3 Decades Later, Finnair Pilots Report Dramatic Close Encounter With a Missile 138
jones_supa (887896) writes It has come to light that a Finnair-owned McDonnell Douglas DC-10 passenger jet narrowly avoided being shot down by a missile while en route to Helsinki 27 years ago, claimed the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat on Sunday. The two co-pilots, Esko Kaukiainen and Markku Soininen, describe how the event happened during a routine flight back to Helsinki from Japan in December 1987. When the plane was crossing the Arctic Ocean, a missile appeared in the distance. The crew thought it was a Russian weather rocket on its way into space, but the missile began heading straight towards the aircraft. Just 20 seconds away from a collision, the missile exploded. The captain, who was resting at the time of the incident, never officially reported the event. The question of who fired the missile has never been definitively answered. But the pilots believe it was launched from either the Soviet Union's Kola Peninsula or a submarine in the Barents Sea. They speculate that the missile could have been a misfire or that the plane was used as training target.
Re:first explosion (Score:5, Funny)
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bam!
Emeril Lagasse, don't be tossing your ESSENCE [google.com] around here...
Nice timing (Score:2, Interesting)
It's probably coincidence that they remember it at this time.
Re:Nice timing (Score:4, Informative)
The article implies this incident was already known to some people for quite some time, but had been kept from higher ups in the government. It recently came out because a newspaper did some digging (the timing of which isn't too surprising).
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Are you suggesting that you should have come forward when Russia was invading Georgia? Or when Russia was threatening countries in Eastern Europe with being targeted by nuclear missiles? Or when Russia was making threats against Western Europe?
With Russia it seems there are too few good opportunities to bring this sort of thing forward without questioning "the timing." Why is that?
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In fact what's happened in Moldova is a good foreshadowing of what's happening now in Ukraine; Russia uses "separatists" in the east of the country to foment unrest, then props them up whilst denying all involvement. This neatly keeps the country unstable and weak and turns it into a bargaining chip; Moldova won't be able to join the EU unt
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Because the rubes taking CIA propaganda at face value (you guys learned NOTHING from the Iraq war) have a slight [youtube.com] problem with throwing stones from within glass houses. [businessinsider.com]
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Are you so willfully obtuse? Ray Charles could have seen what the point was. And Ray Charles is blind.
And dead.
Re:Nice timing (Score:5, Funny)
The Ruskies aren't going to be invading Finland again. Not after the embarrassment of the last time.
When winter changes sides and goes against the Russians, they notice.
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For one, Stalin's army had suffered severe purges of qualified generals in the 1930s
I have a couple of minor quibbles with this. For one, it wasn't a severe purge:
"At first it was thought 25-50% of Red Army officers were purged, it is now known to be 3.7-7.7%. Previously, the size of the Red Army officer corps was underestimated, and it was overlooked that most of those purged were merely expelled from the Party. Thirty percent of officers purged in 1937-9 were allowed to return to service." Stephen Lee, European Dictatorships 1918-1945, page 56, quoted via Wikipedia.
It has been argued t
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IIRC, most of the "deep battle" proponents (like Svechin and Tukhachevsky) were purge victims, so Stalin effectively threw away a mobile warfare doctrine that was arguably as good as Germany's. There were no large mobile formations in the Red Army early in WWII, and the ones formed before the German invasion mostly had no formation-level training.
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Stalin effectively threw away a mobile warfare doctrine that was arguably as good as Germany's
I'm not really sure "Germany" had a "good" mobile warfare doctrine at the start of the war. Yes, they had a few moderately large mobile formations, and those formations had trained together. However, most of the German army was still on foot, and using animals for transport. Many of the vehicles the Germans did have were captured during the invasion of Czechoslovakia!
Further the German tanks were hugely inferior to the best French models (inferior as in the German shells often bounced off the French armo
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Yes, nobody had an actual good mobile warfare doctrine at the start of WWII. Germany's was probably the best. The Soviet Union could have been right up there.
