All language subtitles for Mayday.S09E05.Target.Is.Destroyed.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DD+2.0.H.264-playWEB_track3_[eng]

Thirty-five-thousand feet
above the Sea of Japan...

Korean Air 007,
unreadable, unreadable.

We are experiencing
rapid decompression.
Descend to 10,000.

...the pilots have lost control
of their plane.

Speed brake is coming out.

A 747 with 269 people on board
plunges towards the sea.

Within hours,
the story began circulating
in Washington

that the Soviets
had been involved.

This shocking
incident escalates tension
between two bitter rivals.

The investigation is mired
in secrecy and deception.

It's up to investigators
to find the answer...

before the crash
of a passenger jet
leads to an all-out war.

Mayday, mayday.

Emergency descent.

Put the mask over your nose
and adjust the headband.

Emergency descent.

Emergency descent.
Put the mask over your nose
and adjust the headband.

Emergency descent.
Put the mask over your nose
and adjust the headband.

Emergency descent.

Put the mask over your nose
and adjust the headband.

It's just after 2:00
in the morning
aboard KAL Flight 007.

Korean Air 007
positioned over NIPPI.

Estimating NOKKA 1826132.0.

After a brief layover
in Anchorage,

a Korean Airlines 747
is on its way to Seoul.

The marathon flight originated
in New York 13 hours ago.

Captain Chun Byung-in
has nearly 11 years' experience
flying for Korean Airlines.

Before that, he served 10 years
in the Korean Air Force.

This leg of the flight
is a 6,100-kilometre journey
over the North Pacific.

Once the plane is in the air,
there is very little
for the pilots to do.

Ladies and gentlemen,
we'll soon be serving breakfast
before we land in Kimpo,

which will be
in about three hours.

Many of the passengers
plan to take connecting flights

to other destinations
after landing in Seoul.

Mary Jane Hendrie
is heading to Japan
to start a new life.

My sister Mary Jane
found a job,

and she'd gotten hired
by this car company.

She was exactly the kind
of person that they needed
for their company in Tokyo.

So she was leaving to embark
on this new stage of her career.

Just 15 minutes behind them
is the plane's sister flight,

KAL 015.

Korean Air 007.

- Go ahead, Korean Air 015.
- What are you doing?

The flight crews chat
to help pass the time.

We're experiencing
an unexpectedly strong tailwind.

How much of a tailwind?

Thirty-five knots from 040.

In an effort to conserve fuel,

the crew decides to take
the plane to a higher altitude.

Tokyo Centre, Korean Air 007.

Korean Air 007, Tokyo.

Korean Air 007.
Request climb 350.

Roger. Stand by.

Korean Air 007, climb,
and maintain flight level 350.

Roger. Korean Air 007. Climb,
and maintain flight level 350.

Then, without warning,
the plane is out of control.

What happened?

Retard throttles.

Landing gear.

Landing gear.

The crew extends
the landing gear in an effort
to stop the plane from climbing.

Altitude is going up.

Altitude is going up!

Altitude is going up!

Speed brake is coming out.

I can't descend.

This isn't working.
This isn't working!

Engines are normal, sir.

- Captain?
- Is it rapid decompression?

Tokyo Centre, Korean Air 007.

Korean Air 007, Tokyo.

We are experiencing
rapid decompression.

Descend to 10,000.

Korean Air 007,
unreadable, unreadable.

Radio check on...

10048.

Stand by, stand by, stand by!

...headband.
Emergency descent.

Korean Air 007, Tokyo.

Korean Airlines Flight 007

and all 269 people on board

have vanished.

Korean Air 015,
would you attempt to contact
Korean Air 007, please,

and relay position?

All efforts to contact
the flight have failed.

Tokyo makes calls
to other radar stations
in Japan and Korea.

I cannot contact
Korean Air 007...

A call is even made
to a radar facility
in the Soviet Union.

Relatives nervously await news
of the missing flight.

