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On the early morning hours of September 1, 1983, a Boeing RC-135S Cobra Ball flying out of Shemya AFB, Alaska, was orbiting near Soviet airspace over the Kamchatka peninsula. They were carrying out MASINT mission in anticipation of the Soviet ICBM test scheduled for the day, tracking and measuring re-entry vehicles as they made landfall on the Kura test range - Likewise, on the other side of the border, Soviet radar operators were also tracking every single move they made.
The pressure was high among the ranks of the V-PVO, the air defense command of the Soviet air force. Earlier that year some of their comrades had been reprimanded or dismissed after several US Navy aircraft from USS Midway and USS Enterprise overflew Soviet installations in Kuril islands during exercise FleetEx '83-1, some up to 20 minutes long. As a result, the Soviet air defense command in the area was put on alert for the rest of the spring and summer.
Meanwhile, Oblivious to the tension developing on the skies over the Kamchatka peninsula, a Boeing 747-230B of the South Korean flag carrier Korean Air Lines departed from Anchorage under the flight number KAL 007, after a short refueling stop on its way from New York John F. Kennedy to Gimpo in Seoul, South Korea. Upon arriving over Bethel, Alaska, KAL 007 entered the northernmost of five 80 km wide airways, known as the NOPAC routes, bringing it just 28.2 km from the edge of Soviet airspace off the coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula. The flight was carrying 246 passengers and 23 crew members.
And with all players in place, the stage was set for one of if not the most painful tragedies in the history of aviation. A tragedy that will forever change the way we navigate around the globe and brings the world ticking ever closer to midnight.
I would like to thanks all my friends for your encouragement in the past posts. To get this right the first time, I looked up some digital painting tutorials and dissected the work of my favorite aviation artists, namely Shigeo Koike-sama of Hasegawa fame and monsieur Romain Hugault of Angel Wings comics. I still have a long way to go to be in their league, but I'm making progress little by little.
The darkness of the scene still affords me the comfort of relatively monochrome painting, I will definitely try a more vibrant daytime scene next time!
The pressure was high among the ranks of the V-PVO, the air defense command of the Soviet air force. Earlier that year some of their comrades had been reprimanded or dismissed after several US Navy aircraft from USS Midway and USS Enterprise overflew Soviet installations in Kuril islands during exercise FleetEx '83-1, some up to 20 minutes long. As a result, the Soviet air defense command in the area was put on alert for the rest of the spring and summer.
Meanwhile, Oblivious to the tension developing on the skies over the Kamchatka peninsula, a Boeing 747-230B of the South Korean flag carrier Korean Air Lines departed from Anchorage under the flight number KAL 007, after a short refueling stop on its way from New York John F. Kennedy to Gimpo in Seoul, South Korea. Upon arriving over Bethel, Alaska, KAL 007 entered the northernmost of five 80 km wide airways, known as the NOPAC routes, bringing it just 28.2 km from the edge of Soviet airspace off the coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula. The flight was carrying 246 passengers and 23 crew members.
And with all players in place, the stage was set for one of if not the most painful tragedies in the history of aviation. A tragedy that will forever change the way we navigate around the globe and brings the world ticking ever closer to midnight.
---I would like to thanks all my friends for your encouragement in the past posts. To get this right the first time, I looked up some digital painting tutorials and dissected the work of my favorite aviation artists, namely Shigeo Koike-sama of Hasegawa fame and monsieur Romain Hugault of Angel Wings comics. I still have a long way to go to be in their league, but I'm making progress little by little.
The darkness of the scene still affords me the comfort of relatively monochrome painting, I will definitely try a more vibrant daytime scene next time!
Category All / All
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 1280 x 860px
File Size 130.7 kB
KAL 007 and Vincennes incident seems to me like two sides of the same coin. Yet the PVO shot them down to save themselves from getting sacked for letting foreign aircraft strayed so far into Soviet airspace, so far as shooting them down even after they were leaving Soviet airspace into international waters.
From the ICAO report, they found the autopilot was in HDG mode instead of INS mode, this means the aircraft was following magnetic heading instead of the pre-selected waypoints on the aircraft's Inertial Navigation System. Why this happens is still unknown, but looking at the VCR transcript, the flight crew of KAL 007 seems unaware that they were entering Soviet airspace.
If it wasn't such a brutal incident this would make a fantastic poster, brilliantly done Graue! And yes with the whole Operation RYAN incident and general increase in tension 1983 was one of the most dangerous years of the Cold War. In fact in some respects more-so than the Cuban Missile Crisis because both sides were at, or near, the very peak of their combined nuclear arsenals. A grim painting for a grim time.
And yes with the whole Operation RYAN incident and general increase in tension 1983 was one of the most dangerous years of the Cold War.
The aging Soviet leadership at the time was shrouded in anxiety over the possibility of the US mounting a first strike against the USSR, event to the point of obsession that Americans are legitimately preparing for nuclear war. This was only compounded by intensified CIA operation first by Carter and continued by the Reagan administration, numerous probing flights by the Strategic air command bombers, FleetEx '83 exercise, and culminating in the shot down of KAL 007
Two weeks after the shot down Yuri Andropov himself said that:
"If anyone had any illusion about the possibility of an evolution for the better in the policy of the present American administration, recent events have dispelled them completely."
the word "completely" was carefully chosen to express Politburo's consensus that the USSR could not reach any agreement with the Reagan administration. In sum, the KAL 007 Shot down heightened Andropov's profound distrust of American leaders and might have influenced his overreaction to the Able Archer 83 exercise that took place in November that year.
Even Gorbachev himself said:
Never, perhaps, in the postwar decades was the situation in the world as explosive and hence, more difficult and unfavorable, as in the first half of the 1980s.
80s music is fire though, change my mind
The aging Soviet leadership at the time was shrouded in anxiety over the possibility of the US mounting a first strike against the USSR, event to the point of obsession that Americans are legitimately preparing for nuclear war. This was only compounded by intensified CIA operation first by Carter and continued by the Reagan administration, numerous probing flights by the Strategic air command bombers, FleetEx '83 exercise, and culminating in the shot down of KAL 007
Two weeks after the shot down Yuri Andropov himself said that:
"If anyone had any illusion about the possibility of an evolution for the better in the policy of the present American administration, recent events have dispelled them completely."
the word "completely" was carefully chosen to express Politburo's consensus that the USSR could not reach any agreement with the Reagan administration. In sum, the KAL 007 Shot down heightened Andropov's profound distrust of American leaders and might have influenced his overreaction to the Able Archer 83 exercise that took place in November that year.
Even Gorbachev himself said:
Never, perhaps, in the postwar decades was the situation in the world as explosive and hence, more difficult and unfavorable, as in the first half of the 1980s.
80s music is fire though, change my mind
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