On July 18, 1981, a passenger plane of unknown origin suddenly flew into Soviet airspace. After several unsuccessful calls to the airliner to stop, the pilot pilot of the Su-15 made a decision that later horrified everyone: crashing. In the end, the airliner was destroyed by the Su-15, and none of the people on board survived. It was not until the collapse of the Soviet Union that the secrets of the plane were gradually revealed. Why, then, did this opportunity to enter Soviet airspace sting soviet sensitive nerves? What kind of secrets are there on passenger planes? If you are interested in this topic, please help "press the 2-second like button" to give a strong thumbs up. And "pay attention" to it, often come later, and don't get lost.
(Su-15)
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="5" > why was the Soviet Union so sensitive to air transport aircraft? </h1>
Perhaps, in today's eyes, the reaction to the Soviet Air Force will be a little confused: why can the seemingly "harmless" passenger aircraft stimulate the sensitive nerves of the Soviet Union so much that the Soviet Air Force pilots will not hesitate to make the decision to collide?
This is because, in the 21st century of peaceful development today, it is difficult to imagine the intensity of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union in the last century, and the provocation of the US-led NATO Air Force against the Soviet Union.
(U.S. U2 reconnaissance aircraft)
In 1945, the United States successfully dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, and mushroom clouds rose over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Before the nuclear strike on Japan, U.S. President Harry S. Truman triumphantly hinted to Stalin that "the United States has a secret weapon," but Stalin thought that Truman, who had just sat on the hot presidential bench, was still too young. The Manhattan Project in the United States was a top secret to most people, and Truman knew nothing about it when he was Roosevelt's deputy. But before Truman knew of the plan and the atomic bomb came out, KGB agents in the United States had reported the American plan to develop the atomic bomb to Stalin.
Thus, in 1949, the Soviet Union soon succeeded in testing the first atomic bomb of its own. Since then, the nuclear test race between the two major powers of the United States and the Soviet Union has become uncontrollable. It wasn't until many years later that Truman realized that the United States might have been infiltrated into a sieve by Soviet intelligence. As a result, the United States also attached importance to intelligence work, and McCarthyism flourished in the United States.
(U.S. President Harry S. Truman)
However, after several rounds of competition, the United States found that its CIA KPI was far less perfect than the Soviet KGB in investigating the progress of the Soviet nuclear test. Therefore, if it is too soft to work, it can only come to hard: In 1956, the U-2 reconnaissance aircraft painstakingly developed by the United States was completed, and this reconnaissance aircraft could fly up to a height of more than 20,000 meters, far exceeding the maximum flight altitude of the MiG-17 fighter of the Soviet Union at that time. Therefore, the United States took advantage of the power of the U-2 reconnaissance aircraft to frequently invade the airspace of the Soviet Union and obtain the latest information on the Soviet Union's nuclear tests, which made Khrushchev, who was in power at the time, very annoyed.
On Labor Day 1960, U-2 reconnaissance aircraft flew into Soviet airspace again, and the Soviet Union dispatched the latest MiG-19 to intercept it, but still could only look up at the high-toed U-2 in the air. The Soviets then dispatched the newly produced Su-7 to intercept the Su-7 to barely reach the U-2, but the Su-7, which took off in a hurry, did not carry any weapons. And the angry ground Soviets were already on their heads at this time, giving the order to the Su-7 pilots: Hit it!
(Su-7 attack aircraft)
It didn't take long for the U-2 in the United States to show signs of falling, wafting through the air in the air. However, the U-2 was not finally hit by the Su-7, but the Soviet ground forces launched anti-aircraft missiles, which actually did not hit the U-2, but hit their own aircraft that had previously intercepted the U-2 without success and was withdrawing: the MiG-19, but the fragments of the MiG-19 explosion hit the U-2, and the American pilot Bowers on the U-2 reconnaissance plane was also captured alive.
Although the whole story has a funny twist, you can also see the hard core of the Soviet army from the side: as long as you invade my airspace, even if you hit your own people, I will pull you. In 1978, a Boeing 707 from Korean Airlines deviated from the course and mistakenly entered the skies over Murmansk, while the Soviet Union thought that the passenger plane that had strayed into the airspace was invaded by enemy aircraft, so it sent a Su-15 fighter jet to shoot it down with an air-to-air missile, which also killed 2 passengers on the plane.
Therefore, if today's Russian flights play a heartbeat, then for other countries' flights in the last century, it is heart disease that mistakenly enters the Soviet airspace. But what people who lamented for two South Korean flight passengers in 1978 did not expect was that in a passenger plane straying three years later, the Soviet Air Force would go a step further and prove what a fighting nation's martial virtue was.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="19" > In 1981, why did the Su-15 crash into an Argentine airliner? </h1>
July 18, 1981 was a Saturday holiday. But soviet ground forces suddenly received an alert: a CL-44 commercial flight that had not sent a request for a flight to the Soviet Union was gradually approaching Soviet airspace, which is the airspace near today's Armenia.
This made the Soviet troops, who had relaxed their nerves a little, suddenly tense up, who could break into soviet airspace at this time? After all, in the 1978 Incident of South Korean flights mistakenly entering the Soviet Union, although the Soviet Air Force left the title of "Flight Butcher" because of overreacting, it did make the captains of the world tense their nerves: even if the flight turned from the North Pole to Antarctica, the flight could not be mistakenly into Soviet airspace. Now that an aircraft that had not sent an application to the Soviet Union had broken into Soviet airspace, what was it trying to do?
(CL-44 involved)
After several unsuccessful calls on the plane on the ground, the Soviet Union finally made a decision: let the Su-15, which had a history of destroying Korean airlines, fly into the airspace to see what happened, and the captain of the Su-15 fighter was The Soviet Air Force Captain Valentine, who had a wealth of combat experience. If the captain of this passenger plane is a cargo-aware, can recognize the model of the Su-15 aircraft, and think about the South Korean airliner in 1978, it should be difficult to retreat.
