<영문자료> LAST WITNESS OF KAL 007(3)

게재일   8612 현재위치   3/4 출 전   월조 조 회   1154   LAST WITNESS OF KAL 007(3)

Mystery at Bethel Park, Yong Man claims that the biggest mystery of the 007 mystery lies in Bethel. Bethel is a small city 350 aeronautical miles to the west of Anchorage. The navigation guidance facility there sends out two types of electronic signals called the DME and the VOR. When the DME is received, the aircraft would be able to know the distance between the aircraft and the facility, and when the VOR is received, a needle inside the aircraft would indicate the direction of the facility. When these two signals are received, the aircraft can get on the correct air route without the use of the INS. Even if the INS is being used, whenever the aircraft passes over Bethel, it is to check the another position and correct the error of margin of the INS. Pilots refer to Bethel as the "Gate". This means that it is the entrance to the North Pacific Route. Since it is the final navigation guidance facility on land, no pilot can confidently fly the open sea without checking their flight path with the DME and VOR at Bethel. But, 007 passed 22 kilometers to the north of Bethel, and afterwards instead of correcting it's heading, continued to deviate from course. And it was not to the south but to the feared territory of the Soviet. Park, Yong Man said, "After 007, I arrived over Bethel exactly 10 minutes after 007 had been there. I'm not quite sure but, I think I received DME waves but not VOR. If it was the case that the VOR was momentarily failing, 007 could not have found accurate position with the help of the DME only. When receiving the DME only, you would only get the distance between Bethel and the aircraft. In 007's case the instruments would read 12 aeronautical miles between the aircraft and Bethel. You would not be able to tell in which direction you were 12 miles off. I wonder if it wasn't the case where Captain Chun misjudged his position as being 12 miles off to the south, and in turning to the north continued to widen the gap." However, according to other pilots, if 007 was told to head straight for Bethel, and it flew on a heading mode(compass navigation), it should have flown accurately and directly towards Bethel since Bethel is a VOR navigation facility. And if the INS had been turned off and it was flown on a compass according to computer flight plan, it should have passed Bethel 150 kilometers to the south. And that test had revealed that the veering would have been to the south. It seems that the mystery surrounding the passing over Bethel should be left as a mystery. Not being able to come up with a logical answer for the cause of deviation does not negate the fact that the aircraft did stray from flight path. There is a limit to human imagination. We must base upon limited imagination and overindulgence will create a lie. After 007 had passed over Bethel, its cockpit was overcome by confusion and mistakes. When flying on a heading mode without the INS, one must manually control the nose to get the aircraft set in the right direction because of the wind. on a computer flight plan, the appropriate nose directions are given for anticipated wind direction and wind speeds for a given flight path. Unless there is a radical change in the weather forecast, you can control according to the nose directions on the flight plan. The wind directions and speeds reported at Bethel by 007 is identical with that of the flight plan. Forty-five minutes later, as 007 was passing NABIE (a checkpoint on the flight path), it reported wind direction of 250 degrees and blowing at 65 knots. According to the flight plan, it should have been 240 degrees and 29 knots, which is a large discrepancy. Several situations may be inferred from his discrepancy. First, judging from the wind condition, 007 may have been much farther north than NABIE. Second, if it was on a compass navigation, and the wind was blowing greatly different from that of the flight plan, it would have every now and then manually changed the heading of the aircraft. Such a flight is a nerve-wracking experience. Third, when correctly passing over signals from Saint Paul Island, which is located 250 kilometers in the 9 o'clock direction (this island does not show on the weather radar). But, 007 could not receive this DME signal for it had veered to the north and as a consequence, it became further confused. The U.S. knew The pilots say that if 007 was on compass navigation, the reason it deviated from flight path was because it could not properly control its nose against the wind. When the INS becomes unreliable, the compass and the wind information become the two main references for accurate navigation. According to the ICAO report, one of two compasses on board had not been operating properly. During the two hours after 007 had passed over Bethel, it is unknown what kind of a flight path 007 had left. We can only speculate and there is no flight path records to support this. This portion of 007's flight was missing from 007's flight