page_title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007
section_title: Soviet memoranda
hierarchical_section_title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007 / Investigations / Interim developments / Soviet memoranda
caption_attribution_description: English: Soviet ship in search for KAL 007. Only photo available of this ship in operation.
context_page_description: Korean Air Lines Flight 007 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 Su-15 interceptor. The Boeing 747 airliner was en route from Anchorage to Seoul, but due to a navigational mistake made by the KAL crew the airliner deviated from its original planned route and flew through Soviet prohibited airspace about 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 likely not seen by the KAL pilots. 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 Soviets found the wreckage under the sea on September 15, and found the flight recorders in October, but this information was kept secret until 1993.
context_section_description: In 1992, Russian President Boris Yeltsin disclosed five top-secret memos dating from a few weeks after the downing of KAL 007 in 1983. The memos contained Soviet communications (from KGB Chief Viktor Chebrikov and Defense Minister Dmitriy Ustinov to General Secretary Yury Andropov) that indicated that they knew the location of KAL 007's wreckage while they were simulating a search and harassing the American Navy; they had found the sought-after cockpit voice recorder on October 20, 1983 (50 days after the incident), and had decided to keep this knowledge secret, the reason being that the tapes could not unequivocally support their firmly held view that KAL 007's flight to Soviet territory was a deliberately planned intelligence mission.
  The third memo acknowledges that analysis of the recorder tapes showed no evidence of the Soviet interceptor attempting to contact KAL 007 via radio nor any indication that the KAL 007 had been given warning shots.
  However in case the flight recorders shall become available to the western countries their data may be used for: Confirmation of no attempt by the intercepting aircraft to establish a radio contact with the intruder plane on 121.5 MHz and no tracers warning shots in the last section of the flight
  That the Soviet search was simulated (while knowing the wreckage lay elsewhere) also is suggested by the article of Mikhail Prozumentshchikov, Deputy Director of the Russian State Archives of Recent History, commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the airplane's shootdown. Commenting on the Soviet and American searches: "Since the U.S.S.R., for natural reasons, knew better where the Boeing had been downed...it was very problematical to retrieve anything, especially as the U.S.S.R. was not particularly interested".
caption: Mikhail Merchink, lead Soviet vessel in simulated search
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