Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

KAL 007 shootdown by the Soviets in 1983

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • #16
    A soviet diver to KAL 007 speaks

    Originally posted by Speedy
    That's the legacy of all those U.S. spy overflights of the Soviet Union.
    Dear Folks who have been following this discussion,

    Yesterday, a reader of the website of the Committee for the Rescue sent in this Oct. 1, 2000 short Itogi interview with Vadim Kondrabaev, one of the Soviet civilian divers who visited KAL 007 at the bottom of the Tatqar straits within 2 weeks of the downing. We have included the interview below.
    We had been familiar with it and have had it on our website. The interview detailed Kondrabaev's surprised response to the fact of no bodies ( he explains that "special services" explained to them that crabs ate them - no comment about the bones), and no suitcases and luggage. He also gives as explanation what we have maintained by other evidences-

    "It is quite possible that several mini submarines with military divers went down to the Boeing even before us and collected everything, and scattered the remaining parts of the destroyed liner about or left them there where they were needed, and afterwards called us as a smoke screen. "

    In additon, he describes the condition of KAL 007 on the bottom as being in timy pieces much in the way Capt. Girs, who commanded the submersible Tinro 2 and who made most of the dives - very different from the description provided by the military divers. Further substantiating an underwater explosion to simulate a plane having disintigrating upon impact.

    But what I had not seen until yesterday, is that this is the first of the recent articles by the participants from the Soviet times on into Russian Federatation times confirming the mystery of the missing bodies and luggage as being truly a mystery and hardly explainable (quite a divergence from the previous Soviet postions) and confirming that the Soviet "search" was a cover-up for the fact that they knew where KAL 007 was and had already gutted it and had gotten the "black boxes". See- http://www.rescue007.org/kaminski.htm and http://www.rescue007.org/anniversary_commentary.htm


    Times are achanging-perhaps!

    The interview-
    "Vadim Kondrabaev: "Secret of the Empty Airplane"
    The tragedy in the skies over the Black Sea unwillingly reminded one of the events that occurred on 1 September 1983 in the Far East, when a Soviet Su-15 fighter shot down a KAL airlines Boeing 747 airplane, which was flying the New York - Seoul trip, that had intruded into the air space of the USSR with two air-to-air missiles. The airplane, on board which according to official data were 269 passengers and crew, fell into the Tatar straits from an altitude of 11,000 meters. The bodies of the dead, if one is to believe the official announcements of the Soviet side, never were found.

    The deep sea diver Vadim Kondrabaev, who has kept quiet for 18 years, was one of the first lowered to the destroyed Boeing, which was laying at a depth of 174 meters. He arrived at a meeting with Itogi journalists with a small, black bag. There were several curiosities in it: things from the Boeing itself. The diver proudly showed us forks and spoons with the KAL symbol, golf balls and the most important relics: a large ancient Egyptian cross - a symbol of eternal life - and a small bible in English, which he found on the bottom in the pocket of a rain coat which was tangled in the airplanes wreckage.

    - Did you understand what you were risking when you collected these "souvenirs" on the bottom?

    - The desire to keep some kind of memory about our secret mission was stronger than fear of the KGB. We well understood that we could be brought to trial for such escapades. When the tough times began, I wanted to sell my collection in Moscow. Having gone around to opening days and markets and not finding any buyers, I decided to shrug it off. By the way, I don't regret that some kind of memory remained.

    - How did you turn up at the place of the Boeing's impact?

    - On the night of 10 September 1983, when my colleagues and I were working on the diving and rescue craft "Sprut" in the Barents Sea, an aircraft carrier approached us. They reported from it that myself and 16 other divers were to fly immediately to Kaspiy. However, instead of Kaspiy, we landed in Moscow at Chkalovskiy airport.
    Having been refueled, our military transport airplane once again took off and assumed a heading unknown to us. We landed in Yuzho-Sakhalinsk. From there by buses to Kholmsk - to the Arktikmorneftegazrazvedka diving base. Then they literally forgot about us for several days and only at the end of September brought us to the drilling ship "Mikhail Mir*****o." There was a diving complex there, which also became our home for a whole month.

    - Didn't you know what you would be doing?

    - Of course not. No one had explained anything to us. Only having started training in the pressure chamber did we find out that we would be diving to the destroyed South Korean Boeing. They showed us an old, shabby pocket calendar with ((Korean)) characters, on which this very Boeing was rendered.

    - Did you start the dives right away?

    - At first they lowered a video camera from the Mir*****o to the bottom, and then they decided to use a diving bell. where one of the divers looked to the right, a second to the left, and a third and fourth below, directly beneath the bell. On the third day of the dives we noticed a heap of wreckage on the bottom. We were ordered to leave the bell and begin to collect all of this debris. There were especially interested in radio parts, the remains of equipment, documents, in general, everything that was there. Everything was placed into a basket, welded with metal bars and attached to the bell.

