I was stationed on Shemya n(Aleutian chain in 1971.). Even then the Cobra Ball a SAC reconnaissance Aircraft flew the figure 8 pattern looking for data on soviet missle launches into target range on Kamchatka
Thanx for uploading.... Danke für das Hochladen dieses Films, der leider kaum noch gezeigt wird, obwohl er eine historische Begebenheit bewertet und daher sehr wichtig ist, wie ich finde.
THANK YOU SO SO MUCH BJORN. I’ve been waiting for decades to see this again. Awesome account of the event.. and the re-enactment at the end.. just wow. T H A N K Y O U. 🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇
This is awesome. I have this movie on VHS stored away somewhere. This movie shows the job I did in the Air Force... monitoring Russian military communications (though many years after this incident). I would have been doing the same job as the blonde guy typing into the computer with his headphones on, tracking aircraft.
@@holybear It's a great movie though there are A LOT of inaccuracies... for one, you never went into the latrine to discuss classified information as it was considered non-secure. But I do like this movie because when I was in, we were always told about how incredibly secret our jobs were and to never, ever say anything to anyone. But we all knew about this movie though few had actually seen it. I didn't see it until after I got out, and found it at the local video rental place.
53:20 "That is murder in anyone's language. What do you think they'd call it if we did it" . interesting line of dialogue for a move that came out the year after the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian airliner killing 290 people.
To think that the flight crew made one small error that caused the whole mess. They failed to turn the knob on the auto-pilot panel from Heading to INS mode.
The error may have been deliberate. Korean airliners were known to stray off course into Soviet airspace on too many occasionas just to write it off as incompetence. With the Captains being mostly former Korean Airforce pilots, they may have known more about the true objective of their mission than the rest of the flight crew did. In 1978, a similar incident occurred when a Korean Airlines Boeing 707 strayed into Soviet airspace. It was shot down near Murmansk, the northern part of Europe. Two passengers died but the plane managed to land on a frozen lake. Both the Captain and the navigator were detained for questioning but were released a week after the passengers had been returned.
@@MyDsmall The Soviets couldn't take the chance to let it escape. For all, they knew it had been snooping and spying on military facilities during its incursion. After all, Aeroflot had conducted "off course" flights over US military installations along the Eastern seaboard. Their IL-62s fitted with cameras. KAL 007 had to be destroyed before it left Soviet airspace.
Someone obviously talked. But the Russians never admitted to covering up the shootdown until after the fall of the Soviet Union. The KGB had found a bunch of debris which washed up on their shore as well as parts of the plane they pulled out of the ocean, and they buried it in a huge pit.
Call me crazy, conspiracist, whatever. In the 1990s, the Discovery Channel aired a reconstruction of KAL 007, the Korean airliner that was shot down, starting at its take off from Anchorage, Alaska. The onboard computer was not confused because the plane was moved prelimary. It was programmed to fly the exact route that had it enter Soviet controlled airspace and overflying the Sakhalin peninsula. Korean Airlines had a tradition of recruiting veteran Korean Airforce pilots to be the flight crew Captains. KAL 007's Captain actually ordered more fuel to be taken in. Of course this could be accidental, just like the alleged misprogramming of the flight computer could have been a mistake. Or the Captain knew in advance that he would need the extra fuel to carry out his mission. What better civilian pilots to recruit by either American intelligence directly or more likely, by the Korean equivalent, the KCIA (its actual name at the time) to do some 'reconnoitering/accidentally straying' into Soviet controlled military airspace. Think the western Allies (USA, NATO, South Korea) would be crazy to risk the lives of innocent civilians on a spying mission. But you will believe the Soviet Union military thought they could commit acts of terror by killing civilians onboard a big airliner. Only after the USS Vincennes did the unthinkable and shoot down an Iranian airliner full of civilians, did people realize that professional military can make big and costly mistakes. In the case of the USS Vincennes, it was even worse than in the case of KAL 007. The Iranian airliner did everything right, it flew on an establish air route, one that was flown on a daily basis. The USS Vincennes however, at the moment of it launching its missiles at the Iranian airliner, was itself in Iranian territorial waters, a mistake it had not realized after a wild goose chase to catch Iranian gunboats. Fearing for their lives, the crew and Captain of the USS Vincennes shot down the Iranian plane with the Americans thinking they were acting in self defense, and that they were under attack by an Iranian F-14 that was divebombing them. Only later it turned out the Vincennes' crew had misread the rather user unfriendly radar screens (you could not see both the target's distance to them and its altitude on the same screen, they had to keep switching between two screens. They misread the distance from the plane to their ship was actually its altitude and it was rapidly decreasing (diving!). I do not believe the crazy story that both the USSR and USA were involved in a mini-airwar with KAL-007 as unfortunate collateral damage. KAL 007's Captain was on a secret mission to spy on the Soviet Union, as had previous KAL Captains done already. Don't believe me? Check out the strange story of KAL 902 that 'accidentally entered Soviet airspace' on April 1978.