German tanks were superior to western ones in ergonomics and communications. Some French tanks were superior in firepower and armor, but had one-man turrets and no radio, meaning it was hard to use them effectively, particularly in any sort of fluid situation.
Certainly, after Khalkin-Gol and Finland, the Soviets worked hard on catching up, but
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"correct mistakes" made in drawing the border with Finland
i.e. "we wanted more of it"
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Indeed. Finland is one of those peacenik non-aligned countries that has never had to concern itself with Russian imperialism
I hope this is sarcastic. Finland has more than enough experience of Russian aggression [wikipedia.org].
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ok so the part of Russian Empire that provided plenty of goods for the St. Petersburg and had a bloody war between commies and whites to separate from the Russia/Ussr and had to fight two wars with Russia during WW2, one aligned heavily with nazis (only technically unoccupied european nazi partner whee!!/sarcasm)...
has not had to concern itself with Russian imperialism?? what the fuck! the entire Finnish foreign policy is only about how to keep Russia or earlier USSR out of Finland while at the same time do
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Very far to the west? Greece has never been at war with Russia. Granted, they've only been around in their present form for just under two centuries. Though I'm sure you were intending to identify either Great Britain or Spain as the nation in question.
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Finlandization is moral debasement (Score:4, Interesting)
There are people who recommend Finlandization as a policy. They are terribly misguided. It's a form of moral debasement. It leads to secrecy and lies. It's not a valid policy. If it had continued for a few decades longer, we'd probably have joined the Soviet Union voluntarily. It was a form of slow national suicide.
Re:Finlandization is moral debasement (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... [wikipedia.org]
Re:Finlandization is moral debasement (Score:4, Informative)
I have no idea why this comment was modded down since it's directly related to the incident. The pilots actually referred to Finlandization being the reason why the incident wasn't made public by the higher officials. Finlandization was an era of extreme Soviet ass licking on Finland's part and every Finn acknowledges it.
During the era of Finlandization most anything negative that was directly related to the Soviet Union was censored.
Re:Finlandization is moral debasement (Score:4, Interesting)
There really seems to be something going on about that comment, I don't know what it is. It's probably the "national suicide" formulation that is a negative trigger for some people who do not understand the background; but national suicide really was what the USSR about for its constituent peoples. If it wasn't forced relocation, it was branding anything "Fascist" that wasn't pro-Soviet enough.
There were certainly positives to our ability to keep the Soviets at bay and maintain our democracy during the Cold War; President Kekkonen in his younger days was a remarkable diplomat and statesman, and being overtly uppity would have just triggered "help" from Moscow. But I can well understand the deep frustrations of those people who just wanted to call a spade a spade when it came to our "friend" to the East.
The really bad part is that Finlandization works across generations in a culture; we're still sheep, scared of the displeasure of those we consider our superiors, and all too afraid of and eager to participate in the collective shoutings-down by people who believe they're superior because they're in the ideological in-crowd. The Stalinists won at least when it comes to that.
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The really bad part is that Finlandization works across generations in a culture; we're still sheep, scared of the displeasure of those we consider our superiors, and all too afraid of and eager to participate in the collective shoutings-down by people who believe they're superior because they're in the ideological in-crowd. The Stalinists won at least when it comes to that.
Really, sounds like half the internet these days.
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I'm not sure I understand how this relates to the idea that the USSR sought to destroy national identities and replace that with the new "Soviet human"...
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Another example of this phenomena, in addition to the one, which I mentioned in my previous post, - the Tsar Ivan the Terrible executed during his reign of half a century less people than were executed during the St. Bartholomew's Day(!) massacre. Still he is called the Terrible, but not Catherine de' Medici or the King Charles IX.
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Most US prisoners are for drug crimes. We have a vigorous debate going on about legalization.
Many (most?) Soviet prisoners were political prisoners. Criticism of that got you added to it.