records, which the U.S. had provided to an undisclosed ally. Seymour Hersh wrote that, because 007 was beyond the surveillance limit(approximately 370 kilometers in radius) of U.S. military radars, it was impossible to trace the flight path of 007 nor warn it. Of all the Korean Air Lines' pilots the author had met, there wasn't a single pilot who even began to believe Hersh's theory. Most of KAL pilots are former military pilots and are very knowledgeable on such matters. one pilot said that, although it is true that 007 was beyond the surveillance limit of the Shemya Island radar, but Shemya is not the only one with a radar. If the radars directed at the Soviet Union are unable to detect the 007 flying towards the Soviet Union, then how will they detect the missiles and bombers flying from the Soviet Union. It seems that 007, after passing Bethel and coming out into the Northern Pacific, had passed in the vicinity of Saint Matthews Island. It is most unlikely that the U.S. would not have a radar on its last frontier, Saint Matthews Island. Furthermore, it is very early in the morning and there were very few aircraft in the air. The aircraft track over a long period of time was headed for the Soviet Union at very high speed. There was plenty of time to identify the aircraft and give warning. It is certain that they merely watched 007 approach the mine field. The 007 flight path which had been provided to an undisclosed ally on the day of the incident by the U.S., had the flight path in U.S. control air space erased and only the flight path over Soviet controlled air space. There is criticism about the self-contradicting claim that they knew of 007's flight path over a foreign nation and did not know in their own airspace. The U.S. Air Force had launched a electronic reconnaissance aircraft, the RC-135 in the vicinity of the 007 at the time. The RC-135 had its own radar and a sophisticated electronic surveillance system which was being controlled by ground radar base. In 1968 when a EC-121, a predecessor of the RC-135, was intercepted by the North Koreans over the Sea of Japan, Nixon announced, "We know that North Korean radars had detected the EC-121 when it was intercepted in international airspace." It is hard to believe that the U.S., which is equipped to detect the enemy radar following U.S. aircraft, did not know that 007 was heading towards the Soviet Union. According to Hersh, in 1978 when a KAL 707 aircraft was being chased by Soviet interceptors over the airspace of Murmansk, U.S. electronic surveillance base was listening to conversations between the interceptor pilot and Soviet air control but could not give warning to the KAL aircraft because the U.S. was afraid that U.S. military eavesdropping network might be revealed. Mistaking a Soviet Island for a U.S. Island When 007 informed Anchorage control center that it had passed NEEVA, it informed that its expected time of arrival at NABIE, the next checkpoint, was to be 00:49 hours Korean Standard time, and 9 minutes later, reinformed Anchorage changing the expected time of arrival to 00:53 (4 minutes difference) Korean Standard time. But, later when 007 reported the time at NEEVA, it was 00:58 which was again 5 minutes later when the revised expected time of arrival. Captain Park, who was surprised to hear this, had this co-pilot ask the reason for such a delay. "At that time, it seemed that 007's co-pilot, Son, was hesitant to answer. It took a while for him to reply that the wind was strong. Come to think of it, I wonder if co-pilot, Son, was not asking Captain Chun on how to respond." Approximately 10 minutes later, Captain Park himself called Captain Chun and asked, "Why are you late?" and Chun replied, "The wind is strong." At about the time that this conversation was taking place, the air defense radar on Soviet Commandorski Island detected 007 for the first time. 007's position was not at NEEVA on the R-20 route, but was over the Bering Sea inside the Soviet Aircraft Identification Zone, which was 330 kilometers to the north of NEEVA. This was an enormous deviation. It would be as if one were flying over Pusan but in reality be over Seoul. "NEEVA is the most important checkpoint on this route. once you pass Bethel and head for the dark and vast ocean, you are engulfed in complete darkness for two whole hours and there isn't a single island to be seen. There are no landmarks to check to see if you are on course. Then about an hour after passing NEEVA, two distinct islands appear on the left end of the weather radar. There are actually three islands but normally you can only see two of them. This Shemya Island is like a lighthouse in the darkness. There are the DME-VOR signals from the island which you can receive. If you see Shemya at a 9 o'clock direction 135 miles away, this means that you are now passing accurately over NEEVA. There is a sigh of relief after confirming proper navigation coordinates with the three components, the DME-VOR and the radar. But, it would have been impossible for 007 to catch either Shemya Island or