The company that Mary Jane
was going to work for,

they apparently had phoned
and said Mary Jane's plane
hadn't arrived

and that something had perhaps
gone wrong with the plane.

But at that point,
we didn't really know anything.

There was concern that it had
either been forced to land
or crashed, or within hours,

the story began circulating
in Washington that the Soviets
had been involved.

As the world waits
for news about the incident...

...U.S. military officials
make a horrible discovery.

At a top-secret
surveillance facility,

they've been monitoring
Soviet transmissions.

It appears the unthinkable
has happened.

At the time
of the flight's disappearance,

U.S. soldiers heard
what they thought was a routine
Soviet training mission.

It doesn't seem possible
that the Soviets

would actually shoot down
a passenger plane.

But American officials
have little doubt.

The next morning,

U.S. Secretary of State
George Shultz delivers
an unusually blunt statement.

The United States reacts
with revulsion to this attack.

Loss of life
appears to be heavy.

We can see no excuse whatsoever
for this appalling act.

It couldn't be.
It just... it couldn't be.

How could they all just perish?
What do you mean?

There must've been a reason.

1983 is the height
of the Cold War.

Russia and much
of Eastern Europe are united
by communist ideology.

Ruled with an iron fist,

the Soviet Union is locked
in a bitter political struggle
with the West.

Relations were bad,
but no one really knew how bad,

how dangerously bad they were.

Initially,

Soviet officials
deny responsibility
for the KAL disaster.

The story
that came out of Moscow
was that the plane appeared,

we intercepted it,
tried to make it stop;
it didn't, it flew away.

That was the first story.

But soon,
they reverse course
and come clean.

A Soviet fighter jet did,
in fact, shoot the plane down.

But they insist
the attack was justified.

The Soviet view was
that it was on a spy mission,
perhaps carrying instruments:

cameras, recorders and so forth.

The Soviet Union
claims Flight 007 entered
highly restricted airspace

under orders
from the U.S. government.

But the U.S. insists KAL 007
was a routine passenger flight.

The dispute only heightens
political tension.

In terms
of an actual shooting war,

the... the closest points
that we may have come...

were in that year,
both before and after,
when both sides -

particularly the Soviet side,
though -

was expecting an attack.

The KAL disaster
would put NATO nuclear
disarmament talks in jeopardy.

The Soviets
would ultimately walk away.

The nuclear threat is growing.
Under such circumstances,

the need for an impartial
enquiry is urgent.

The UN calls
on the International Civil
Aviation Organization.

ICAO offers a...
a neutral investigation,

an investigation team
that can deal with all parties
involved in a neutral way.

Caj Frostell joins
the international team
of investigators

that will try to uncover
the truth behind the destruction
of Flight 007.

With two superpowers
squaring off,

they're under pressure
to find answers -

and find them fast.

KAL 007's flight plan
should've kept it well away
from Soviet airspace.

Either it was shot down
over international waters,

or the flight had strayed
off course.

Figuring out which
is the first priority
for investigators.

But they face a huge obstacle.

The plane's black boxes
are still missing.

The lack of flight recorders,
data recorder,
cockpit voice recorder,

that's significant
in an investigation.

The Americans
join forces with South Korea
and Japan

in the search
for the crucial devices.

But the three allied nations
are not the only ones searching.

On September 1,

we got an order
to go to the place
where the Boeing fell

and take part in the search
for the Boeing 747.

It's a race
to find the black boxes.

The Americans know
they may never get the truth

if the Soviets find
the boxes first.

Each side accuses the other
of dirty tricks.

The U.S. did formally complain
that the Soviets would either
sail across U.S. ships,

that they would drop
false pingers

to deflect listening devices
away from the true pinger.

The Soviets claim
Flight 007 was flying
in Soviet airspace,

over Sakhalin Island,
when they shot it down.

If that's true,

the aircraft was well outside
its designated
aerial corridor...

...a route known as R-20.

