alf@ttds.UUCP (Thomas Sj|land) (09/21/84)
From: alf (Thomas Sj|land)
Message-Id: <8409141734.AA18202@ttds.UUCP>
Date: 14 Sep 1984 1934-MET (Friday)
To: enea!mcvax!vu44!jack
Cc: alf
Subject: Re: Soviet Fighter hunting Swedish civil aircraft full of tourists.
In-Reply-To: Your message of Fri, 14 Sep 84 12:09:22 -0200.
Apparently-To: net.politics
<8409141009.AA00648@mcvax.UUCP>
> Although I don't know much about the Swedish/russian relations, I do know
> that it is common practice among fighter pilots to "intercept"
> civillian planes. Until about 4 years ago, it was even more
> or less official policy in the Dutch airforce, until the union of
> civil pilots started to complain.
> I don't want to say anything about the intentions of the russian
> pilot (or, more probably, his superiors), but I think that it
> *could* be explained as mere "playing around".
Jack Jansen, {philabs|decvax}!mcvax!vu44!jack
What happened actually ?
========================
All our news media have been filled with various facts and speculations
concerning what actually happened, what kind of evidence the military has,
what the russian motives, if any, are etc. Evidently not much of that has
leaked out into the international media.
The Superior Command of the swedish defense published a commented map which
shows the exact movement of the various aircrafts involved as this was
recorded by the military radar. Some further technical evidence was
announced but was never published for security reasons. (The military does
not want to give the russians an exact picture of their technical
capacity.)
What is clear is that the soviet fighter was taking part in an exercise
over the baltic sea where russian bombers were used as targets. These
started from somewhere close to Poland and flew along the coast line
towards Leningrad. The swedish Boeing 474 came 4000 meters higher and
approximately 150 km to the west of this exercise in the ordinary flight
route from Greece. At the time of the incident the Boeing had its land
based control in Riga in Estonia, i.e. Soviet (civil) authorities had
complete control over where this plane was and what it was doing there.
Three possibilities seem to be the only logical explanations:
1) The fighter was ordered to follow the swedish plane in over swedish
territory for some reason, either political (show the swedish government
who rules the baltic) or military (test the swedish potential of
detecting and interfering with foreign activity like this one).
2) The fighter was ordered to follow what was evidently a russian plane
trying to escape to Sweden. This has happened before and as late as in
1982 there were reports that the Soviets shot down a fleeing aircraft
from Estonia over international waters in the baltic. Some have
actually succeeded especially Polish planes of which we have received at
least 3 spectacular landings after general Jaruzelski closed the borders
which were earlier open (polish citizens could visit Sweden without a
visa and the opposite before the military take-over).
3) A mistake was made at the commanding military base in Estonia which was
later corrected either by the pilot himself or by contacts between civil
and military authorities, before any real damage was done.
The third possibility is generally not beleived for a few different reasons:
1) The russians refused to accept the diplomatic protest claiming that the
event never happened but is a 'fabrication by the right wing forces in
the swedish military'. This is ridiculous since everyone who knows
anything about how the media works in a democracy knows that they would
not get away with this. The government is socialist and cannot be
considered to be west-oriented. Check for instance what Pravda writes
about the 'wise' Olof Palme in some very positive articles concerning
his different 'peace'-activities in and out of the UN. Still it was
Palme's government who, though reluctantly, issued the diplomatic
protest. Evidently both Palme and his state secretary Pierre Schori,
who is a warm friend of both Cuba and Nicaragua, beleive the swedish
military in this matter.
2) If it was a mistake it would, as pointed out by swedish defense minister
Anders Thunborg, not be particularly sensitive, though somewhat
embarrasing, for the Soviets to apologize. This would immediately lead
to better political relations between Sweden and Russia. Either the
russian officials do not understand this, and that certainly makes them
look alien to civilized people, or they have other priorities that make
it impossible for them to apologize to a small country bordering to
them.
As long as the russians are refusing to accept the Swedish view of the
matter, it is difficult to get more of a clear picture about what happened.
Clearly the political effect in Sweden was devastating to what can be
considered as Soviet interests, just like the submarine hunts that now are
evidently starting up in Japan too.
In the future the swedish Airforce will have fighter stationed on the
island Gotland which was not the case now and led to that the russian
fighter could follow the Boeing in attack position for as long as 8 minutes
without being disturbed.
The swedish organisation for civil pilots have protested to the foreign
ministry about the fact that the pilot was not informed about the incident.
Just in passing one can remind about the so called "catalina"-affair in the
fifties where two swedish planes were shot down by the russians over the
baltic sea, the first one disappeared completely (they found a lifeboat
with bullet holes in it), and the crew of the second one (looking for the
first one that was beleived to have had an accident) was saved by the Swedish
navy and could tell the story about how they had been shot at without warning.