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3 Decades Later, Finnair Pilots Report Dramatic Close Encounter With a Missile
jones_supa (887896) writes It has come to light that a Finnair-owned McDonnell Douglas DC-10 passenger jet narrowly avoided being shot down by a missile while en route to Helsinki 27 years ago, claimed the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat on Sunday. The two co-pilots, Esko Kaukiainen and Markku Soininen, describe how the event happened during a routine flight back to Helsinki from Japan in December 1987. When the plane was crossing the Arctic Ocean, a missile appeared in the distance. The crew thought it was a Russian weather rocket on its way into space, but the missile began heading straight towards the aircraft. Just 20 seconds away from a collision, the missile exploded. The captain, who was resting at the time of the incident, never officially reported the event. The question of who fired the missile has never been definitively answered. But the pilots believe it was launched from either the Soviet Union's Kola Peninsula or a submarine in the Barents Sea. They speculate that the missile could have been a misfire or that the plane was used as training target.
bam!
It's probably coincidence that they remember it at this time.
There are people who recommend Finlandization as a policy. They are terribly misguided. It's a form of moral debasement. It leads to secrecy and lies. It's not a valid policy. If it had continued for a few decades longer, we'd probably have joined the Soviet Union voluntarily. It was a form of slow national suicide.
can we get the truth about (KAL 902) and KAL 007?
now as well?
Much as I'm disliking the Hitlerian Russian government now, I can't believe a) anyone wouldn't have reported it (the pilot) or b) not talked about it loudly for 25+ years.
It doesn't add up.
Even for a very slow (Mach 1) missile, that's several miles flight time. For a missile flying a reasonable speed, it's ten or more miles.
And USA would be? Don't be an idiot. It was the Russians.
Occam says, you're wrong.. Conspiracy and Russian propaganda retards notwithstanding.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Probably a US sub-launched ICBM.
1. There is no such thing as a "sub-launched ICBM". Subs carry SLBMs and SLCMs.
2. Any kind of BM would follow a completely different trajectory than the one described.
3. The "B" in ICBM/SLBM means "ballistic". That means that after the initial burn, it is guided by inertia, and would have no ability to track a moving target.
Oh my. Hate much?
That's just not true. There are sub-launched ICBMs. The definition doesn't require that they're launched from land, just that they have a very long range (5k+ miles or so) and are primarily designed to deliver nuclear warheads.
Probably a US sub-launched ICBM.
1. There is no such thing as a "sub-launched ICBM". Subs carry SLBMs and SLCMs.
2. Any kind of BM would follow a completely different trajectory than the one described.
3. The "B" in ICBM/SLBM means "ballistic". That means that after the initial burn, it is guided by inertia, and would have no ability to track a moving target.
Damn pesky facts.
Here's something I don't know the answer to: Do air-to-airs or ground-to-airs have any sort of range safety feature like rockets, or do they just automatically blow up at the end of their runs? Or both? Or neither (in which case why did it blow up?)?
Damn those Finnish Republicans!
The original article says the missile was 20-25 kilometers away when it was blown up.
Original link (in Finnish)
http://www.hs.fi/sunnuntai/LentÃfjÃft+kertovat+Ohjus+oli+osua+Finnairin+koneeseen+1987++tÃfystuho+20+sekunnin+pÃfÃfssÃf/a1409895098937
Please tell why you post this nonsense greenwow, it makes absolutely no sense. None. Nada. You don't think it will make people vote for candidates that idiots like you support do you? Moron.
Speaking to the paper, the DC-10 plane's two co-pilots, Esko Kaukiainen and Markku Soininen, describe how a routine flight back to Helsinki from Japan in December 1987 suddenly took a dramatic and terrifying turn...”There’s no doubt it came from the Soviet Union,” Soininen said.
That's not true.
ICBMs are intercontinental missiles; they are launched from one continent to target another continent.
As the OP said, submarine-launched missiles of similar range are called SLBMs.
Since it's most probably a russian missile, this proves that they have a self-destruct mode that can be activated before they could hit their target.
This implies that the plane shot down by a russian missile in Ukraine was destroyed on purpose, since the missile could have exploded before hitting its target.
All hail the BBC.
Also a Finnair DC-9 was nearly shot down by the Germans in 1972 during the Munich Olympics. The plane was thought to be hijacked by terrorist because it had a broken radar and radio. The radio was fixed at the last moment and the order to shoot down the plane cancelled.
A Finnair Airbus A300 had a close call with a Belarussian missile in 1994 en route from Helsinki to Rhodos, Greece. The pilots saw a missile crossing their flight path in front of the plane. Belarus denied shooting the missile.
Despite all the close calls, Finnair remains one of the safest airlines in the world with no major incidents.
Much as I'm disliking the Hitlerian Russian government now, I can't believe a) anyone wouldn't have reported it (the pilot) or b) not talked about it loudly for 25+ years.
It doesn't add up.