Across the North Pacific,
there are various routes
that are labelled.

The R-20 was the one closest
to Soviet airspace.

Red Route One
was a nickname for it.
It was the one closest.

So it was known to be,
or should've been known to be,

a route that you took
extra precautions on.

Investigators get
their first hint

that if the crew was flying
in restricted airspace,
they didn't know it.

The coordinates
they were reporting...

...put them on course.

The Tokyo air-traffic controller
who last communicated

with Flight 007
tells investigators
that all seemed normal.

Korean Air 007
positioned over NIPPI.

Estimating NOKKA 1826132.0.

The crew reported
they were flying the R-20 route.

But as with every other flight
over the Pacific,

007 was beyond
Tokyo's radar range.

The controller could only rely
on the pilots
to verify their position.

Perhaps they were mistaken
about where they were.

That possibility
becomes more likely

when investigators talk
to the crew of the Korean
Airlines flight

that was just minutes
behind Flight 007.

Tell me about the exchange
with Flight 007.

The captain
of the second flight
recounts an odd conversation

with the 007 crew.

We're experiencing
an unexpectedly strong tailwind.

How much of a tailwind?

Thirty-five knots from 040.

We still have
a 15-knot headwind.

Could he be getting a headwind
if he was here?

It would be almost impossible
for one flight

to have a tailwind
and the other a headwind.

Something doesn't add up.

But with the black box
still missing,

investigators have no way
of knowing

where KAL 007 actually was
at the time of that exchange.

That made it very difficult
in the way that we...

we had no... direct information

that I would normally have
as an accident investigator.

Frostell gets more information
from an unlikely source:

the U.S. military.

In a rare move, U.S. officials
share highly classified
surveillance data

from the night of the shootdown.

A top-secret technology
called "passive radar"
can track the movements

of every military and civilian
plane around the globe.

What it reveals about KAL 007
is stunning.

The plane was way off course.

For almost its entire journey
across the Pacific,

the flight had been
drifting north.

By the time it was shot down,

Flight 007 was 560 kilometres

or 350 miles north
of where it should've been,

and had already flown in
and out of Soviet territory.

The Soviets were telling
the truth.

And then it becomes a question
of determining why
was it off course that much.

To find the answer,

investigators turn
their attention

to the navigation system
on board the 747.

It's called INS:

the Inertial Navigation System.

The INS that was used
on this airliner,
like most in that time period,

had an accuracy
of about half a mile of drift
per hour.

Very accurate. It would get you
where you wanted to be.

The system relies
on coordinates,

or waypoints, entered
into the flight controller.

The way it works
is that there is nine waypoints
that you put in.

That's the way you program it.

59 degrees.

18.0 north.

Waypoints are essentially
GPS coordinates

that also have one-word names,

like BETHEL, NEEVA or NIPPI.

Flight 007's INS
should've been programmed

to find and follow
those electronic guideposts
to Seoul.

...59 degrees, 18.0 north.

At 8:49... heading 270.

Perhaps there was
some last-minute change
in the flight plan.

Caj Frostell listens
to the pre-flight conversation

between the crew
and the tower in Alaska.

Korean Air 007, climb,
and maintain flight level 310.

...73 turn right at 0...

It was total routine
from the beginning to the end.

There was nothing exceptional
with the takeoff
or the taxiing to position,

the preparation for the flight.

After leaving Anchorage,

the 747 flew out
over the Pacific
just as planned.

But it never made it
to the first waypoint.

Instead, it drifted off course
for more than five hours.

Hope of uncovering
the reasons why begins to fade.

A 10-week effort
to recover the flight recorders
has turned up nothing.

The search is called off.

The actual aircraft,
where it was
and how many pieces it was in,

remained unknown.

With the investigation stalled,

Frostell turns
to the plane's manufacturers.

The U.S. and Boeing offered
to simulate the route

that we knew
Korean 007 had flown.

