Pilots ‘were trigger-happy’

Press, 23 September 1983, Page 6

Pilots ‘were trigger-happy’

NZPA Edinburgh A Soviet official acknowledged yesterday that “trig-ger-happy” Soviet pilots made a “mistake” in shooting down the Korean Air Lines Flight 007.

“Of course it was a mistake in the sense that the pilots took this plane for a reconnaissance plane,” the official, Dr Viktor Linnyk, said in an interview with the 8.8. C. The 8.8. C. identified him as an adviser to the Soviet leadership and part of a nine-member Soviet delegation to an Edinburgh university conference on EastWest relations.

Dr Linnyk said that the pilots of the Soviet fighters that intercepted the jumbo jet “never thought it was a civilian plane. If they did, the decision would have been totally different. I am absolutely certain of that.” He noted American statements that a United States Air Force ‘ reconnaissance

plane was operating over the North Pacific — well outside Soviet territory — at the same time the Korean plane flew over the Kamchatka Peninsula, which is studded with secret Soviet military bases. Dr Linnyk said that the presence of the American plane had made Soviet interceptor pilots “trigger“The fact, was that the United States reconnaissnce planes were flying over the area all the time,” he said. “They were about to monitor the would-be tests of the Soviet intercontinental missiles. And the tension that the (Soviet) pilots in that area are telling about is so intense, is so high, that I was not surprised they reacted in this triggerhappy manner.” Dr Linnyk, who the 8.8. C. said is a consultant to the Communist Party central committee’s department of integral information, Soviet contentions

that there was “strong evidence" the Korean flight was on a spying mission. But he added: “Had we known (it was civilian), we wouldn’t (have shot), never, no — even though it was Pftieanwhile, the West German Defence Ministry said that Soviet jetliners using Frankfurt international airport are equipped with hidden cameras to spy on N.A.T.O. installations. West German television showed films of an Aeroflot passenger plane with lensshaped bulges on the fuselage parked at the airport The TV report said that spy cameras could easily photograph the United States Air Force’s RhineMain airbase, which is located across the runway from the commercial airport, and other objects from the air.

Asked to comment, a Bonn Defence Rgftistry spokesman, Jurgen

Reichardt, said: “Yes, that’s well known. The entire transport capacity of Aeroflot and the East-Bloc airlines also have military uses.”

Mr Reichardt said that the Aeroflot jetliners often change course in West German airspace to fly over N.A.T.O. installations, but he said nothing could be done to prevent this. Aerial photography in West Germany requires prior approval from Government officials, and there are also regulations against photographing some military installations. The Soviet airlines’ daily round-trip flights between Moscow and Frankfurt were suspended by Germany for a two-week period this month after the Korean plane disaster. Lufthansa, the West German flag carrier, also suspended service to the Soviet Union from September 15 to 29 in a joint move with other Western airlines.