Word: kal
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...just about 1 a.m. (Japan Standard Time) on Sept. 1 when Korean Air Lines (KAL) Flight 007, cruising southwestward from Anchorage over the Bering Sea in the early-morning darkness, came under the watchful eye of Soviet radar. For the next 2½ hr. the blip moved into and out of Soviet airspace. When it crossed over the eastern border of the Kamchatka Peninsula, the Soviets scrambled four MiG-23s and Su-15s from the Petropavlovsk airbase on Kamchatka to search for the intruder. Just after 3 a.m., over the Soviet island of Sakhalin, where another six interceptors had given...
...ground instruction, the pilot swings around, heads east-southeast, and eventually falls in line behind the Su-15, where he will stay for the duration of the chase. The other two planes are also vectored, or steered, by ground control into positions behind the Su-15 and the KAL passenger plane...
Pilot 805 confirms to the ground that the KAL jetliner is in full view. Seconds later, Pilot 163 jettisons his empty fuel tanks. "I have dropped my tanks," he says, signaling that he has only the fuel in his main tanks remaining, enough to keep him in the skies another...
...target, bringing his missiles into alignment with the jetliner ahead. The moving half circles on his radar screen close to form a glowing full ring with an orange or a green dot in the middle. The Su-15 is now "locked on" for a straight shot at the KAL airliner...
...heavily reinforced to survive impact and ocean depths down to 20,000 ft. For 30 days it will automatically emit a sonar signal that can be heard for up to five miles under water. Many of these boxes have been recovered in the past, but if the one from KAL Flight 007 is in Soviet waters it may never be made available to the U.S. or Korea for analysis. Even if it were, there are some questions that only the crew of the jet could answer. Others could be cleared up only by the Soviet military, which has probably revealed...