We went over to Boeing
in Seattle,

and Boeing carried out
the simulation.

Waypoint #2:

59 degrees, 18.0...

Retracing Flight 007's steps
in a simulator

leaves them
with a few possibilities.

One is that a mistake was made
while entering the coordinates
into the INS.

60 degrees...

...47.1 north.

Normally,
the co-pilot would insert...

the waypoints,

and the captain would check
that the correct digits
have been put in.

60 degrees,

47.1 north, check.

Misprogramming the INS at the gate

could've taken the plane
over the Soviet Union.

Okay, let's try the flight
in heading mode now.

A second,
less likely possibility

is that after programming
the waypoint navigation system,

the crew may have failed
to turn it on.

After takeoff from Anchorage,

the aircraft would have used...

a constant magnetic heading
to get to the route.

It's a standard procedure
to begin a flight

using a magnetic compass heading
for direction.

Soon after takeoff,

pilots must activate
the navigation system

so it can lock on
to the first waypoint.

And if it was forgotten...

in that constant
magnetic heading,

it would continue
over Soviet airspace.

The magnetic heading
would've kept the plane flying
in the right direction,

but along a very different route
than the one planned.

Captain Chun
was a distinguished pilot
with years of experience.

Forgetting to switch
the autopilot to INS mode

would've been
an astonishing error.

At this point,
Frostell can only speculate
why Flight 007 was off course.

But what's even harder
to understand

is why the Soviet Union
would risk starting a war
by shooting a plane down.

The Soviets resorted
to deadly force
to punish this intruder.

It's like shooting the paperboy
in your front yard at night

because you think he might
be breaking into your house.

What could prompt
such a response
from the Soviets?

Investigators get their answer
from the U.S. military.

Though Flight 007
may not have been
on a spy mission that night,

another plane was:

A U.S. Air Force RC-135.

They were tracking an RC-135,

which was doing very, very slow
figure eights

off the coast,
with its own listening devices,

waiting
for a Soviet missile test.

The spy plane
was near the Soviet border
in the path of the KAL jetliner.

When their paths crossed,

the two planes
may have been indistinguishable
on Soviet radar.

When 007 came in
over Soviet airspace...

...the Soviet Union assumed
it's an RC-135.

Along came this intruder,

and they just fell
into the patterns
they had prepared in advance

for such an intruder.

Upon violation
of state border...

...approach target and destroy.

But disturbing questions remain.

Did the fighter pilot
get close enough to see
the target with his own eyes?

Did he know
it was a passenger jet?

Requests to speak
to fighter pilot
Gennadi Osipovitch are refused.

And for the time being
at least,

those questions
are left unanswered.

In December 1983,

less than four months
after the disaster,

ICAO releases the findings
of the investigation.

Though lacking hard evidence,

the report concludes Flight 007
strayed into Soviet airspace
by accident...

...due to pilot error
in operating
the navigation system.

I would almost call it
the best guess
based on all the work

and the factual information
we had in 1983.

For them to summarize
the plane was there by accident,
as far as I'm concerned,

that's not the answers
we wanted to hear.

And we believed
that there was further
investigation to do.

The key
to this mystery remains locked
inside the plane's black boxes,

which are assumed lost forever
beneath the sea.

In the months following
the KAL disaster,

unidentifiable human remains
wash ashore in northern Japan.

Small pieces of wreckage
are also found.

Investigators have no doubt
that the plane
was completely destroyed.

We don't know
where their bodies lie.

There was clothing
that washed up on the shore;

her ID washed up
on the shore of Japan.

Of course,
getting that ID back was...
at least we had something.

Like the victims' families,

investigators have no clear idea
where Flight 007 went down.

But there are some people
who do.

Top Soviet officials are hiding
the fact that one month
after the incident,

not only did they find
the wreckage,

they also found
the all-important black boxes.

It was a big pile of debris.

They took down this pile
with their bare hands

until they found
the black boxes.