Your parallel is silly and an obvious nod towards what issues in the US you consider paramount at the moment. At least normal blame America firsters (nice cold war reference there!) tie something the US did as, normally ludicrously, heavily controlling over some other nation. You simply skip that part.
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Most US prisoners are for drug crimes.
I heard on the radio that there is a racial issue in this problem too.
But I do not know exact statistics about the reasons why people are in prisons. And it was not my point.
What I wanted to say is that by pure political reasons some figures are given much more importance than the others.
For instance, 136 people died while crossing Berlin Wall, we all know it. And I regret it, certainly. Even one was one too many.
But hundreds of people die each year on the Mexican-US border. And nobody even kno
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A lot of human tragedies are going on there right now. But they will not attract so much attention as the Berlin Wall crossings' tragedies.
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You and GP are so wrong. There is no chance Finland would have "voluntarily" joined Soviet Union. I am willing to bet at least 70% of the population would have rather went to fight in a war than join SU. Sure a lot though the best policy for Finland is to have very close political and economical ties to SU, but joining ... no way.
Then there were no cencorship, none at all. Sure the press, and especially government owned YLE, did have a strong bias and they did suppress bad publicity, but there was no censor
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Then there were no cencorship, none at all. Sure the press, and especially government owned YLE, did have a strong bias and they did suppress bad publicity, but there was no censoring done by the government.
So the government did not actually ban books and films [wikipedia.org] that were seen as pro-Soviet? Or that just isn't viewed as censorship in Finland?
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Sure, there were censoship after the war, but the GP was talking about -80s. If public libraries did not purchase something, it is hardly censorship, is it? One library decided not to buy Donald Duck though it was widely available in shops. Buying or selling any book was not illegal, not even "Mein Kampf". (Offtopic: I hope every neo-nazi reads the book, 'cause it is bullshit).
OK, I'll give that the classification board can be considered censorship, though it could not prohibit import or private viewing (th
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Your thesis is substantiated by another dramatic close encounter with a missile happened more than 3 decades ago in Italy, and to this day we don't know who killed all those people, source [wikipedia.org], and if the trail of suicides-bad luck that oppressed the witnesses is entirely casual.
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On the other hand, it kept Finland independent and non-Communist, unlike most of the USSR's immediate neighbors. It was probably about the best the Finns could have done under the (shitty) circumstances.
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What I was going to say. How much could they exercise their morals if they were conquered by the USSR?
As usual it's a question of idealism vs. pragmatism
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This is simply not true. Just by using Google translate on his home page (www.tuomioja.org) you can see that on his analysis on the situation at Ukraine he puts Russia as supplier of weapons and as part of the ongoing armed conflict. A fact which official Russia (and their supporters) still firmly deny. I can understand your ...umm...criticism with Tuomioja because of his background, but what you say is simply not true.
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This is still pretty far-fetched from your original assertion of saying as his opinion that Finland should never do or say anything that could be construed as being antagonistic to Russia. If that would be the case, he would not assess the situation against what Kremlin says the situation is, would he?
Saying that he doesn't support stronger and more permanent NATO bases in Baltic countries is a very different thing. Finland still has politicians and public figures who think that the best way would be the of
can we get the truth about (KAL 902) and KAL 007? (Score:2)
can we get the truth about (KAL 902) and KAL 007?
now as well?
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The mystery of flight 870 (22 July 2006)
http://www.theguardian.com/wor... [theguardian.com]
It seems strange this story was just 'found' now... with a mention of the "Kola Peninsula or a submarine in the Barents Sea"...
Defies credulity (Score:3, Insightful)
Much as I'm disliking the Hitlerian Russian government now, I can't believe a) anyone wouldn't have reported it (the pilot) or b) not talked about it loudly for 25+ years.
It doesn't add up.
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Re:Defies credulity (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Defies credulity (Score:5, Informative)
Obviously you've never met a Finn.