@@AudieHolland Well, I have checked out KAL 902 - each incident is isolated and must be viewed individually - no comparisons. Your opinion is valuable, however, I still think that this was a series of mistakes, miscalculations, misconceptions, bad habits, bad paranoia both Russian and American - all in the heat of the Cold War. Please check out the professional documentary on KAL007 - so many things get cleared up. Have a very nice day ahead😀 ruclips.net/video/aOl3yoWNTCY/видео.html
The most interesting part is the interview with that pilot who explains what must have happened: a sequence of errors by the pilots due to overconfidence and stressful working conditions.
South Korean Captains were predominantly picked from former South Korean Airforce. So they were rather dominant figures who had the last and only word onboard. No CRM for Korean Air at that time
This tragic incident occurred nearly 37-years ago on September 1, 1983 when a Soviet Su-15 interceptor shot down a Boeing 747, (Korean Air Lines flight 007), killing all 269 souls aboard. I believe the original name of this HBO presentation is, 'CODE NAME HOSTILE'.
@@Mario_N64 Yes, it was Tailspin in the US, but Coded Hostile elsewhere. "The British Granada Television documentary drama Coded Hostile, screened on September 7, 1989, detailed the U.S. military and governmental investigation, highlighting the likely confusion of Flight 007 with the USAF RC-135 in the context of routine US SIGINT/COMINT missions in the area. Written by Brian Phelan and directed by David Darlow, it starred Michael Murphy, Michael Moriarty, and Chris Sarandon. It was screened by HBO in the United States under the title Tailspin: Behind the Korean Airliner Tragedy on August 20, 1989. An updated version of Coded Hostile was screened in the UK on August 31, 1993, incorporating details of the 1992 UN investigation."
KAL 007 wasn't the first time the Soviets shot at a commercial plane. Ironically, it happened five years prior to this, to ANOTHER Korean Airlines flight, KAL 902. You'd think Korean Air would take better precaution to avoid such repeat from happening again. EDIT: I've been watching this movie over and over again - am I the only one who thinks that the General & the Major (played by Harris Yulin & Michael Moriarty respectively) was rather cartoonish?
The Korean pilots were Korean air force and were allowing the American's to shadow them as cover thinking the Russian's wouldn't shot down a passenger airline
@@terryquarton3864 I doubt this. Again, Korean actually had a plane shot down 5 years prior to KAL 007 so they won't be so gung ho to believe that the Russians won't shoot them down.
@@tiadaid do some google screach it came out about a year after the incident. The Russians had to either lose the radar detects along the coast or have pershion missiles in Europe. Plus the flying tigers of South Korea were very gunhoe and patriots back then.
A funny movie, with the last 20 minutes jarring with rest of the film...I can well believe the fight within the US intelligence agencies and think that was well portrayed
After this tragedy, they found just 29 bodies....and this plane was seen on 14th of august on military airforce base Andrews, who could explain, that civilian aircraft was on this base. Plane during flight get code information about soviet submarines to Feret D.
@@otto1976liska It doesn't surprise me that you're only one commenting about the possibility that KAL 007 was being used by U.S. intelligence. What is a surprise is that an exposé published about a year after this tragedy confirmed that the C.I.A. had contracted commercial airliners for reconnaissance, and that the Whitehouse didn't refute the report. The surprise is that this information and the "No comment" reaction by the Reagan admin has been all but ignored. Just like the memory and deaths of the victims on the plane, used like insignificant pieces on a child's board game. Reagan provoked the Soviets at every opportunity. The average American in the 1980's has no idea how CLOSE he had gotten us into a conventional war with the Soviets, which would have surely escalated into nuclear warfare. The only reason all the prodding didn't work was because the Soviets were smart enough NOT to take the bait.
I've been looking for this since RUclips started almost 15 years ago... Thank you so much for uploading it. One of the best HBO movies I've ever seen.
Me too !
So did I 😅
"Captain Chun was my friend. We were lucky when we were young. We were fliers. We flew the plane! Now, the plane flies us. Captain Chun forgot that."
Thank you for your upload...being looking for this VHS for a very long time...