There were two of them.

But the Soviets
keep the boxes to themselves.

The information
is kept locked away.

Until nearly 10 years later...

...after the turn of the decade
brings a jubilant end
to the Cold War.

Glasnost ushers in a new spirit
of openness in Russia.

Eager to break with the past,

the new administration in Moscow
decides to go public.

The actual unveiling
of the data recorders
and black boxes

was a total surprise.

And suddenly,
this new material...
promised some real answers.

So I knew
they're gonna tell me something.

I wanted to have the facts
from the tapes and then see

how do those facts compare
to what we wrote in 1983.

In 1992,

during official ceremonies
in Seoul,

Russian leader Boris Yeltsin
hands over the long-awaited
flight recorders.

I was approached
by a KGB general.

And he told me that, uh:

"You probably don't know me,
but I have had the recorders

for 10 years.

I had them in the safe
in my office.

I knew it was a big
international secret.
It bothered me tremendously...

...every day,
when I came to the office
and I looked at my safe,

and I knew the recorders
were there."

He told me:
"You may not understand

that this is the happiest day
in my life."

Caj Frostell
is asked to lead the new team
of investigators based in Paris.

And as a clear indication
that the times have changed,

Vladimir Kofman,
a Russian avionics expert,
joins the team.

At the time,
I was working at
the Civil Institute of Aviation

and was an air-crash
investigator.

This was an international
investigation
of a very high level.

Their first task
is to make sure
the black boxes are authentic.

There was a high suspicion
in a lot of quarters

that the Russians or the Soviets
had tampered with the tapes
or had made bogus tapes.

And so we had to 110% validate

the authenticity of the tape.

They had seals on them.
They had...

I remember... wax seals on them.

The photographs were taken,

the seals were cut.

Investigators confirm that the CVR
handed over by the Russians

is the same box
that was installed
on Flight 007.

They opened them
and looked at them,

and validated
the serial numbers,
validated the model numbers.

Now that they know
they have the right boxes,

investigators need to make sure
they have not been
tampered with.

Suspicion soon arises.

During the cleaning process,

they noted that there had been
some breaks in the tape,

and had been spliced
by the Russians.

It is not uncommon
for a tape to break
during the impact of a crash.

But distrust of the former
Soviet Union runs deep.

First they examined
these areas of the splices
where it had broken,

and they did that
on this high-magnification
photograph.

One of the techniques
that the French had
that I hadn't seen before -

it wasn't used
in the United States -
was a photo-analysis machine.

They could do this
with this optical
high magnification.

They could actually see
the magnetic waves.

The test confirms
that no data was added
or removed

from the cockpit voice recorder
when it was spliced together.

Finally,
investigators can listen
to the tape,

confident that every word
is authentic.

What?
It's already time for breakfast.

You want to eat now?

Let's eat later.

But all they hear
is idle banter from the crew.

I heard
there's a currency exchange
at the airport.

What kind of money?

Dollars to Korean money.

- It's in the domestic building.
- 52010 to intercept...
American 1037.

There is not a word
on the tape to suggest
the crew was on a spy mission.

Just a totally routine
conversation.

Either these guys
are the most cold-blooded actors
and falsifiers ever,

or they really were
totally clueless
about where they were.

Sadly,
I think the latter's the case.

It seems unlikely that KAL 007
was on a spy mission.

But it was caught flying
over Soviet territory.

Investigators have long
suspected

that the crew
either misprogrammed
their navigation system

or left it in the wrong mode...

...set on constant magnetic
heading.

The flight-data recorder
finally provides
the definitive answer.

The data revealed
that the aircraft
was on constant magnetic heading

from soon after takeoff
from Anchorage to the end.

There was no deviation
whatsoever
in the magnetic heading.

The crew of KAL 007
never activated
the waypoint navigation system.

Gear up.

Landing gear up.

Now passing 500.

It seems they simply forgot
a basic step

in their standard
flight procedure.