It does if you know anything about Finnish history. Pissing off the Soviets was may have been an American national sport during the cold war period but for the Finns it was not at the top of their agenda. Finland spent the cold war balancing on a razor's edge they were bound by post WWII treaties to have a military of a fixed (and rather small) size and of course to remain neutral. For this reason the Finns painstakingly split their military procurement exactly down the middle. Half the air force jets, half the army's tanks and half the navy's ships were bought in the Soviet bloc and the other half in the West and it was a very successful strategy (which is why its now being suggested as a solution to the Ukraine crisis). The Finns may have wiped the floor with the Soviet army during the Winter War but it was still not an experience the Finns cared to repeat in the nuclear era. Since the aircraft wasn't actually harmed no purpose would have been served by deliberately embarrassing the bad tempered 16 foot tall, 3000 pound grizzly bear sitting on their eastern border by advertising the ineptitude of the Soviet air defenses so the sensible strategy was just to play it down.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Or Aerolinee Itavia Flight 870 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The mystery of flight 870 (22 July 2006)
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
It seems strange this story was just 'found' now... with a mention of the "Kola Peninsula or a submarine in the Barents Sea"...
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Put your tin foil hat back on. Then bury it... no need to take it off first. America never shot anyone, nor had any other country shoot anyone for the simple reason of them wanting to leave country. East Germany killed thousands for this at Russia's instruction (and remember Putin was part of that Russian security operation in East Germany). And every other country under Russia's thumb did the same. Soviet Union = Russia. And Petrov??? All he did was assume that a shitty Russian built system malfunctioned. He did his job. If you made a hero out of him, you are lame. Their systems probably weren't that reliable so his assumption that the system failed was probably immediate. After all, the great minds of Russia would do things as stupid as shoot down civilian air liners. The difference here is that the guy at the trigger (and his family) would have died too.
else it might have been teenage me shooting off my home-made rockets.
/ yep, I'd be in gitmo nowdays for half the crap I did as a teen
Take it easy on the paint chips.
Here's something I don't know the answer to: Do air-to-airs or ground-to-airs have any sort of range safety feature like rockets, or do they just automatically blow up at the end of their runs? Or both? Or neither (in which case why did it blow up?)?
In that era, yes. I beleive most anti-aircraft missle systems in that era were semi-active radar guided missiles which require a ground based radar to paint the target. Most likely there was a safety system where if the painting radar shuts down the missle destructs. Even air to air radar missles (e.g. Aim-7 Sparrow) required the firing aircraft to keep it's nose pointed towards the target aircraft to keep it painted. I beleive the Aim-54 Phoenix was one of the first missles with self contained terminal guidance.
Who is John Galt?
Yep. It would have been extremely irresponsible to forget to report they were almost hit by a missile. Making a public statement wouldn't be necessary, but a pilot lazy enough to not report it to his superiors shouldn't be flying a kite, much less a plane.
Nor your lack of self-awareness.
easy- the US routinely sent RC-135 (Boeing 707 derivatives) into or near Soviet airspace to study their air defense systems. So, the Russians monitor an RC-135 as it wanders into and out of its airspace, and by the time their top-down command and control system reacts with orders to the field level, the RC-135 was gone but KAL XXX (big wing, 4 engines, large airplane, all of which similarities cause misidentification of the commercial airliner as the RC aircraft) had wandered into the way.
And then: Bang. Smash. Oops.
Look up Rivet Joint, Rivet Ball and other such missions and you'll know all you need. That and that KAL pilots needed better training on entering route information into their avionics...
SM1 (standard missile 1) required active guidance all the way, typically a 55B fire control RADAR or similar.
Typical warhead was continuous rod (a lot of shrapnel). The idea being to tear holes in the target and let aerodynamics do the rest.
Yes, because we absolutely know that
a) 30 years ago that actually was a russian missile, which
b) was purposefully blown and did not for example malfunction, and
c) it was the russians that shot down the airliner in Ukraine, and
d) the crew that shot it down knew it was a passenger jet, and
e) it was the same kind of missile system
This proves it 100%.
You better pick a side this time.
"Russian President Vladimir Putin said on 14 March 2013 at a meeting with military historians that Stalin launched the war to "correct mistakes" made in drawing the border with Finland after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution."
Actually the incident has been known in Finnair and aviation circles ever since, and discussed publicly in aviation seminars etc.
However, the pilots never wrote official report and never informed the politicians.
So know we know not to fly Finnair ever again or any Finnish airline for that matter. Not because an airplane was targetted by Russia which could happen to any airline but because they have kept this information hidden for 27 years even to this day. This means that the Finnish Transport Safety Agency is corrupt and cannot be trusted which doesn't bode well for their aviation safety.
I wonder how many "UFO" close encounters reported through the years might be something like this: something very rare, and almost unthinkable to the common people (a passenger jet as target practice for missiles?!), but totally explainable.
"A sysadmin is a cross between a detective, a police officer, a gardener, a doctor and a fireman"
Then it's a good thing the remote detonation worked this time.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
they learned, the US got away with it
The U.S. got away with not launching any nukes? It was concluded the Russian satellite detection system malfunctioned.
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