHO.
007 left Anchorage at 1300 instead of 1220 because of lighter than
usual headwinds.
Fifty minutes into the flight, 007 reported that it was passing
Bethel. US radar tapes later showed 007 12 miles north of Bethel.
Johnson asserts that either the INS or the autopilot coupled to the
VOR should have brought 007 directly to Bethel, not 12 miles north.
He also asserts that the deviation was large enough at this point to
even show up on the magnetic compass as well as all the other
navigation equipment. Johnson says "Thus, to believe that 007
was off course by accident at Bethel one has to believe that
Captain Chun and his fellow officers were guilty of the most
extraordinary negligence and inattention." Chun's widow insists that
he would never have been so careless.
Either:
1. Both the INS and autopilot were uncoupled *and*
007's crew failed to notice this *and* they failed
to notice the warning light. *In addition* the crew
would have had to fail to notice the reading on their
magnetic compass *and* the fact that their weather
radar was showing a different part of the Alaskan
coastline than it should have.
or:
2. The wrong route had been deliberately programmed into
the INS... This could not have been done without the
connivance of the crew, especially since they would
have known they were sending back a false position report
at Bethel.
or:
3. There had been a programming error in the INS back
at Anchorage *and* the autopilot was not functioning
correctly *and* the crew failed to notice the same
instruments as in (1)...
[emphasis Johnson's]
Flight 15 left Anchorage 14 minutes behind 007 (ahead of schedule)
and then flew at unusually high speeds. "Robert Allardyce, a
veteran US pilot, has reconstructed 015's flight and concluded
that 015 must have been flying at unusually high Mach numbers
('red-lining') to catch up so fast." Flight 007 was flying
a little slower than usual, with the result that the two planes
were flying almost parallel for a good part of the time.
At 1430, 007 reached NABIE, a compulsory reporting point, and did
not report. Failure to report is very serious, as a search and
rescue operation is automatically started if ground control fails
to make contact. Anchorage control tried several times to reach
007 before 015 called up to relay 007's report. Finally, 14 minutes
late, 007 called up in person to report NABIE. Anchorage ordered
007 to make all reports directly instead of through 015 from now
on, but 007 never complied. Later, it was found that both the
reports were false anyway -- 007 never went to NABIE.
At 1600, Anchorage called 015 and 015 passed on a position report
from 007 saying that they had reached NEEVA (they were actually
150 miles north of NEEVA). Johnson asks why 015 didn't relay
that report to Anchorage instead of waiting for Anchorage to call
and ask. 007 called in in person 10 minutes late, but they called
Flight Services instead of Anchorage. Also, all they did was give
their call sign three times and hang up. By now, 007's radar should
have been picking up the Kamchatka coastline and alerted the crew as
to the fact that they were off course. Also, the radar should have
picked up the RC-135 surveilance plane crossing in front of them.
007 was also changing speeds quite a lot (unusual for airliners),
losing 9 minutes between NABIE and NEEVA and then gaining 2 minutes
by the time they reached their next waypoint. Also, Robert Allardyce
asserts that kal 015 was traveling at Mach 0.9, far in excess
of a 747's normal speed and fast enough to turn on the Mach
warning buzzer.
Judging from transcripts of Russian communications, 007 changed
course from 252 degrees to 240 at about the time it flew closest
to the RC-135. This course change put 007 parallel to Romeo-20.
The Russians say that the radar blips were merged for 20 minutes.
When 007 left Anchorage, they informed ground control that they would
climb to 31,000 and at 1350 confirmed that they were at that
altitude. At around 1606, 007 informed Anchorage that they were
climbing to 33,000. The Russians say that 007 and the RC-135 were
at 26,000 when they entered their airspace and that later 007
climbed to 29,500.
At 1630, 007 crossed the Kamchatka coast into Russia. Although the
Russians should have scrambled interceptors when 007 was still
60 miles out, they in fact didn't get any planes into the air until
007 was 50 miles inside of Soviet territory.
According to the Russians, 007 was flying without lights and
was wildly varying its course, altitude and speed. At 1708, 007
left Kamchatka. This is strange, as the Russian's standing orders
were to shoot down any intruders that failed to respond. If
the Russian explanation is correct, then either the fighter pilots
disobeyed orders or ground control decided to let 007 go. The
Russians deny that this was because they knew 007 was an airliner.
Another possibility is that the interceptors never made contact at
all and the story about 007 not showing any lights is just a cover
for not sighting it in the first place.
There are two theories for this: one is that someone was using
Electronic Counter Measures to disable Soviet radar and the other
is that the Russians were caught asleep at the switch.
One minutes after leaving Kamchatka, 007 reported leaving NIPPI
although they were actually 180 miles north of there.
