Explaining the Inexplicable

By WALTER ISAACSON

What is known and unknown about the Soviet jet attack

Somewhere in the Sea of Japan, just off Sakhalin island, is a "black box"--its actual color is orange--from Korean Air Lines Flight 007. The flight data inside would probably answer some of the questions about how and why the wayward aircraft met its fate. The waterproof container is heavily reinforced to survive impact and ocean depths down to 20,000 ft. For 30 days it will automatically emit a sonar signal that can be heard for up to five miles under water. Many of these boxes have been recovered in the past, but if the one from KAL Flight 007 is in Soviet waters it may never be made available to the U.S. or Korea for analysis. Even if it were, there are some questions that only the crew of the jet could answer. Others could be cleared up only by the Soviet military, which has probably revealed as much as it ever will. Here are the key aspects of the jetliner disaster and the explanations that experts now believe are the most likely:

How could KAL Flight 007 stray so far off its proper course? The Boeing 747 was equipped with three Inertial Navigation Systems (INS), designed to keep the jet on its scheduled flight path and to back one another up in case of malfunctions. Their performance record is excellent: a new study shows that only about one flight in 10,000 strays 50 or more miles off course. In 90% of the cases, the deviation is attributed to pilot error. The INS computers are programmed by the crew at the start of the flight. The computers are fed the plane's latitude and longitude at takeoff and the coordinates of way points along the plane's scheduled route. On Flight 007, for example, the computers, made by Litton Industries at $100,000 apiece, were told that the plane should be at its fifth way point, Neeva, above the Aleutian Islands at 172DEG 11 min. east and 54DEG 40 min. north, after the first 900 miles of the trip. Using gyroscopes and acceleration meters, the INS keeps track of the plane's location and guides it along the preprogrammed course.

The initial information fed into the Korean airliner's INS computers at Anchorage, where the flight had refueled, was correct. Flight 007 hit its first five way points as planned. But after Neeva, Flight 007 apparently began to stray.

One possible explanation is that the crew fed the INS computers some erroneous information while aloft. The INS can store only nine sets of coordinates; there were twelve way points along Flight 007's route to Seoul, which means that new sets of latitudes and longitudes had to be plugged in sometime during the trip. The copilot, who on Korean Air Lines flights is usually responsible for entering navigational data, might have done so after Neeva. Although each INS is supposed to be programmed separately, in practice the numbers are often put in simultaneously. The co-pilot (or other crew member) on Flight 007 could have simply misread the coordinates from his chart when he punched them into the computer. It is standard procedure for the other crew members to double-check these navigational entries. But airmen have been known to skip this precautionary step.

Another possible explanation for straying off course: a crew member might have used the INS to find out the distance and time remaining to 007's final destination; if he had left the coordinates for Seoul on the screen, and pressed the "insert" button rather than the "clear" button on the electronic console, the plane would have made a beeline for the South Korean capital instead of looping south away from Soviet territory and out of harm's way. In fact, the plane appeared to head straight for Seoul after passing Neeva.

Isn't there a way to check on the INS? At each checkpoint, the flight crew is supposed to double-check the INS by calling up the next coordinate and comparing it to the one marked on the flight's navigation chart. Apparently this is not always done. One U.S. airline pilot who has trained KAL crews says they often did not cross-check INS data with their charts.

Why did the pilot report at subsequent way points that he was on the proper course when in fact he had gone astray? The INS has a light that notifies the crew each time the plane reaches a checkpoint. Apparently the pilot radioed that he had reached what he believed were the correct points without checking to see what his actual location was. Even though programmed with a faulty flight path, the INS could have told crew members their true location at any time--and thus shown they were off course--if they had checked for such information.

Shouldn't the crew have taken special precautions while flying in such a sensitive area? Flight 007 followed a path known as Red 20, which is the one closest to the Soviet Union. Ordinarily, pilots flying this route use their weather radar and focus it on the ground in order to track the shoreline and make sure they have not strayed. "Everyone flying Red 20 should use their radar for back-up," says 747 Captain Chuck Hall of San Diego, who has flown that route for 15 years. Presumably, if the KAL pilots had used their weather radar, and if the equipment was working, they would have picked up Soviet landmasses.

