Word: sued
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...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...
...pilot of the Su-15 announces his intention to down the passenger plane with an air-to-air missile. Meanwhile, the MiG-23, some 7 miles from the target, reports to ground control that he has both the Soviet hunter and its Korean prey squarely in his field of vision...
...businesslike tone, Pilot 805 informs ground control that he has fired his missiles. The Su-15 fighters normally carry two: one heat seeking, the other radar homing. Two minutes later, the pilot assures the ground that he has "launched both." The heat-seeking missile would have headed for one of the 747's engines; the radar-homing one would have streaked toward the giant fuselage...
...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...