Passengers on Korean Air Lines (KAL) flight No. 902, who flew from Paris to Seoul on April 20, 1978, may still not really know why and how, instead of a stopover in Anchorage, their plane ended up on the ice of a forest lake in Karelia. But those of them who are still alive should raise a glass to their pilot: it was he who brought them out of the other world thirty years ago. True, not everyone.
Late in the evening of April 20, 1978, a Korean Air Lines Boeing 707 crashed onto the ice of Lake Korpiyarvi, not far from the Karelian village of Loukhi, about 2,000 km from Moscow. It had taken off from Paris, but never made it to an intermediate landing in Alaska. There were 109 passengers on board, and the plane was piloted by former military pilot Kim Chang Kyu.
Note the aircraft's wake: pilot Kim Chang Kyu was landing on the ice with the landing gear down. At the moment of stopping, the Boeing's nose rolled onto the shore. The photo was taken on April 21, 1978 from a military helicopter.
The left wing console was torn off by a rocket explosion
The striking elements of the missile warhead destroyed the hydraulic system and damaged the left outer engine
Taking off from Paris and heading north, the Boeing 707 crossed the English Channel, safely passed the UK, but abeam Iceland it unexpectedly left the airway, flew over Spitsbergen and, turning right again, headed towards the Kola Peninsula. Captain Kim's arc turned out to have a radius of about two thousand kilometers - it seemed that everyone was asleep, including the autopilot.
Passengers should light the first candle to their gods for the fact that their plane was not destroyed by an anti-aircraft missile on approach to Murmansk. The fact is that the Boeing 707, flying at that moment at an altitude of 9000 meters, is exactly like the NATO reconnaissance aircraft RC-135, and the story of the Lockheed U-2 pilot Francis Harry Powers taught Soviet generals to act decisively against flying spies. shot down over the USSR on May 1, 1960. If we had launched our surface-to-air missile, the Boeing 707 would have disintegrated into molecules. According to Colonel Evgeniy Grobovsky, who was on duty that evening at the airfield of the 5th Air Defense Division in Poduzhemia, instead of an anti-aircraft attack, the air defense command organized a “cleanup” of the airspace according to the “Carpet” plan, when aircraft, regardless of type and departmental affiliation, are obliged to carry out an urgent landing at the nearest airfield. A flight of Su-15TM fighters took off to intercept the target. The first to approach the offender was the “dryer” of captain Alexander Bosov. Having reported to the ground that there was a civilian aircraft in front of him, Bosov took a parallel course, shook his wings, signaled with his side lights and, crossing the course of the intruder, smoothly turned to the side - in aviation Esperanto this meant an order to follow the interceptor aircraft. But the Korean pilot “turned on the fool”: pretending that he did not understand the signals, he turned towards Finland. Most likely, military pilot Kim Chang Kyu, who once fought with our MiGs in Vietnam, tried to escape to adjacent territory.
The inside and outside of the shot Boeing
Representatives of all Soviet law enforcement agencies visited the plane landing site
Flight KAL-902 deviated from the air route abeam Iceland and, having turned, actually took the opposite course. The only person who suspected something was wrong at that moment was Boeing passenger Kishio Ohtani. Looking out the window, he was surprised that the Arctic sun was shining from the wrong side, but he did not attach any importance to this and fell asleep peacefully
But not everyone survived. Fragments of a rocket fired from Alexander Bosov's fighter killed two passengers, injured 13, and those who survived the attack received barotrauma.
The first search group reached the plane two hours later. They say that those who boarded the plane were almost knocked off their feet by a terrible mixture of the smells of alcohol, tobacco, blood and excrement...
The reaction to the night events in the Karelian sky followed in the morning. A TASS report on the pages of Pravda stated that a Korean Airlines plane violated USSR airspace and landed on a lake in Karelia. It is clear that foreign “voices” immediately shouted that the “Soviets” shot the defenseless civilian aircraft. But here’s what’s curious: there was no diplomatic scandal! Because both of them had the stigma. The Korean Boeing actually invaded the airspace of the USSR, and its crew did not comply with the requirements of the interceptor aircraft, putting innocent passengers at risk. The Soviet Union, in turn, violated international agreements prohibiting attacks on civilian aircraft. And neither Russian nor American military historians can find recordings of pilots’ radio conversations made by both sides...
The passengers of flight KAL-902 spent several days in the garrison House of Officers in the city of Kemi, where they received medical care, and then flew to Helsinki. Cargo 200 was also sent from the USSR on the same flight. The crew was taken to Moscow, but after investigative actions and the Koreans confessed their guilt, they were released to their homeland.
Meanwhile, work was in full swing on the shore of Lake Korpijärvi. Representatives of all aviation design bureaus visited the tent camp next to the plane. The emergency radio was removed from the Boeing, the fuel drain system was dismantled, samples of the wing's honeycomb fillers were cut out, and the remaining scrap metal was removed by helicopter. It is possible that some of the trophies benefited our aircraft industry, but it is absolutely certain that a foreign plane brought the virus of Western culture to Karelia. After gutting the passenger compartment, the officers tasted the smoke of Marlboro cigarettes, discovered Playboy magazine and tasted Coca-Cola. Funny? Just remember 1978 - what they smoked, what they drank... Have you seen pictures like these?
Talking about gastronomic discoveries, the helicopter pilots of the Poduzhemie airfield laugh at themselves:
“I remember they tried to open a can of beer for about twenty minutes... In the end they did the same as with condensed milk - they pierced the can in two places with a screwdriver and drank it.”
But what everyone we talked to in Karelia, including military pilots, agreed on was that landing a “wounded” Boeing on the ice was aerobatics.
— The Korean landed blindly, without a piece of the wing, with broken hydraulics and on three engines. He did not break the ice and did not jump into the forest belt. Well done man!