Could the pilot have been attempting to sneak a shortcut across Soviet airspace to save time and fuel? "Not unless he was contemplating suicide," says Pilot Hall. The Soviets are notoriously touchy about unauthorized intrusions into their airspace. Nobody knows this better than South Korea. In 1978 another Korean jet was forced to crash-land after being fired on when it wandered over Soviet territory. Moreover, South Korean pilots must contend with hostile airspace over North Korea; flights out of Seoul airport must swerve to avoid the Demilitarized Zone 30 miles away and the battery of North Korean missiles that lie just behind it. Because of their proximity to unfriendly skies, South Korean flyers are probably more sensitive about airspace violations than pilots anywhere else in the world. KAL Flight 007 Captain Chun Byung In, a retired Korean Air Force officer, was known as a cautious and skilled pilot. He was picked to fly for President Chun Doo Hwan on a tour of Southeast Asia in 1981.

Why didn't Japanese or American radar posts warn the Korean jet that it was off course? The flight, in effect, fell between the cracks in the ground-control network. When it first began to wander in midocean, it had passed beyond the range of U.S. civilian air-control radars in Alaska. It was in voice contact by radio with civilian controllers in Tokyo, but not yet within their radar range. The plane was picked up as a blip on the radar screens at Wakkanai in northern Japan, which is run by the Japanese Defense Agency with assistance from the U.S. military. But the Wakkanai station was not in radio contact with the plane. All flights in the region are automatically recorded by military radar, but they are not necessarily tracked at the time, and rarely are they contacted by military ground controllers. Officials at the military radar station do not routinely compare information with civilian controllers. Only when the data from the military station were analyzed, after it was too late to save the plane, did it become clear that the craft on what turned out to be a course of doom was a Korean airliner.

Didn't Sakhalin Korean plane use a transponder, which would identify it on any radar screen? A transponder emits a coded electronic signal giving the plane's four-digit identifying number. After the number is punched into Air Control computers on the ground, it automatically appears next to the plane's radar blip. American officials find it difficult to believe that the Soviet radars are not capable of monitoring the transponder signals of commercial airliners. Sources in both the U.S. Air Force and Japanese Defense Agency say the Korean jet's transponder was functioning.

Did the Soviets know that their "target" was a commercial passenger plane? A former high official in the U.S. intelligence service says he is all but positive that Soviet radar operators keep complete, regularly updated lists of scheduled commercial flights passing anywhere near Soviet borders; he is also convinced that the RC-135s fly regular routes well known to the Soviets. Thus, he is virtually certain the Soviets knew the intruder plane was a civilian craft. Other American sources say that intercepted "ground chatter" from radio broadcasts inside the U.S.S.R. also indicates that the Soviets knew. If there are transcripts of what the Soviet ground commanders said, they have not been released, perhaps because both Japan and the U.S. are afraid of compromising their intelligence-gathering methods.

Once the MiG-23 and Su-15 interceptors spotted the Korean plane visually (the Su-15 came within 1.2 miles), it should have been clear from the distinctive humped profile that it was a Boeing 747. Indeed, the 747 is one of the most recognizable passenger planes in the skies. Soviet pilots, like those in the West, are trained to recognize plane silhouettes. In his press conference last week, Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, the Soviet Chief of Staff, said the pursuit occurred "in the death of night, in clouds." But American officials say that the visibility at that time and at that altitude would have permitted a good enough look. What is most clear from the incident is that the Soviets did not seem to care that their target was merely an innocent commercial passenger plane.

Could the Soviets have mistaken their target for a U.S. RC-135 reconnaissance plane that had been on a mission in the region near where the Korean jet went off course? Marshal Ogarkov reiterated the Soviet claim that the KAL plane was on a spy mission and flew in tandem with the RC-135 for ten minutes so that the blips of the two planes merged on Soviet radar screens. When they separated, he implied, the Soviets could not tell which was which. U.S. officials dismiss this scenario as ludicrous. The two planes, they say, passed each other 86 miles apart headed in opposite directions. At first, the Soviets reportedly referred to the Korean jet as an RC-135. Relays of fighters--ten in all, according to Ogar--were sent aloft to intercept the wayward plane; it evidently took them more than two hours to make visual contact. Visual contact should have confirmed that it was a commercial 747. The passenger plane is 50% larger than the RC-135. Its 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.)

Did the Soviets try to contact and warn the Korean plane? The transcript of one Soviet fighter pilot's communications refers to using a system known as Identification: Friend or Foe (IFF). This device, which is ordinarily used only by the military, allows allied planes to identify themselves to each other by correctly responding to secret electronic passwords. The Korean jet, of course, did not identify itself as a Soviet-aligned plane. Marshal Ogarkov said that Soviet pilots "repeatedly tried to contact the intruder" on the frequency assigned for international emergencies, but there is no evidence of this in the published transcripts. President Reagan charged that Soviet planes are not equipped with the emergency radio frequencies because the Kremlin fears they might be used to allow pilots to defect. The Soviets deny this. In fact, Soviet aircraft have the capability to use the emergency frequencies while participating in air and sea rescues with NATO planes. Whether the Soviets were so equipped this time may be beside the point, since there is no indication that the Korean plane, which seems to have been unaware that it was in trouble, was monitoring or broadcasting on an emergency frequency.

