"Vladimir Vasiliev of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies .... He said they were probably spy missions used by the U.S. to test Soviet air defense and command capabilities"
lol. Yeah right. The U.S. always uses Korean passenger planes for spy missions.
The more famous case of KAL 007 with conservative Congressman Larry McDonald aboard along with 268 others was pretty much the same case but with a more tragic result. The pilot even discussed the red light flashing on top before firing a rocket which sent the aircraft on an eleven minute decent to the Pacific.
Red lights are always flashing on spy planes.
no, but we'd shadow commercial airliners with smaller jet figthers.
Actually, the US uses RC-135 aircraft, which happen to be Boeing 707's. Doesn't surprise me in the least that the Russians thought they were spy planes, heck the RC's were probably collected data at the time.......