The INS was functioning
properly,

had been loaded properly,

and was counting along
the route where it thought
it was supposed to be.

But the autopilot
was not following
the INS commands.

Instead, it was following
a compass mode.

So it's only telling them
where they're supposed to be.

Investigators learn
that even though the plane
was following a compass heading,

and not the waypoints...

...the computer
would've continued to display
their intended waypoints,

even though the plane
was nowhere near them.

Korean Air 007
positioned over NIPPI.

Estimating NOKKA...

1826132.0.

This may explain
why the crew never noticed
their mistake.

The crew also didn't notice
a key indication

that they were badly off course.

We're experiencing
an unexpectedly strong tailwind.

How much of a tailwind?

Thirty-five knots from 040.

The fact
that they were experiencing

completely different
weather patterns to a plane
supposedly minutes behind them

should've alerted them
to the problem.

Now, there's a point...

where you see him teetering
on the brink of realizing
something is horribly wrong.

He's talking to the pilot
behind him,

and the winds
are almost 180 degrees apart.

And there's a pause.

And Chun is...

Somewhere in his mind...
He's a pilot
and he has the instinct:

You know, this is odd.

Is it a clue to something
I should look into?

And he... doesn't.

And at that point,
he might as well have pulled
the gun out, put it to his head.

It was human error.

A complacent crew
in the middle of the night

had their flight computer
on the wrong setting.

And then didn't notice
they were straying off course.

Everybody makes mistakes
sooner or later.

Good pilots make mistakes,
not-so-good pilots
make mistakes.

We're all making mistakes.

When investigators
combine the conversation data
from Flight 007

with intercepted
Soviet transmissions...

...they get a detailed picture
of what went wrong
on September the 1st, 1983.

The pilots believed
they were on course,

but three hours into the flight,

their magnetic heading
took them into Soviet airspace
over Kamchatka.

The Soviet military
had been tracking
a U.S. reconnaissance plane.

There was a real
American spy plane.
It was there.

There were two planes
that looked alike.

When KAL penetrated the border,

the perception
was that this was the plane.

As the passengers sleep
through their long journey,

the Soviets scramble fighters
to intercept the plane.

The identity of the plane
was just not known.

The clues that it was
a lost civilian airliner,
well, might've been there.

The clues that it was a 135
didn't add up,

but the Soviets involved
didn't have time
to think it through.

Target travelling at high speed
and approaching border.

But the fighters
are not fast enough.

The plane leaves Soviet airspace
and continues along its heading
to Seoul.

They figured
that they'd just been spooked,

but that was all over.

Unfortunately
for everyone involved,
it wasn't.

The airliner
is just seconds from flying
over the island of Sakhalin.

So Sakhalin was prepared.

KAL Flight 007
enters Soviet airspace
for the second time.

Ladies and gentlemen,
we'll soon be serving breakfast
before we land in Kimpo,

which will be
in about three hours.

Target travelling at high speed
and approaching border.

Target is on your heading.

I can see it both visually
and on the screen.

Major Gennadi Osipovitch,
the lead fighter,

makes visual contact
with Flight 007.

Give warning burst
with cannon.

But the warning shots
go unnoticed.

Take up position for attack.

Approach target and destroy.

Roger. Locked on already.

Executed launch.

Target is destroyed.

The fighter pilot believed
the 747 was an enemy spy plane.

It takes nearly a decade
after he shot down KAL 007

for that pilot to tell
his side of the story.

Investigators have long wondered
what Major Gennadi Osipovitch
saw and did

after he was ordered
to intercept
an intruding aircraft in 1983.

After nearly 10 years,

and the collapse
of the Communist regime,

he finally tells
his side of the story.

I saw the plane.

It did look
like a civilian plane,

because there was a flashing
light on its tail
and one on the top.

But you could disguise
any plane like this.

You can put a flashing light on
and you've got a civilian plane.

So I did not have any thoughts
about this.

