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 South Korean
airliner servicing the flight was shot down by a
Soviet Sukhoi Su-15 interceptor. The
Boeing 747 airliner was en route from Anchorage to Seoul, but owing to a navigational mistake made by the KAL crew the airliner deviated from its original planned route and flew through Soviet
prohibited airspace around the time of a U.S.
aerial reconnaissance mission. 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 which were probably not seen by the KAL pilots.
[2] The Korean airliner eventually crashed in 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 from
Georgia. 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 until 1992.
The Soviet Union initially denied knowledge of the incident,
[3] but later admitted shooting down the aircraft, claiming that it was on a
MASINT spy mission.
[4] The
Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union said it was a deliberate provocation by the United States
[5] 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.
[6] The
Soviet Armed Forces suppressed evidence sought by the
International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) investigation, such as the flight recorders,
[7] which were released ten years later, after the
dissolution of the Soviet Union.
[8]
The incident was one of the tensest moments of the
Cold War and resulted in an escalation of
anti-Soviet sentiment, particularly in the United States.
As a result of the incident, the United States altered tracking procedures for aircraft departing from Alaska. In addition, the incident was one of the most important events that prompted the
Reagan administration to allow worldwide access to the United States'
Global Positioning System (GPS).
[9][10]