4 ms·

I remember watching a "Mayday: Aircrash Investigation" episode (awesome series by the way) from the 80's I think. It involved an Eastern passenger plane that h

I remember watching a "Mayday: Aircrash Investigation" episode (awesome series by the way) from the 80's I think. It involved an Eastern passenger plane that had miscalibrated it's guidance system and strayed into Soviet(?) territory during a politically tense period at the same time a US spy plane was in the area. The Russians(?) shot the plane down and it nearly started a war. The country the plane was from didn't believe it had strayed as far as the Russians(?) said it did. Eventually, the US government released radar data showing the position and path of this plane so that it would avoid a war. It showed this particular plane had grossly gone off course and entered Russian territory. The radar they had was capable of tracking every plane in the world 24x7. This was back a couple/few decades as well! Turned out the plane has set the wrong guidance system pre takeoff which was a terrible and extremely rare mistake. The US held out until the last moment to release this data as they didn't want anyone to know they had the capability. This leads me to believe some people somewhere know where this plane went down. I am not sure if I am recalling this precisely, but I 100% remember that the US government back then apparently has this radar tech.

throwaway092834 13y ago
It sounds like you're describing KAL007: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007 There's a larger list of airliner shootdowns here, and this is the only incident which seems to match your recollection: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_incidents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_inci... There's nothing in the wikipedia article about the USA's ability to track planes. We did have a radar station in AK, which may be what you're thinking of? According to wikipedia it didn't produce useful information, and wasn't necessarily tracking the plane at all points anyway: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007#U.S._Air_Force_radar_data http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007#U.S... I don't think we've ever had the ability to track all planes in the world.
- TomGullen 13y ago
  It'll take me ages to go through all the episodes of Mayday, but I'm certain in one of them the US released highly classified radar data to prevent a wider political catastrophe, and that the narrator described the source of the data was from a new type of radar that had the capability to track every plane in the world. The series is exceptionally well researched and presented.

throwaway092834 13y ago

It sounds like you're describing KAL007: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007 There's a larger list of airliner shootdowns here, and this is the only incident which seems to match your recollection: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_incidents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_inci... There's nothing in the wikipedia article about the USA's ability to track planes. We did have a radar station in AK, which may be what you're thinking of? According to wikipedia it didn't produce useful information, and wasn't necessarily tracking the plane at all points anyway: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007#U.S._Air_Force_radar_data http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007#U.S... I don't think we've ever had the ability to track all planes in the world.

TomGullen 13y ago
It'll take me ages to go through all the episodes of Mayday, but I'm certain in one of them the US released highly classified radar data to prevent a wider political catastrophe, and that the narrator described the source of the data was from a new type of radar that had the capability to track every plane in the world. The series is exceptionally well researched and presented.