Give warning burst
with cannon.

When warning shots are fired,
they usually include tracers,

which are like flares
and are easily seen.

However,
Osipovitch has no tracers
loaded in his cannon.

They're supposed
to load tracers.

Just no one had shipped them any
for the last six months,
so they weren't there.

But even without the tracers,

Osipovitch thinks the 747 crew
should have seen him.

As I caught up with them,

I was flying like this
and he was flying like that.

How could he not turn around
and see me?

I was flying with lights,
everything was according
to protocol.

He should've seen me.

And then a horrible coincidence
seals the fate

of 269 people aboard the flight.

Korean Air 007.
Request climb 350.

Korean Air 007, climb,
and maintain flight level 350.

Like a car going uphill,
a climbing plane slows down.

But to the fighter pilot
following the 747...

...this is interpreted
as an evasive manoeuvre.

He decreased his speed

so that I could either pass him
or fall, one of the two.

So that's how I knew
that he's an enemy intruder.

That convinced him
that it was not a civilian plane
and that he was in danger.

My only thought
was to catch and stop.

This is what we were trained
to do.

I fell a little behind him
and banked down,
made a snake manoeuvre,

put some distance between us,
because otherwise,

the rockets
would not have locked on.

He's running out of time,

because the airliner
was approaching
international waters.

Take up position for attack.

Roger. Locked on already.

Executed launch.

Osipovitch fires
two air-to-air missiles.

They travel 2,000 kph
towards the jetliner.

One of them explodes
near the tail,

damaging vital controls
and hydraulic lines.

The warhead also tears a hole
in the fuselage,

causing a rapid decompression
in the cabin.

I saw the first explosion
right under the tail,

and that's it.

The lights of the trespasser
went out and I went home.

Emergency descent.

Put the mask over your nose
and adjust the headband.

Emergency descent.
Put the mask over your nose
and adjust the head...

In the time
that they lost pressurization,

to a certain point indicated

that the hole would have been
approximately 1.75 square feet.

The crew managed
to fly the crippled plane
for several minutes.

Immediately
after the missile impact,

the aircraft climbed to...

flight level 380,

and then it descended
about 5,000 feet per minute.

The stricken jetliner plummeted
towards the Sea of Japan...

...with most of its passengers
likely still conscious.

And that's when
the recording stops.

Our determination
was that the airframe
probably broke up at that point.

To this day,
Gennadi Osipovitch is convinced
he shot down a spy plane.

I knew they wouldn't order me
to intercept

if it was a civilian plane
or a cargo plane.

Only if it was a trespasser.

We weren't blaming him,
but some families did.
They certainly did.

They said it was his fault
and he pressed the button
and he shot them down.

And they were looking
to blame somebody.

It was clear that he was...
living with what he had done.

And what he had done,
in order for him to live
and to sleep,

was to believe
that it was a spy plane,

there were no passengers
on board,

that he had not killed
269 people.

Uh, and that's the way
he wants to believe it.

And I'm not gonna blame him
for wanting to believe that.

In 1993,

Caj Frostell has the evidence
that he sorely lacked
when he issued his first report.

He can prove
how the Korean pilots blundered
and ended up off course.

And how the Soviet pilot
interpreted the situation.

The destruction of Flight 007
is ruled an accident.

Frostell recommends
that all passenger planes
be equipped

with a clear indicator
that the autopilot
is in heading mode.

The tragedy of 007 is that...

it didn't have to happen,

it was not inevitable.

It was a series of accidents,

a series of misunderstandings,

a series of... bad decisions

that had been primed
ahead of time.

When my sister Mary Jane
said goodbye to me
at the airport,

she hugged me so, so tightly.

And I said, "Mary Jane,
I feel like I'm never gonna
to see you again."

Korean 007 has had
a great effect on my life.

It has been close to my heart.
That had been very sad for me.

My sympathy and condolences...
all these years
have gone out to the families.

difuze