No problem! Watched this with the daughter of one of the men involved in this incident on the American end. Interesting stuff.
Bjørn Helge Nesheim This is a great interpretation of the incident. There is another one by Angela Lansbury but I like this one better.
What a find!!! Looking for this video since forever
I was stationed on Shemya n(Aleutian chain in 1971.). Even then the Cobra Ball a SAC reconnaissance Aircraft flew the figure 8 pattern looking for data on soviet missle launches into target range on Kamchatka
there are two website that sell the dvd for $10
Finally! For decades, I kept an old VHS tape that recorded only 15 minutes of this movie. Now I can see the rest of it.
Thanx for uploading.... Danke für das Hochladen dieses Films, der leider kaum noch gezeigt wird, obwohl er eine historische Begebenheit bewertet und daher sehr wichtig ist, wie ich finde.
I was looking for this in DVD or Bluray media through many years. Thanks for uploading this to RUclips!
Thank you!!! I´ve been looking for this for some 10 yrs now !!
Thank you so much for loading...I was too young at premiere time to appreciate it.
I've been looking for this FOR YEARS!!!! THANK YOU for the upload!!!!!
Been looking for this movie for years!
Thank you.
I was searching this for years... many thanks.
THANK YOU SO SO MUCH BJORN.
I’ve been waiting for decades to see this again. Awesome account of the event.. and the re-enactment at the end.. just wow.
T H A N K Y O U. 🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇
Such a great film, and impossible to find, especially the German version on any media
Thank you for posting this.
I remember watching this on HBO as a kid and had been looking for this film for years.
there are two website that sell the dvd for $10
@@zillsburyy1 Can you tell me the web sites that have this DVD? Thanks.
@@brienroome2396 www.mediaoutlet.com/korean-war-korean-conflict-dvds-c-1_3_17/tailspin-behind-the-korean-airliner-tragedy-dvd-kal007-shootdown-p-1285.html
Yup saw it as a kid in Pakistan
30 yrs later I can watch it again in US
This is awesome. I have this movie on VHS stored away somewhere. This movie shows the job I did in the Air Force... monitoring Russian military communications (though many years after this incident). I would have been doing the same job as the blonde guy typing into the computer with his headphones on, tracking aircraft.
I uploaded it and watched it with some friends. The father of one of them had the same job you did!
@@holybear It's a great movie though there are A LOT of inaccuracies... for one, you never went into the latrine to discuss classified information as it was considered non-secure. But I do like this movie because when I was in, we were always told about how incredibly secret our jobs were and to never, ever say anything to anyone. But we all knew about this movie though few had actually seen it. I didn't see it until after I got out, and found it at the local video rental place.
Me, too. I was stationed there at Misawa 94-96 after the 6920th became the 301st. This film was damn-near required viewing for the squadron.
SOVIET BASTARDS ..I.
@@MrAvenger1975 We were there at the same time! I was at the 301st from Dec '93 - Dec '96!
53:20 "That is murder in anyone's language. What do you think they'd call it if we did it" . interesting line of dialogue for a move that came out the year after the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian airliner killing 290 people.
To think that the flight crew made one small error that caused the whole mess. They failed to turn the knob on the auto-pilot panel from Heading to INS mode.
Yeah, and even after they realize something went wrong, they pretend nothing happened, just to save face.
The error may have been deliberate.
Korean airliners were known to stray off course into Soviet airspace on too many occasionas just to write it off as incompetence.
With the Captains being mostly former Korean Airforce pilots, they may have known more about the true objective of their mission than the rest of the flight crew did.
In 1978, a similar incident occurred when a Korean Airlines Boeing 707 strayed into Soviet airspace. It was shot down near Murmansk, the northern part of Europe.
Two passengers died but the plane managed to land on a frozen lake.
Both the Captain and the navigator were detained for questioning but were released a week after the passengers had been returned.
@@MyDsmall The Soviets couldn't take the chance to let it escape. For all, they knew it had been snooping and spying on military facilities during its incursion. After all, Aeroflot had conducted "off course" flights over US military installations along the Eastern seaboard. Their IL-62s fitted with cameras. KAL 007 had to be destroyed before it left Soviet airspace.
I was looking for that movie long time ago as I recorded it many years ago on a VHS but have no player anymore. Thank you Bjørn.
Great film! How could they know these details in 1989, when Russian prime Boris Yeltsin granted the top-secret black boxes to Korea only in 1992?
Someone obviously talked. But the Russians never admitted to covering up the shootdown until after the fall of the Soviet Union. The KGB had found a bunch of debris which washed up on their shore as well as parts of the plane they pulled out of the ocean, and they buried it in a huge pit.
