ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, December 9, 1996 TAG: 9612090123
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: MOSCOW
SOURCE: The New York Times
Gennadi Osipovich held up his thick hands to show how, 13 years ago, he maneuvered his SU-15 fighter to blast a Korean 747 airliner out of the sky.
It was the morning of Sept. 1, 1983, and Lt. Col. Osipovich's unit had scrambled from its secret base on Sakhalin Island to intercept an intruder. An unknown aircraft had passed over the Kamchatka peninsula and was heading toward Sakhalin.
``For us, that is everything,'' he said, recalling the order. ``It means that we just have to go up and kill someone.''
After trailing the unidentified plane for more than 60 miles, the Soviet pilot zoomed alongside to get a look for himself.
``I was just next to him, on the same altitude, 150 meters to 200 meters away,'' he recalled in conversations with a reporter this weekend.
From the flashing lights and the configuration of the windows, he recognized the aircraft as a civilian type of plane, he said.
``I saw two rows of windows and knew that this was a Boeing,'' he said. ``I knew this was a civilian plane. But for me, this meant nothing. It is easy to turn a civilian type of plane into one for military use.''
Minutes later, he fired two air-to-air missiles, sending Korean Air Lines Flight 007 crashing into the sea, killing 269 people and causing what Russian President Boris Yeltsin has called the greatest tragedy of the Cold War.
Thirteen years after the downing of KAL 007, debate still rages over whether the Soviet air force showed a reckless disregard for human life and why the Korean plane was so far off course.
In his first interview with a U.S. journalist, the retired pilot addressed some of the mysteries that still surround the incident, although the central question of why the plane - en route from Anchorage, Alaska, to Seoul, South Korea - was so far off course is still debated.
A confirmed communist who lives in the Caucasus region, Osipovich insists that the jetliner was on a spy mission and that there were no civilian passengers aboard. He even considers himself fortunate to have achieved a measure of celebrity by having destroyed Flight 007.
One of his few complaints is that the Soviet authorities paid him a smaller bonus for shooting down the plane than he had hoped: 200 rubles minus a small fee for postage.
The ground-based officer who first detected the plane on his radar scope received a 400-ruble bonus, he complained.
``Those who did not take part in this operation received double their monthly pay,'' he said. ``At that time, monthly pay was 230 rubles. So I expected to be paid at least 400 rubles.''
For years, experts have debated whether the Soviet pilot was aware he was downing a civilian plane or had mistaken the 747 for an RC-135 U.S. military reconnaissance plane.
But Osipovich says he had no doubts he was dealing with a civilian plane and not an RC-135. Viewed through the prism of the Cold War, the pilot treated the plane not as a lost commercial airliner, but as part of a nefarious mission against the Soviet homeland.
Osipovich also revealed that in the pressure of the moment, he did not provide a full description of the intruder to Soviet ground controllers.
``I did not tell the ground that it was a Boeing-type plane,'' he recalled. ``They did not ask me.''
LENGTH: Medium: 65 linesby CNB