Talking isn't part of their vocabulary.
Besides, the flight crew probably didn't think that much about it anyways. Being next to Russia you see some pretty crazy things on a regular basis.
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This. Mika Hakkinen is the true master of it. [youtube.com]
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Swedish Joke about the Fins:
Two Fins are sitting in a bar, drinking.
The first one lifts his beer and says "Skoll!"
The second one: Are we here to drink or to talk?
Finlandization... (Score:5, Informative)
Much as I'm disliking the Hitlerian Russian government now, I can't believe a) anyone wouldn't have reported it (the pilot) or b) not talked about it loudly for 25+ years.
It doesn't add up.
It does if you know anything about Finnish history. Pissing off the Soviets was may have been an American national sport during the cold war period but for the Finns it was not at the top of their agenda. Finland spent the cold war balancing on a razor's edge they were bound by post WWII treaties to have a military of a fixed (and rather small) size and of course to remain neutral. For this reason the Finns painstakingly split their military procurement exactly down the middle. Half the air force jets, half the army's tanks and half the navy's ships were bought in the Soviet bloc and the other half in the West and it was a very successful strategy (which is why its now being suggested as a solution to the Ukraine crisis). The Finns may have wiped the floor with the Soviet army during the Winter War but it was still not an experience the Finns cared to repeat in the nuclear era. Since the aircraft wasn't actually harmed no purpose would have been served by deliberately embarrassing the bad tempered 16 foot tall, 3000 pound grizzly bear sitting on their eastern border by advertising the ineptitude of the Soviet air defenses so the sensible strategy was just to play it down.
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Much as I'm disliking the Hitlerian Russian government now, I can't believe a) anyone wouldn't have reported it (the pilot) or b) not talked about it loudly for 25+ years.
It doesn't add up.
It does if you know anything about Finnish history. Pissing off the Soviets was may have been an American national sport during the cold war period but for the Finns it was not at the top of their agenda. Finland spent the cold war balancing on a razor's edge they were bound by post WWII treaties to have a military of a fixed (and rather small) size and of course to remain neutral. For this reason the Finns painstakingly split their military procurement exactly down the middle. Half the air force jets, half the army's tanks and half the navy's ships were bought in the Soviet bloc and the other half in the West and it was a very successful strategy (which is why its now being suggested as a solution to the Ukraine crisis). The Finns may have wiped the floor with the Soviet army during the Winter War but it was still not an experience the Finns cared to repeat in the nuclear era. Since the aircraft wasn't actually harmed no purpose would have been served by deliberately embarrassing the bad tempered 16 foot tall, 3000 pound grizzly bear sitting on their eastern border by advertising the ineptitude of the Soviet air defenses so the sensible strategy was just to play it down.
No, that was exactly why I read TFA expecting to see that the Finnish government was the one who buried it. They weren't. Seems to...defy credulity that 2 ordinary citizens would be making a political decision like that. The government yes, 2 copilots no.
Re:Finlandization... (Score:4, Insightful)
Much as I'm disliking the Hitlerian Russian government now, I can't believe a) anyone wouldn't have reported it (the pilot) or b) not talked about it loudly for 25+ years.
It doesn't add up.
It does if you know anything about Finnish history. Pissing off the Soviets was may have been an American national sport during the cold war period but for the Finns it was not at the top of their agenda. Finland spent the cold war balancing on a razor's edge they were bound by post WWII treaties to have a military of a fixed (and rather small) size and of course to remain neutral. For this reason the Finns painstakingly split their military procurement exactly down the middle. Half the air force jets, half the army's tanks and half the navy's ships were bought in the Soviet bloc and the other half in the West and it was a very successful strategy (which is why its now being suggested as a solution to the Ukraine crisis). The Finns may have wiped the floor with the Soviet army during the Winter War but it was still not an experience the Finns cared to repeat in the nuclear era. Since the aircraft wasn't actually harmed no purpose would have been served by deliberately embarrassing the bad tempered 16 foot tall, 3000 pound grizzly bear sitting on their eastern border by advertising the ineptitude of the Soviet air defenses so the sensible strategy was just to play it down.
No, that was exactly why I read TFA expecting to see that the Finnish government was the one who buried it. They weren't. Seems to...defy credulity that 2 ordinary citizens would be making a political decision like that. The government yes, 2 copilots no.
It is hard to believe that a near miss by a SAM would be given less attention by the captain than a malfunctioning coffee maker and even harder to believe that this incident was not reported. If a SAM exploded 20 seconds away from my DC-10 full of passengers whose lives I'm responsible for that would sure as shit get my attention if I was the captain and you can bet your bottom dollar I would report it to somebody. The original article simply says the captain refused to report the incident, it does not say he didn't try so it's entirely possible that he actually did try to report it and was told in no uncertain terms to shut the f*** up about it.
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...
It is hard to believe that a near miss by a SAM would be given less attention by the captain than a malfunctioning coffee maker and even harder to believe that this incident was not reported. If a SAM exploded 20 seconds away from my DC-10 full of passengers whose lives I'm responsible for that would sure as shit get my attention if I was the captain and you can bet your bottom dollar I would report it to somebody....
It really is hard to believe, yes. For example, let's say it is the inclination of the pilot to day "we're okay" let's just forget about it. Does he know the airplane suffered no damage at all? How? When the plane goes in for maintenance are there going to the mysterious fragment holes in the tail or wings? These might endanger plane safety, and even if not the unreported incident that created them would end his career. Is he and the copilor going to bet that the plane really is unscathed?
What about the pa
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20 seconds away was ~20 km away. [www.hs.fi] None of the passengers would have even noticed it. It was a near miss in that if it wasn't prematurely detonated it would have struck the aircraft, not in that it was actually near the aircraft.
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I call bullshit.
What would have happened is the same as what happened with the Lake Inari missile, except less press. USSR would have said it was a practice, the estimate to hit would have been changed from 20 seconds to few minutes, "no real danger", and the Finnish government and Army would have completely agreed.
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If only Linus T. had been in the cockpit, there might've been some interesting commentary afterwards.
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Because what you took from the Iraq invasion was that hilariously bad government propaganda should be believed at all times?
20 seconds away? (Score:5, Informative)
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Airplanes don't fly stationary. I assume it was flying away from the missile, so "20 seconds away" would've been calculated using the missile's speed minus the airplane's speed. Which means the missile could've been much closer.
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I assume it was flying away from the missile
That seems like an unlikely assumption given that the crew saw the missile from the cockpit.
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Airplanes don't fly stationary. I assume it was flying away from the missile, so "20 seconds away" would've been calculated using the missile's speed minus the airplane's speed. Which means the missile could've been much closer.
Closer sure, but not much closer. The speed of the missile might be 4 times the speed of the passenger plane, so for example 20 km becomes 15 km. The missiles are designed to hit supersonic military aircraft, after all.
20 seconds away? (Score:1)
The original article says the missile was 20-25 kilometers away when it was blown up.
Original link (in Finnish)
http://www.hs.fi/sunnuntai/LentÃfjÃft+kertovat+Ohjus+oli+osua+Finnairin+koneeseen+1987++tÃfystuho+20+sekunnin+pÃfÃfssÃf/a1409895098937
And this implies... (Score:1)
Since it's most probably a russian missile, this proves that they have a self-destruct mode that can be activated before they could hit their target.
This implies that the plane shot down by a russian missile in Ukraine was destroyed on purpose, since the missile could have exploded before hitting its target.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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This implies that the plane shot down by a russian missile in Ukraine was destroyed on purpose, since the missile could have exploded before hitting its target.
The capabilities of thus unknown, but most likely sea or air launched, missile tell you nothing about those of an SA-12.
It also gives no indication if whoever shot MH17 down knew that it was a neutral
Re:And this implies... (Score:4, Insightful)
This implies that the plane shot down by a russian missile in Ukraine was destroyed on purpose, since the missile could have exploded before hitting its target.
I don't think anyone was in much doubt that it was deliberately shot down. What they thought they were shooting down is another matter.
I blame George Bush, and of course the Jews (Score:1)
All hail the BBC.
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Really, I stopped paying attention to the BBC after too many incomplete and inaccurate reports on news. I don't know why they do it, maybe it is just ineptitude, but if it is, they need to re-learn journalism.
Thank god it wasn't 40 years ago (Score:2)
/ yep, I'd be in gitmo nowdays for half the crap I did as a teen
Never fly Finnair (Score:2)
So know we know not to fly Finnair ever again or any Finnish airline for that matter. Not because an airplane was targetted by Russia which could happen to any airline but because they have kept this information hidden for 27 years even to this day. This means that the Finnish Transport Safety Agency is corrupt and cannot be trusted which doesn't bode well for their aviation safety.
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People are stupid and shit doesn't work.
Welcome to life
Hummm (Score:2)
I wonder how many "UFO" close encounters reported through the years might be something like this: something very rare, and almost unthinkable to the common people (a passenger jet as target practice for missiles?!), but totally explainable.
pane was used as a target (Score:1)
Then it's a good thing the remote detonation worked this time.
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And USA would be? Don't be an idiot. It was the Russians.
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they learned, the US got away with it
The U.S. got away with not launching any nukes? It was concluded the Russian satellite detection system malfunctioned.
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Nor [youtube.com] your lack [wikipedia.org] of self-awareness. [businessinsider.com]
Re:Probably US Navy missile (Score:5, Informative)
Probably a US sub-launched ICBM.
1. There is no such thing as a "sub-launched ICBM". Subs carry SLBMs and SLCMs.
2. Any kind of BM would follow a completely different trajectory than the one described.
3. The "B" in ICBM/SLBM means "ballistic". That means that after the initial burn, it is guided by inertia, and would have no ability to track a moving target.
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Probably a US sub-launched ICBM.
1. There is no such thing as a "sub-launched ICBM". Subs carry SLBMs and SLCMs.
2. Any kind of BM would follow a completely different trajectory than the one described.
3. The "B" in ICBM/SLBM means "ballistic". That means that after the initial burn, it is guided by inertia, and would have no ability to track a moving target.
Damn pesky facts.
Here's something I don't know the answer to: Do air-to-airs or ground-to-airs have any sort of range safety feature like rockets, or do they just automatically blow up at the end of their runs? Or both? Or neither (in which case why did it blow up?)?
Re:Probably US Navy missile (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's something I don't know the answer to: Do air-to-airs or ground-to-airs have any sort of range safety feature like rockets, or do they just automatically blow up at the end of their runs? Or both? Or neither (in which case why did it blow up?)?
In that era, yes. I beleive most anti-aircraft missle systems in that era were semi-active radar guided missiles which require a ground based radar to paint the target. Most likely there was a safety system where if the painting radar shuts down the missle destructs. Even air to air radar missles (e.g. Aim-7 Sparrow) required the firing aircraft to keep it's nose pointed towards the target aircraft to keep it painted. I beleive the Aim-54 Phoenix was one of the first missles with self contained terminal guidance.
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SM1 (standard missile 1) required active guidance all the way, typically a 55B fire control RADAR or similar.
Typical warhead was continuous rod (a lot of shrapnel). The idea being to tear holes in the target and let aerodynamics do the rest.
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Damn those Finnish Republicans!
RTFA (Score:2)
Speaking to the paper, the DC-10 plane's two co-pilots, Esko Kaukiainen and Markku Soininen, describe how a routine flight back to Helsinki from Japan in December 1987 suddenly took a dramatic and terrifying turn...”There’s no doubt it came from the Soviet Union,” Soininen said.