Word: su
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...Moscow. The U.S.S.R.'s reaction was thoroughly chilling. Some top Administration foreign policy officials had been hoping that Soviet leaders would duly note that Reagan had not sought harsh retaliatory penalties against the U.S.S.R. because of the shooting down of a South Korean airliner by a Soviet Su-15 interceptor, despite all the condemnatory rhetoric out of Washington. And Soviet President Yuri Andropov had remained publicly silent about the air atrocity, leading some in the Administration to wonder whether he might wish to pick up Reagan's cue and offer some fresh arms control proposals...
...black boxes-actually, they are bright orange-are small (5 in. by 9 in. by 15 in.) but heavily armored to withstand explosion, heat and pressure. Their tapes of conversations in the airliner's cockpit could show whether the crew had any warning before a Soviet Su-15 interceptor knocked Flight 007 out of the sky, killing all 269 aboard. For the U.S., retrieval of the boxes could mean the opportunity to strengthen the Reagan Administration's case about the brutality of the incident. The U.S. fears that if the Soviets find the recorders, they will alter...
...pilots who pursued Flight 007. The amended version was the result of an electronic enhancement of the tapes, which is standard procedure in such a case. It was immediately publicized by the State Department even though it somewhat undercut the American position. A remark by the pilot of the Su-15 that shot down the airliner, originally said to be unintelligible, was revised to read, "I am firing cannon bursts." This seemed to buttress the Soviet claim that its pilot had fired tracer shots to warn the Korean jetliner away from Soviet airspace...
...made no mention of anything unusual when he contacted controllers in Tokyo. The scrambling Soviet fighters generally stayed to the rear of the passenger plane and made no apparent attempt to get close enough to signal their presence. Indeed, one of the other revisions in the transcripts reveals the Su-15 pilot saying, "He still can't see me." Unfortunately, this created another ambiguity: Did the Soviet pilot mean that he had succeeded in avoiding detection, or that his efforts to signal the KAL 747 had been unavailing...
...navigation and strobe lights were on. (Asked about the lights, Ogarkov asserted that the trailing Soviet fighter "saw these lights on the first Soviet plane and reported so to the Soviet command post." In fact, the transcripts clearly show that it was the first Soviet fighter, the Su-15, which twice reported that "the target's" lights were visible...