Johnson points out that 007 contacted Flight Services just before
entering Russia, maintained radio silence while over Russian
territory, got back in contact with Anchorage (for the first time
since leaving Bethel) immediately after leaving Kamchatka, and then
went back into radio silence. 007 now headed towards Sakhalin.
Just before entering Sakhalin, 007 changed course to take it
*deeper* into Russian territory. The Reagan administration used
maps which show 007 going in a straight line, but the Japanese
military radar tapes (and the Russian's too) show 007 changing
course at this point. Tapes of the fighters intercepting 007
at Sakhalin indicate that they were at about 26,250 feet when
they intercepted the airliner. This would mean that 007 was about
27,000 feet. This turn seemed to commence two minutes after Major
Kasmin's SU-15 came up behind it. Kasmin said this on the radio:
"Roger. Repeat heading ... To the left surely. Not to the
right." A few seconds later he reported turning right to 260 to
keep 007 in sight. Half a minute later he reported that 007
had turned back to 240. The Russians interpreted all this as
evasive maneuvering. The Russians claim that 007 ignored
all the standard intercept procedures of light-flashing, wing-waggling
and radio contact and that they were flying without any lights.
At this point, 007 came back on the radio and asked Tokyo for
permission to climb from 33,000 to 35,000. Kasmin claims he
fired four rounds of tracer shells (120 cartridges each) across
007's nose. John Glenn says there is no way the flight crew of
007 could have missed that. Reagan says that the fighters must
have been firing cannon shells instead. Johnson asserts that
if they were cannon shells, the flight crew should have been
able to *hear* them at such close range.
While Kasmin was complaining to his controllers that 007 wasn't
responding, 007 received permission to climb to 35,000.
The tapes of Kasmin's half of the conversation indicate that he
was having a hard time keeping even with 007 as 007 was making
frequent changes in speed and altitude. Apparently, ground
control relayed 007's reported altitude to Kasmin who can't
believe what he's hearing. At one point (according to Kasmin),
007 extended its flaps and slowed down drastically, causing him
to overtake it and maneuver to get back into position. Shortly
afterwards, he was ordered to shoot it down.
38 seconds after 007 was hit, 007 called in to give its call letters,
but not to declare an emergency. 10 seconds later, they called back
and reported rapid decompression and descent. It took 12 minutes to
disappear off of Japanese radar, indicating that the crew was
keeping it somewhat under control. Johnson finds it hard to
believe that the radio failed during that time, as it had
obviously survived that attack; so he wonders why 007 did not
issue a mayday, especially since they were 365 miles from
where ground control thought they were.
II Captain Chun's flight plan.
Captain Chun was given a computer-generated flight plan that he
made some changes to: The fuel requirements were all
crossed out and Chun wrote in a different total which
was 4100 lbs less than the computer called for. The
manifest indicates that he actually loaded 7900 lbs *more*
than the computer had called for.
III Six and a half hours after the shoot down, The South Korean
Foreign Ministry received word that 007 was safe; forced down
by the Russians and landed at Sakhalin. The Foreign Ministry
says the CIA gave them that report, but the CIA refuses to either
confirm or deny it.
IV Johnson rejects the assertion that the US intelligence system
was not aware of 007's deviation into Russian airspace. That
part of the world is probably more densely covered by US military
radars than any other: On Shemya Island are Cobra Dane is a giant
phased array radar used for tracking Soviet missiles, Cobra Talon
is a powerful Over-the-Horizon Backscatter radar. On board
the USS Observation Island is Cobra Judy. There are also
throughout the Japanese islands.
In 1968 a DC-8 veered off course towards Soviet territory while
on the Anchorage-Tokyo run. The deviation was immediately
picked up both by the Americans at Shemya and the Japanese at
Wakkanai. Wakkanai immediately warned the DC-8 and Shemya
contacted Anchorage ground control.
This is getting much too long, so I'll stop here.
I HIGHLY reccomend the book, it goes into *every* aspect of what happened.
--
-ed falk, sun microsystems
fa...@sun.com
sun!falk
Richard A. Levin
I already said this on another net so I will make it quick...
The atlantic has an excellent article on the flight in the
latest (sept?) issue. It is the cover article. the theory
puts it down to bad data in the INS and miscommunication with
the crew. Most of the pts raised in Ed falks article are covered.
I won't go into listing the pts (I don't have the article handy,
and any of you can go to the library and read it) except for one:
The autopilot is controlled by the INS (in one operating mode) thus
it wouldn't have to malfunction.
The theory was thought up by a pilot who
flew the route (R-20) many times and he tested it (on back up
INS) of his flights. Thus I put more faith in his comments about
b747 operation than the the author of shootdown (for instance many
pilots don't trust the ground radar and just turn it off if it
doesn't show what they expect.) Well this is too long already.