    - Did you see the airplane with your own eyes?

    - It is difficult to call this an airplane. The largest wreckage was the size of not more than a square meter. Despite the fact that on board, as they say, was a large number of passengers, we didn't find one body, with the exception only of one hand in a black glove that had been torn off from the arm. The only fact testifying to the fact that there was a destroyed airplane laying on the bottom was the a landing gear strut.

    We found very many things - ragged clothing, cosmetics, tape players, children's toys, spoons, forks, and rescue equipment with the KAL trade mark. But were weren't able to explain some finds. For example, a completely new powder box was found in a box, but with a cracked mirror, as if someone had broken it specially in advance.

    - And did you find the "black boxes"?

    - Somewhere on the fifth day of the search we discovered a recording tape. We went along it and discovered that it was coming out of some kind of box. We reported to above. It really started! The order came to immediately to lift this box. Later they explained to us that we had found one of four of the recorders on board the airplane. Incidentally, somewhere in the bowels of the special services undoubtedly is the film taken by us: from the very beginning we were recording everything that was happening with a video camera, which was concealed in a homemade sealed box. However, someone squealed on us and one evening they called all the "cinematographers" into a special section on board the ship. There a serious man in civilian clothes asked everything be given up to him at once and to take no more pictures.

    - Are you sure that you were working on that very Boeing?

    - It hs been difficult to believe up to now for the reason that, of the people who supposedly were on board, something should have remained. We worked beneath the water almost a month for 5 hours a day and didn't find one suitcase, not even a handle from them. After all there is baggage on any air trip. We either were able to work on the remains, which already had been filtered by the special services, or, what I also do not discount, there were no passengers at all on the airplane, and they stuffed the cabin with rubbish.

    - You don't rule out that special service divers were able to do thorough work on the bottom before you?

    - It is quite possible that several mini submarines with military divers went down to the Boeing even before us and collected everything, and scattered the remaining parts of the destroyed liner about or left them there where they were needed, and afterwards called us as a smoke screen. Then, you know, both the Japanese and the Americans were hunting for this airplane. The latter even listened in on our conversations under water with the help of special radio buoys, which were dropped from helicopters and combat ships which were traveling back and forth not far away. Therefore, the authorities always were repeating to us not to be chattering beneath the water. It happened, we were working and here their acoustics via the radio buoy give such a squeak that the eardrums almost burst. Then the command followed to surface. While we were resting, our military forced back the American ships, and one day they resorted to cunning. They fashioned some sort of a similar "black box" and placed it at a depth of 600 meters several kilometers away from the "Mir*****o." They sent combat boats and fishing trawlers into that region for show. We hear on the radio - the Americans are screaming to the whole world that they have found the Boeing. Helicopters began to arrive on their aircraft carrier with journalists and senators, and one helicopter even crashed in the water.

    - So where might the bodies of the dead passengers be anyhow?

    - I've also thought about this question. You know, even if fishing trawlers were used to collect the remains from the Boeing, then after a month would be simply impossible to collect the bodies of all the dead. True, at the end of the expedition one of the military personnel on the "Mir*****o," having noted that I am very curious and want nonetheless to find the answer to the question, just where are the corpses, said: "The crabs ate them." Perhaps it was this way - even before the first dive we noticed a huge number of crabs on the bottom.

    - When did your mission end?

    - On 29 October. They paid us 200 - 250 rubles each for the work and asked us not to talk about it much. It has come to the point of absurdity. We fly to Moscow, and there aren't enough tickets for the trip to Murmansk. It turns out some have to fly on various trips. Here our group leader goes up to some airport head and says: "Well, the guys were working on the Korean Boeing, we should send them all home together, else they will start drinking one at a time and start jabbering away." The tickets were found immediately.

    - Did they award you somehow for the work?

    - In 1984 there was an order of navy commander-in-chief Admiral GOrshkov issued, in which he expressed his personal gratitude to all our team. They even entered this gratitude for me in my service record.

    Stepan Krivosheev held the interview

    Source: 00.10.01, Itogi "
    Bert Schlossberg, International Director, International Committee for the Rescue of KAL 007 Survivors,

    Comment


    • #17
      Ok so where are the passengers and crew?...

      Cheers!...on the rocks!!

      Comment


      • #18
        Originally posted by lemontree
        Ok so where are the passengers and crew?...
        Lemontree,

        Here http://www.rescue007.org/faq.htm#10 is the answer to your question. These are the results of the Israeli Research Centre for Prisons, Psych-Prisons and Forced Labor Concentration Camps of the USSR. There are no" live sightings" but there are "credible reports" needing further investigation. They are "good" only until the mid 1990's - Avraham Shifrin, the Director of the Centre, died in 1998 but slightly before then, his informant ring ceased its operations in the Russian Federation. There have been a few leads subsequently but no means of verification. The following - http://www.rescue007.org/docs/LaborCamps.pdf - provides evidence for the existance of the Gulag system for foreign nationals into Russian Federation times. These were located in the general area that the Research Centre linked to some of the KAL 007 people - the Tynda area of Siberia and along the Amur river.
        Bert Schlossberg, International Director, International Committee for the Rescue of KAL 007 Survivors,

        Comment


        • #19
          Having read your story with some interest, I would like to ask you a questions.