the DME-VOR signals because it was 330 kilometers away to the north. The people in the cockpit would be feeling cold seat down their backs as they are telling themselves, "I should be seeing Shemya on the weather radar by now…also, I should be receiving the DME by now…Two islands appear on 007's radar about 10 minutes later to the left side. They probably were thinking "whew, there is Shemya, what a relief?" It is certain that at approximately the same time a normal flight would have seen Shemya Island, 007 also sighted the two islands on its weather radar. But these two islands were Soviet Commandorski Islands. The direction and distance of these two islands are similar to those when the Shemya Islands are being approached on the R-20 Route. Even the appearance of the islands are almost identical. Both consist of two islands of like shape and size, and even the arrangements are similar. It is Park's opinion that anyone looking at Commandorski would mistake it for Shemya. Interpretation at convenience, and continued silent flight "But, 007 pilots would soon become worried again. They were confident it was Shemya, but how is it that they were not receiving any signals from DME-VOR when they were so close? They must have thought, "strange…that's strange……" They might have wondered, "could it be the receiving equipment or the Shemya facility which is out of order?" But even though they could not receive DME-VOR they probably did not give up their beliefs that the island on the weather radar were Shemya. It would have been very difficult for them to believe that those islands were the Commandorski Islands and that they were flying more than 300 kilometers off course to the north. It would be terrifying even to think of this possibility and they probably did not want to believe it. so, they interpreted the situation to their favor. That is, they decided to rationalize the situation. Those two islands are definitely Shemya, the only problem is that the navigation guidance facilities were out of order." If 007 judged the two islands as being Soviet Commandorski Island, it would have quickly turned its route to the south. If you would look at the flight path records, you would notice that 007 begins to gradually turn to the left at about the same time it sights Commandorski Island. This way, they were making this island lie at 9 o'clock and approximately 135 aeronautical miles in distance. That is, they were positioning themselves at NEEVA's (in reality, they are mistaking it for NEEVA) position. Park, Yong Man explains that Captain Chun, after convincing himself that Commandorski at Shemya, the flight path record shows us that he adjusted the course to the south which had been leaning to the north. Chun, after judging that he was accurately passing NEEVA, stops the gradual turn to the left and confidently resumes a 246 degree heading. Park, Yong Man explains the fact that the reason for 007 reporting its passing of NEEVA 9 minutes later than was expected is another evidence that Commandorski was mistaken for Shemya. "Chun blamed the wind for being so late, but from the wind that was reported at that time he could not have been that late. At the point when Chun judged that he was passing NEEVA, he was in actuality more than 10 minutes behind schedule. It was due to the distance, the turns and the time it took to locate Shemya. It is as if he reported that he was 9 minutes late because of the inconvenience of having to report a revised flight plan if he was more than 10 minutes late. However, by looking at 007's flight path around Commandorski, it becomes clear that they have the INS turned on. it also becomes clearer that the pilots were conscious of the abnormality of the flight path." Even if 007 had deviated from path due to other errors, it would have corrected the errors after the two warnings it received from Captain Park after it identified the errors. 007 could not make the correct adjustments because up to this time, it was still continuing the same navigation (whether it was the heading mode or problematic INS) and believed that it was still flying about right. Last year on October 31st, a JAL passenger aircraft incident occurred because on its way to Moscow, it encountered an air turbulence and turned the navigation switch from INS mode to heading mode and after making a detour, forgot to return the switch to INS mode and flew for an hour, which caused the aircraft to deviate from regulation course by 110 kilometers towards Sakhalin. In this case, the pilot had even turned the weather radar off. Even if 007 had made such an error, it should have discovered the error by the time it was at Commandorski and turn the INS on to normal operation and returned to R-20 route after receiving the two warnings from the Captain of 015. The fact that no such corrections were made is that, the counter evidence proves that 007 did not commit a mistake of turning the switch and that this is additional evidence that 007 continued its risky flight with the knowledge that the INS was not in proper function.