On September 1st, 1983, a civilian Korean Airlines Flight (007) is shot down by a Soviet fighter jet for violating Soviet airspace. Because of a fatal mistake before take off, all 269 passengers on board tragically died. Tensions between the US and the Soviet Union were extremely high at this point.
Because this program was made well after the end of the Cold War, the Soviet fighter pilot who actually shot down flight 007 is interviewed.
From the Mayday: Air Crash Investigation series.
YouTube link here.
“Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies is a 1984 book by Yale sociologist Charles Perrow, which analyses complex systems from a sociological perspective. Perrow argues that multiple and unexpected failures are built into society’s complex and tightly coupled systems, and that accidents are unavoidable and cannot be designed around.”
It’s a great read. I happened to be in China during https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainan_Island_incident
so one underemphasised point is the tremendous amount of CIA/USAF f*ckery that the USA was doing against the USSR trying to find path ways for a first strike/knock out attack.
Based on a quote from an ex-CIA agent in Sharon Tennyson’s book, “The Power of Impossible Ideas: Ordinary Citizens’ Extraordinary Efforts to Avert International Crises”, the Korean airliner was carrying a CIA camara.