Connect to Finland

[Finnlander]

The Soviets seemed to have made a hobby out of shooting down civilian airliners, specificaly Korean Airlines.

On the 20th of April 1978 a KAL Boeing 707 took off from Paris to Seoul, Korea via Anchorage in Alaska. Due to the pilots erring in the conversion of degrees magnetic to true, their route violated Soveit airspace and were subsequently intercepted by squad of Sukhoi SU-15TM interceptors.

After the Korean pilots failed to acknowledge the interceptors instructions according to international rules (yet Rovaniemi ATC confirms that the 707 attempted to contact the interceptors on the emergency frequency of 121.5 Mhz, a standard procedure in an interception.), the Russians, who had identified the aircraft as an RC-135 spyplane (the RC-135 is a B707 adapted for reconaissance), the order was given to destroy the target.

According to a US interception of the transmission the pilot of Flagon 'F' attempted to command to cancel the attack, as the airliner was carrying the KAL logo. However, the pilot eventually fired two R-60 Molniya heat seeking missles at the 707. One missed, but the second, reaching its destructive envelope detonated off the port wing, removing the wing tip.

Nevertheless, two passengers were killed from shrapnel wounds and the 707 experienced explosive decompression at that point. Pravda, the offical state journal, later reported the attack to be 'warning shots'.

KAL902, making an emergency descent, finally made an emergency landing on the ice of lake Korpijärvi, in Soviet Karelia, not 20 miles from the Finnish border.





The passengers and crew were rescued by Russian forces and later sent to Helsinki to resume their flight back to Seoul.

However the SU-15tm was back in action on September 1st, just off the west coast of Sakhalin Island. This time the airliner was a KAL 747 carrying 269 souls. After 3 MiG - 23 Floggers failed to intercept it, a single
SU-15 did, and shot it down into the ocean with the loss of all life onboard.



A Sukhoi 15 - TM Interceptor.
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