In the air, Captain Valentine repeatedly signaled that the plane should immediately stop flying and land for inspection by the Soviets. However, the airliner did not respond to the signal sent by Captain Valentine, but instead accelerated the speed of the aircraft and prepared to escape the tracking of the Su-15 fighter, which made Captain Valentine feel difficult for a while: after all, in the 1978 South Korean flight that mistakenly entered Soviet airspace, the Soviet reaction caused the death of two passengers on the passenger plane, which also left a bad impression on the international image of the Soviet Union at that time, and if he wanted to shoot down the passenger plane at this time, he had to get the consent of the ground troops.
(Su-15 fighter)
So how did the Soviet ground forces respond to this? The Soviet ground forces subsequently issued several requests for the airliner to stop, but the airliner continued to fly with the signals sent by the Soviet ground forces and the Air Su-15 as the wind in their ears. This further increased the suspicion of the passenger plane by the Soviets on the ground: I warned you many times with the Su-15, but you did not give a face. Eventually, Soviet ground forces issued an order to Captain Valentine: shoot it down.
However, when Captain Valentine in the air received this order, he found that the most ripe time to shoot down the airliner had passed. This is not because the airliner flew too fast, escaping the Su-15's attack range, but because it flew too slowly. The two aircraft flying in the air are in relative motion with each other: the Su-15 fighter, even if it carries weapons, can maintain a speed of 2230 kilometers per hour at an altitude; the CL-44 passenger aircraft is a passenger aircraft built by Air Canada for civil aviation, with a speed of only 670 kilometers per hour. At a fast and a slow time, the Su-15 fighter jet has difficulty maintaining the shortest strike range from the CL-44, that is, the shortest range of its K-98 air-to-air missile: 1.5 kilometers. This made It difficult for Captain Valentine to launch air-to-air missiles and destroy the airliner.
(CL-44 model)
Thus, after the unsuccessful plan of an air-to-air missile strike on the airliner, the idea of another downside aircraft gradually came to Mind of Captain Valentine. He struggled to control the low Su-15's speed of flight, gradually approaching the slow-flying CL-44, and intended to signal to the CL-44 with the hard back of the Su-15 fighter: stop immediately. The CL-44 also seems to have spotted Valentine's intentions and began to try to fly upwards to escape. At this time, Valentine could not restrain his anger and crashed directly into the CL-44 with the back of the Su-15 fighter!
This surprised the Soviet troops on the ground, because although the Su-15 was a fighter, the fighters that were round and round, and the pursuit of lightness and speed was obviously no better than the large passenger aircraft that pursued passenger capacity. According to the data, the Su-15 fighter weighed 18 tons, while the CL-44 that crashed into Soviet airspace weighed 60 tons. After the first impact was fruitless, Valentine saw that the CL-44 was still flying in the air, so he gave the CL-44 a second time: after two impacts, the behemoth in the air finally crumbled and fell to the ground, but Valentine's Su-15 fighter was not lightly injured, and in desperation, Valentine had to choose to parachute, but fortunately he successfully escaped the air disaster because of his excellent parachuting ability.
(Soviet Air Force)
After the crash of the CL-44, all four passengers on board were killed, and the Soviet Union also carried out research on the wreckage and items on the CL-44. This incident once again put the Su-15 fighter on the back of the notoriety of "passenger aircraft killer". After this incident, although Captain Valentine, who guaranteed the security of Soviet airspace, was commended and awarded the rank of major, due to international pressure, the Soviet high command still allowed him to retreat to the second line and retire to his old age. The secret of this CL-44 airliner was not revealed by the world until the end of the Cold War.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="35" what is the secret of the CL-44 airliner that broke into Soviet airspace >? </h1>
All four passengers on board the CL-44 were killed, but this did not prevent the secrets of the aircraft from being made public. After the end of the Cold War, after a multi-party investigation by Russia and other countries, it was found that the passenger plane was not carrying passengers, not commodities, but arms.
But the airliner, which was carrying arms, did not come for the Soviet Union at the time, but at three seemingly unrelated countries: Israel, Iran and Argentina. Why did these two seemingly different beliefs and intolerable countries have such an arms trade at that time? And what does it have to do with Argentina?
(Iran-Iraq War)
It turned out that this was because between 1980 and 1988, a little friction broke out between Iran and Iraq, two countries bordering each other, which the history books called the "Iran-Iraq War." In this war, the United States and other important arms trading countries in the world have tightened arms restrictions on the two countries and strictly prohibited the flow of weapons into Iran and Iran, which has caused certain difficulties for iraq and Iran during the war, so both countries want to find out how fast and good the weapons suppliers in the international community. Israel, which was different from Iran's beliefs, proposed at the time that it was willing to provide Iran with the necessary weapons in time of war. However, in the case of a strict arms ban in the world, aircraft taking off from Israel to transport arms will pass through Iraqi airspace, and if Iraq discovers that Israeli aircraft are carrying weapons destined for Iran, then the arms trade between Israel and Iraq will not be a secret.
Therefore, after deliberation, Israel proposed to Iran such a plan: using the CL-44 passenger aircraft produced by Air Canada, using flights controlled by senior argentine air force officials, passing through a third country, transporting weapons sold by Israel to Iran. As a result, it will be difficult for Iraq to find the "catnip" between Israel and Iran. But what neither Israel nor Iran expected was that the plane would mistakenly crash into Soviet airspace.
(Su-15 interceptor)
Today, the history between Israel and Iran may no longer be a "secret" in the world. But should the Soviet Air Force fire on the arms transport plane that broke into its own airspace?