3:00 a.m.: A Soviet fighter jet shoots down a South Korean Airlines Boeing 747, flight RC135 KE007, off the coast of Japan with 300 people on board. In the following days, a massive hunt for the black box begins, involving Americans, Japanese, and Russians to determine who is responsible for the downing. Officially, no one finds the black box; with the fall of the Soviet Union, it is solemnly handed over to the families of the victims by Russian Prime Minister Boris Yeltsin. The black box reveals what the Soviets had always denied: that the Korean pilots were unaware they were in Soviet territory and that the error was caused by using the magnetic compass instead of the INS.