Some guess work based on the 1983 ICAO report.
Call me crazy, conspiracist, whatever.
In the 1990s, the Discovery Channel aired a reconstruction of KAL 007, the Korean airliner that was shot down, starting at its take off from Anchorage, Alaska.
The onboard computer was not confused because the plane was moved prelimary. It was programmed to fly the exact route that had it enter Soviet controlled airspace and overflying the Sakhalin peninsula.
Korean Airlines had a tradition of recruiting veteran Korean Airforce pilots to be the flight crew Captains.
KAL 007's Captain actually ordered more fuel to be taken in. Of course this could be accidental, just like the alleged misprogramming of the flight computer could have been a mistake.
Or the Captain knew in advance that he would need the extra fuel to carry out his mission.
What better civilian pilots to recruit by either American intelligence directly or more likely, by the Korean equivalent, the KCIA (its actual name at the time) to do some 'reconnoitering/accidentally straying' into Soviet controlled military airspace.
Think the western Allies (USA, NATO, South Korea) would be crazy to risk the lives of innocent civilians on a spying mission. But you will believe the Soviet Union military thought they could commit acts of terror by killing civilians onboard a big airliner.
Only after the USS Vincennes did the unthinkable and shoot down an Iranian airliner full of civilians, did people realize that professional military can make big and costly mistakes.
In the case of the USS Vincennes, it was even worse than in the case of KAL 007. The Iranian airliner did everything right, it flew on an establish air route, one that was flown on a daily basis.
The USS Vincennes however, at the moment of it launching its missiles at the Iranian airliner, was itself in Iranian territorial waters, a mistake it had not realized after a wild goose chase to catch Iranian gunboats. Fearing for their lives, the crew and Captain of the USS Vincennes shot down the Iranian plane with the Americans thinking they were acting in self defense, and that they were under attack by an Iranian F-14 that was divebombing them.
Only later it turned out the Vincennes' crew had misread the rather user unfriendly radar screens (you could not see both the target's distance to them and its altitude on the same screen, they had to keep switching between two screens. They misread the distance from the plane to their ship was actually its altitude and it was rapidly decreasing (diving!).
I do not believe the crazy story that both the USSR and USA were involved in a mini-airwar with KAL-007 as unfortunate collateral damage.
KAL 007's Captain was on a secret mission to spy on the Soviet Union, as had previous KAL Captains done already. Don't believe me?
Check out the strange story of KAL 902 that 'accidentally entered Soviet airspace' on April 1978.
@@AudieHolland Well, I have checked out KAL 902 - each incident is isolated and must be viewed individually - no comparisons. Your opinion is valuable, however, I still think that this was a series of mistakes, miscalculations, misconceptions, bad habits, bad paranoia both Russian and American - all in the heat of the Cold War. Please check out the professional documentary on KAL007 - so many things get cleared up. Have a very nice day ahead😀
ruclips.net/video/aOl3yoWNTCY/видео.html
I remember watching this movie when it was first broadcast by HBO. I do remember the incident when it happened!
The most interesting part is the interview with that pilot who explains what must have happened: a sequence of errors by the pilots due to overconfidence and stressful working conditions.
South Korean Captains were predominantly picked from former South Korean Airforce.
So they were rather dominant figures who had the last and only word onboard.
No CRM for Korean Air at that time
This tragic incident occurred nearly 37-years ago on September 1, 1983 when a Soviet Su-15 interceptor shot down a Boeing 747, (Korean Air Lines flight 007), killing all 269 souls aboard. I believe the original name of this HBO presentation is, 'CODE NAME HOSTILE'.
I watched it when it premiered, it was called "Tailspin". At least on HBO in the U.S.
@@Mario_N64 Yes, it was Tailspin in the US, but Coded Hostile elsewhere.
"The British Granada Television documentary drama Coded Hostile, screened on September 7, 1989, detailed the U.S. military and governmental investigation, highlighting the likely confusion of Flight 007 with the USAF RC-135 in the context of routine US SIGINT/COMINT missions in the area. Written by Brian Phelan and directed by David Darlow, it starred Michael Murphy, Michael Moriarty, and Chris Sarandon. It was screened by HBO in the United States under the title Tailspin: Behind the Korean Airliner Tragedy on August 20, 1989. An updated version of Coded Hostile was screened in the UK on August 31, 1993, incorporating details of the 1992 UN investigation."