          What could the Soviets gain by keeping survivors or bodies?
          "Any relations in a social order will endure if there is infused into them some of that spirit of human sympathy, which qualifies life for immortality." ~ George William Russell

          Comment


          • #20
            Originally posted by sparten
            Having read your story with some interest, I would like to ask you a questions.

            What could the Soviets gain by keeping survivors or bodies?

            This has always been a vexing question for us. We did not reason down from the whys to find the evidence but reasoned up from the evidence that was unfolding before us. Still, there is some order that is appearing. First, it is now admitted by the Russian Federation what the Soviets admitted to themselves - that they had deceived the US in reference to their knowledge of the location of KAL 007 and in reference to their having gotten the black box. What the Soviets hoped to gain by their deception, they gained- but only in part. Below is the background to the answer of your question - taken from FAQ 1 of the Commiottee fo the Rescue's website.


            1. Why did the Russians initially deny that they had shot down the civilian flight, KAL 007? Why have the Russians continued to hold the passengers to this day?
            The answers to these questions lie in the accepted appraisal of the Cold War situation of 1983:

            President Reagan had already publicly castigated the USSR as the "Evil Empire."

            On December 12, 1979, Joseph Luns, Secretary General of NATO, announced that the United States would deploy both Pershing II intermediate range ballistic missiles and ground-launched cruise missiles in Europe -- only six minutes from Moscow! -- to counter the Soviet advantage in ICBMs.

            Yuri Andropov was trying to make the Soviet Union appear as a good, peace-loving nation to forestall NATO's missile deployment. If the Soviets had released the passengers right away, they would have been admitting to their culpability, which would have destroyed their "peace-loving" image. As it turned out, their efforts did not work. The US played the tape of the Su-15 pilot, Gennadie Osipovich, saying "the target is destroyed" at the United Nations. NATO then deployed the Pershing II missiles in November of 1983. They remained in Europe until Gorbachev agreed to the breakup of the Warsaw Pact. (In December 1987, Reagan and Gorbachev signed a treaty that for the first time eliminated the entire class of intermediate-range missiles).

            In the failed coup against Gorbachev in August, 1991, fifteen plotters committed suicide, including General Pugo and Marshal Akhromeyev. On the other hand, plotters Marshal Varrenikov and KGB head, Vladimir Kryuchkov, were imprisoned by Gorbachev but released soon thereafter. Varrenikov was commander in chief of the army. Kryuchkov had been head of the First Chief Directorate of the KGB at the time of the shoot-down. These two represented elements within the Soviet military that were strongly xenophobic, anti-US and oriented towards nuclear confrontation. These were the same ones who lead the cover-up of KAL 007 from the start. (Varrenikov arrived on Sakhalin on September 1st to head up the first military inquest and to contain the damage. Kryuchkov was a senior officer in the KGB and personally interrogated congressman Larry McDonald at the Lubyanka prison in Moscow shortly after the plane came down.) Their release reflects their continuing strength. Kryuchkov is still active, a personal friend of Russian President Putin and on the lecture circuit(!), and Varrenikov is now chairman of the Committee for Veteran's Affairs of the Russian State Duma. To this day, they have a strong interest in maintaining the cover-up. A recent book, War Scare: Russia and America on the Nuclear Brink by Peter Vincent Pry, Praeger Publishers, 1999, shows how these elements were active during the coup attempt against Boris Yeltsin in October, 1993, and how they continue to exist. These elements are even more dangerous now as they are acutely aware of how weak Russia's conventional forces are today, which leaves them only the option of nuclear solutions.

            Russia may fear that the release of the KAL 007 passengers and crew might create a negative reaction in the US and bring an end to the American aid that Russia currently receives.

            Finally, IF (a big "if") the Soviets shot down KAL 007 in order to get Larry McDonald (as some believe), or if they discovered the prize they had unintentionally received was too precious to return, they could not release any of the passengers as this would force them to admit to their holding him.

            Sparten, these reasons pertain particularly to KAL 007. But the Soviets would surely be influenced by their general attitude and practice towards all captured foreigners. See - http://www.rescue007.org/faq.htm#11
            Bert Schlossberg, International Director, International Committee for the Rescue of KAL 007 Survivors,

            Comment


            • #21
              The soviets were the ones who good the maximum flak from world opinion and this incident lead to the reduced resistance from Germans to allow the Preshing II missiles for deployment in their country.
              So it would seem stupid for them to hide from the world that the passengers are alive. The Russians are anything but stupid.

              Cheers!...on the rocks!!

              Comment

              Working...
              X