Being no accident, KAL 007 doesn't fit into the class. Let Lt. Col. Gennadi Osipovich explain (in 1996):
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. Gennadi Osipovich's unit had scrambled from its secret base on Sakhalin Island to intercept an intruder. 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 during the 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 President Boris N. Yeltsin has called the greatest tragedy of the Cold War.
That’s all true. I only mentioned it out of full disclosure, knowing the other flights had been on long established commercial routes. The 747 has a unique silhouette and couldn’t be mistaken for the RC-135. As he said, he knew it was a civilian plane.