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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.
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.
Are you suggesting that you should have come forward when Russia was invading Georgia? Or when Russia was threatening countries in Eastern Europe with being targeted by nuclear missiles? Or when Russia was making threats against Western Europe?
With Russia it seems there are too few good opportunities to bring this sort of thing forward without questioning "the timing." Why is that?
Occam says, you're wrong.. Conspiracy and Russian propaganda retards notwithstanding.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Lets not forget it would have been poor timing to mention it at any point in the previous two decades while Russia was propping up Moldovan separatists in Transnistria.
In fact what's happened in Moldova is a good foreshadowing of what's happening now in Ukraine; Russia uses "separatists" in the east of the country to foment unrest, then props them up whilst denying all involvement. This neatly keeps the country unstable and weak and turns it into a bargaining chip; Moldova won't be able to join the EU until they "solve" Transnistria, for example. Just the way that Russia like it.
Are you unaware that there are multiple versions of surface-to-air missles, and that some may have features that others do not?
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.
I don't think anyone was in much doubt that it was deliberately shot down. What they thought they were shooting down is another matter.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
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.
No, that was exactly why I read TFA expecting to see that the Finnish government was the one who buried it. They weren't. Seems to...defy credulity that 2 ordinary citizens would be making a political decision like that. The government yes, 2 copilots no.
It is hard to believe that a near miss by a SAM would be given less attention by the captain than a malfunctioning coffee maker and even harder to believe that this incident was not reported. If a SAM exploded 20 seconds away from my DC-10 full of passengers whose lives I'm responsible for that would sure as shit get my attention if I was the captain and you can bet your bottom dollar I would report it to somebody. The original article simply says the captain refused to report the incident, it does not say he didn't try so it's entirely possible that he actually did try to report it and was told in no uncertain terms to shut the f*** up about it.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow