History - Past and Perspective
KAL Flight 007 Remembered
AP Images
A view of Korean Airlines plane number HL7442 on the runway in Hawaii in 1982. This same 747 flew as KAL Flight 007 on September 1, 1983. The most prominent passenger on the flight was U.S. Representative Larry McDonald, who was such a strident foe of the communists that a Soviet defector revealed that the KGB had assigned an intelligence desk to monitor him exclusively.

KAL Flight 007 Remembered

On September 1, 1983, a Soviet fighter fired on Korean Airlines Flight 007. The stricken plane supposedly spiraled into the sea, but the evidence suggests otherwise. ...
Warren Mass

This article was originally published in our September 8, 2008 issue. It is reprinted here (condensed) to mark the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the downing of KAL 007. Warren Mass, a longtime contributor to this magazine, passed away in 2021.

It has been 25 years since Korean Airlines Flight 007, carrying 269 passengers and crew, including Congressman Larry McDonald of Georgia, was fired on by a Soviet fighter jet off the coast of Siberia. At the time, McDonald was chairman of The John Birch Society.

Although several speakers eulogized McDonald at a Washington, D.C., memorial service 10 days following the September 1, 1983 attack, the words most remembered by both this magazine’s editor, Gary Benoit, and this writer were delivered by Senator Jesse Helms (R-N.C.). Helms was headed for the same conference in Seoul, South Korea, as was Congressman McDonald, but on a different plane (KAL 015). Both planes, flying on schedules just minutes apart, stopped at Anchorage, Alaska, for refueling, and passengers from each could deplane and stretch their legs. McDonald decided to stay onboard, but Senator Helms opted to visit the terminal, where he mingled with passengers from the doomed KAL 007. During the layover, Helms met two little girls who were passengers on McDonald’s plane, Noel Anne Grenfell, five, and her sister Stacy Marie, three. The senator spoke about the encounter to the 4,000 people gathered at the McDonald memorial service, and often again in the years that followed:

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