@@tiadaid yes i also watched it as Coded Hostile on a local tv channel 30 years ago
Thanks to this movie, I was introduced to Mozart's Requiem
and by chance, I got the exact piece conducted by Peter Schreier
Very interesting movie , I've been looking for it in German for years
This is a great film, got it on VHS haha, the RC-135 kobra ball is still in use today, track it on flightrader24 on missions in the black sea
Do military planes come up on flightradar24
@@andrewmc8314 some do, often see surveillance planes over Romania and poland and jets on maneuvers over the coast of England etc
Wasnt this named "Coded Hostile" at one point? When it went to air in Australia orginally that was the name which it was aired under back around 1990?
Yes
Indeed, 'Coded Hostile'. No wonder I couldn't find it anywhere! Why do they sometimes change the title of movies for release in different countries ?
Thanks for the upload... :) u are a legend
Some of the scenes were used in a History Channel documentary on KAL 007.
thanks for this. maybe you can help with finding The March. 1990 BBC film.
THANKS! I had this on VHS also, got lost I had made my own DVD LOST IT ALSO, I know where this copy is. Thanks Again.
40 years ago today :(
HBO really had some awesome movies back when it was only HBO, and not HBO 1,2,3....
0:44 What was the title of the music?
@@CARLOBOYS Requiem by Mozart
thanks nesheim
The airline tragedy was on midnight of August 31 thru the early hour of September 1, 1983 and NOT happened in 1989
The movie was made in 1989
@@holybear Oh? I thought the sender implies that the event itself happened in 1989. Sorry. It's my bad.
Lastima q no esta traducido en español muy buena pelicula
Que?
@@holybear He laments the fact that it's not subtitled in Spanish.
that actor at 1:09. Im just picturing Braddock beating the shit out of him!
KAL 007 wasn't the first time the Soviets shot at a commercial plane. Ironically, it happened five years prior to this, to ANOTHER Korean Airlines flight, KAL 902.
You'd think Korean Air would take better precaution to avoid such repeat from happening again.
EDIT: I've been watching this movie over and over again - am I the only one who thinks that the General & the Major (played by Harris Yulin & Michael Moriarty respectively) was rather cartoonish?
Pilots were sternly warned of staying clear of Soviet airspace. This pilot just made too many mistakes and wouldn't admit it.
The Korean pilots were Korean air force and were allowing the American's to shadow them as cover thinking the Russian's wouldn't shot down a passenger airline
@@terryquarton3864 I doubt this. Again, Korean actually had a plane shot down 5 years prior to KAL 007 so they won't be so gung ho to believe that the Russians won't shoot them down.
@@tiadaid do some google screach it came out about a year after the incident. The Russians had to either lose the radar detects along the coast or have pershion missiles in Europe. Plus the flying tigers of South Korea were very gunhoe and patriots back then.
because off this tragedy soviet union fall apart!
There were many other reasons as well. But this event did a great harm to the reputation of the USSR
A funny movie, with the last 20 minutes jarring with rest of the film...I can well believe the fight within the US intelligence agencies and think that was well portrayed
After this tragedy, they found just 29 bodies....and this plane was seen on 14th of august on military airforce base Andrews, who could explain, that civilian aircraft was on this base. Plane during flight get code information about soviet submarines to Feret D.
Yeah tell yourself whatever you need to justify the Soviet Union murdering a plane full of innocent people..
Basicly you are right ofcourse ,but thete are many questions still to answer.
@@otto1976liska
It doesn't surprise me that you're only one commenting about the possibility that KAL 007 was being used by U.S. intelligence.
What is a surprise is that an exposé published about a year after this tragedy confirmed that the C.I.A. had contracted commercial airliners for reconnaissance, and that the Whitehouse didn't refute the report.
The surprise is that this information and the "No comment" reaction by the Reagan admin has been all but ignored.
Just like the memory and deaths of the victims on the plane, used like insignificant pieces on a child's board game.
Reagan provoked the Soviets at every opportunity.
The average American in the 1980's has no idea how CLOSE he had gotten us into a conventional war with the Soviets, which would have surely escalated into nuclear warfare.
The only reason all the prodding didn't work was because the Soviets were smart enough NOT to take the bait.
@Nancy Nazzaro Wrong. They actually believed it was a spy plane that was illegally over Soviet airspace.
@@thtoneguy0321 The CIA murdered them, using a passenger airliner for it's own reconnaissance. They used those people as cannon fodder.
Yeah that was all my fault. MB
So wouldn't KAL 007 have radar? One would think so. Was it functioning? If so, the pilot HAD to know something was on his six.
Commercial airliners have weather radar, they don't have the same radar as fighter jets.