On Sept. 1, 1983 the passengers and crew of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 were enjoying a peaceful flight across the Pacific Ocean. The flight had begun at New York City and after a stopover at Anchorage, Alaska, was on the last leg to Seoul. Suddenly, there was an explosion that deprived the pilots of control of the plane. Twelve horrifying minutes later, the plane crashed in the ocean with 269 people not knowing what had caused their deaths. For a while, the world did not know either, but the truth eventually came out. It turned out that the jet airliner was the victim of a particularly tense period of the Cold War. President Reagan had turned up the heat and the Soviet’s reacted with some paranoia. We’ll never know for sure why the Boeing 747 was 200 miles off course, which caused it to cross Kamchatka Peninsula. Either the pilots did not set the autopilot correctly or there was a computer malfunction. The peninsula was the location of top secret military installations. A missile test was scheduled for the next day. An American spy plane was monitoring the facilities at the same time KAL 007 was passing over. It was a terrible coincidence. Soviet radar may have mistaken the two. Jet fighters were scrambled. Several made contact and it was clear it was a passenger jet, but those could be disguised as a spy plane and the lead pilot did not bother to report that the plane was a 747. He did try to make radio contact, unsuccessfully. He fired shots in front of the plane, but they were not tracers and could not have easily been seen. Maj. Gennadiy Osipovich did not question the order to open fire. He fired two heat-seeking missiles at point blank range. He could not have missed. The Cold War got colder as the Soviets lied about the circumstances and Reagan called it a “massacre”. As time passed it became clear it was probably just a tragic accident.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/korean-airlines-flight-shot-down-by-soviet-union
https://www.airforcemag.com/article/0113korean/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007
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