Why didn't the Soviets try to steer the plane out of Soviet airspace or force it to land? When it was shot down, the Korean airliner was only 11 or 12 miles--a mere 90 seconds or so--from international airspace, and the Soviet planes were low on fuel. The Soviets' main consideration at that point may have been to avoid letting it escape. A mixture of paranoia and bureaucratic rigidity makes the Soviets extremely sensitive about their territory. They have long feared encirclement by hostile forces. Any invasion of airspace, even inadvertent, is regarded by them as hostile.

Moreover, it would have embarrassed the Soviet military to let a passenger plane slip through its vaunted air defense. The pilot of the killer Su-15 said on Soviet television Saturday that he had fired four bursts of warning tracer shots, some 120 rounds in all, which could be seen "at a distance of many kilometers." The transcript reports every action taken by each of the Soviet planes chasing the Korean airliner. There is no indication that any warning shots were fired.

Why are the Soviets particularly sensitive about the Kamchatka Peninsula and Sakhalin island? The southern part of Sakhalin, ceded to Japan by the Russians at the end of the 1904-05 war, was retaken by the Soviets at the end of World War II. In fact, Soviet control over Sakhalin was part of the secret pact made between Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta as an inducement to the Soviets to enter the war against Japan. Kamchatka is a key part of the Soviet forward defenses. It is also a target area for ICBMS test-fired from the central Soviet Union. Sakhalin, in addition to being a naval center, has at least six important air bases. Together, Sakhalin and Kamchatka guard the mouth of the Sea of Okhotsk, which the Soviets have been trying to make a sanctuary for their submarines armed with nuclear missiles aimed at the U.S. The Soviets have recently been conducting a massive military buildup in the region.

Who gave the order to shoot down the plane? The Soviet military came under severe criticism in 1978 when a Korean plane flew for two hours into the U.S.S.R. before being tracked down. After that, a new "border law," known as Article 36, gave responsibility for shooting down intruding planes to the regional commanders of the Soviet Air Defense Forces. The local ground control that tracked the Korean jet would have alerted the regional commander at Khabarovsk, in eastern Siberia. Marshal Ogarkov said the military chiefs in Moscow were only informed after the fact. The decision was probably made entirely within the military chain of command, with no official taking responsibility for or dering the Soviet jets not to fire. The politi cal leadership, including Yuri Andropov and others on the Politburo, was probably not consulted, which is what the Soviets indicated in their press conference.

How many missiles were launched? Both of the missiles carried by the Su-15 were launched simultaneously.

Did the Korean jet ever know it was in trouble? Despite Soviet claims that the jumbo jet attempted evasive actions, there is no indication that it ever knew it was being pursued. The Soviet interceptors were generally behind the plane. At one point the Korean plane slowed down, but probably not because the pilot noticed hostile escorts. At that time, he was routinely requesting permission to climb to a higher altitude; his air speed would have dropped slightly as he rose because he was using his power to go higher rather than forward. Indeed, the Korean pilot gave no hint of trouble until the moments after his plane was hit.

Is there any basis to the Soviet contention that the Boeing 747 could have been used as a spy plane? The Boeing 747 used by Korean Air Lines had no bays for photographic equipment or any electronic or communication devices necessary for gathering intelligence. Without extremely sophisticated equipment, which would require visible changes in the shape of the jet and the addition of large antennas, a high-altitude flight at night by a 747 would have little use in reconnaissance. Such a mission would be worthless from the U.S. standpoint, since American satellites and the RC-135s provide far more detailed intelligence than any modified 747 could. The U.S. has never sent out a 747 on a spy mission, Air Force sources insist. Korean President Chun Doo Hwan was vehement in his denial of the spying charge. Said he: "Nobody on earth but the Soviet authorities would believe that a 70-year-old man or a four-year-old child would be allowed to fly in a civilian plane that had the objective of violating Soviet airspace to engage in espionage."

--By Walter Isaacson.

Reported by S. Chang/Tokyo and Jerry Hannifin/ Washington

With reporting by S. Chang, Jerry Hannifin This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.