Banner Graphic, Volume 14, Number 63, Greencastle, Putnam County, 17 November 1983 — Page 2

The Putnam County Banner-Graphic, November 17,1983

300-mile human error new theory in Korean jet case

c. 1983 N.Y. Times News Service NEW YORK Aviation experts say that a new theory has emerged as the likeliest explanation of why a South Korean airliner flew into Soviet airspace on Sept. 1. The theory is that a one-digit, 300-mile human error was made in putting the takeoff location into onboard computers. The Boeing 747 was shot down by a Soviet fighter plane and all 269 people on board were killed. The Soviet Union has contended that the plane was on an espionage mission and entered Soviet airspace deliberately. The theory is said to be under study by a seven-member inquiry team from the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations affiliate. Two or three other possible explanations are being looked at. But the navigationalcomputer error theory is viewed by experts as the one best fitting the known facts. J. Lynn Helms, head of the Federal Aviation Administration, said when asked about this theory: “It is a very real possibility. I have not seen any that are more likely.” But he emphasized that “the decision is properly to be made by the ICAO.” According to navigation specialists, such a critical error

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would have placed the Anchorage, Alaska, takeoff point at 139 degrees 58 minutes West longitude instead of 149 degrees 58 minutes. In other words, the computers would have been programmed to figure that Anchorage was 10 degrees (300 nautical miles) east of where it actually was. With such an error, the computers would have guided the plane 300 miles too far west before making a slight shift in course to the left onto the assigned heading toward Japan and Seoul. Such an error almost certainly would not have been made had a software modification offered two years earlier by the computer manufacturer, Litton Industries, been made in the equipment aboard the jumbo jet. The precise reason the Korean plane flew off course may never be known for certain. Hard proof may not be obtainable except from crash-resistant data recorders in the wreckage. Efforts to retrieve the devices have brought no results. The Korean airliner was to have flown along an airway whose center is within 35 miles of Russian airspace. The airway, known as R (for Red) 20, would have taken the plane east of Japan’s main island of Honshu and west from there toward Seoul. R 20 begins at a “way point” at Bethel and continues to nine

world

Out of Grenada Dec. 23?

c. 1983 N.Y. Times News Service WASHINGTON - The Reagan administration said Wednesday that American combat troops would be withdrawn from Grenada by Dec. 23 and that there was no need for Congress to authorize their presence beyond that date. Larry Speakes, the White House. spokesman, said the Senate majority leader, Howard H. Baker Jr., was informed of the administration view by Secretary of State George P. Shultz on Tuesday evening. A spokesman for Baker said Wednesday night that Republicans would probably

not press for applying the War Powers Act to the situation in Grenada, as many of them did last month. Such a measure was approved by the Democraticcontrolled House on Nov. 1. Part of the War Powers Act requires that combat troops sent overseas must be withdrawn within 60 days of encountering hostilities unless Congress authorizes them to remain. “We have indicated to the Congress that there is ao need for any congressional action, in our opinion, on war powers,” Speakes said at a briefing Wednesday. “We don’t anticipate there will be any additional

Confidential jet documents in trash

SAN DIEGO (AP) - Documents detailing a computerized combat system on one of the Navy’s most sophisticated jet fighters were found discarded in a trash bin outside a drugstore, officials say. The documents, stamped “confidential,” outlined weapons systems for the Navy’s Grumman F-14 Tomcat jet.

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more way points that are arbitrary locations on the map. They are called Nabie, Nukks, Neeva, Ninno, Nippi, Nytim, Nokka, NohoandNanac. Over land, the primary navigation system is a network of VOR (very high frequency omnidirectional radio) stations. A crew tunes to a station’s frequency. An instrument shows the direction to that station and keeps clicking off the number of miles to it. Over the ocean, where a plane is most often out of range of VOR stations, primary navigation falls to computerized devices known as inertial navigation systems. These devices are completely self-contained, requiring no input from radio or other signals from the ground. Sensitive mechanisms detect every acceleration of the plane in the northsouth and east-west directions. They constantly calculate where these changes would take the plane from its takeoff point. But it is vital that the geographical coordinates the longitude and latitude of the takeoff point be put into the computer correctly. If the takeoff point is inaccurate, the calculations of where the plane has flown from that point will be inaccurate. Also entered in the inertial systems are the coordinates of the way points along an airway such as R 20.

hostilities, and combat troops will be out, as Department of Defense said, before the 60-day period expires.” Speakes and other administration officials emphasized that combat troops would be removed by Dec. 23, leaving open the possibility that troops assisting in construction projects, medical care and other noncombat activities might remain beyond that date. The War Powers Act of 1973, which was approved over a veto by President Nixon, sets the 60day time limit. It allows the deadline to be extended to 90 days at the request of the president.

The papers apparently were thrown away in suburban Poway by an officer asassigned to the F-14 training unit at the Miramar Naval Air Station in San Diego, Lt. Cmdr. Sally Robins, a Navy spokeswoman, said Wednesday. Navy officials in Washington, D.C., have ordered an investigation.

Have no choice but to fight, surrounded Arafat says

TRIPOLI, Lebanon (AP) - Palestinian rebels today declared victory in their war against Yasser Arafat, but he vowed to fight on as a pocket of his besieged loyalists held out north of Tripoli. Lebanon’s state radio reported that Arafat had ordered his troops in northern Lebanon to cease fire, but the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization told reporters today he would continue fighting. “It is difficult. But we have no choice,” Arafat said in a brief news conference at his headquarters in Tripoli. One of his hands was wrapped in a bandage, but he said it was “not a wound.” He gave no further explanation. Arafat and his aides said there were still some loyalist fighters in positions on the southern edge of the Baddawi Palestinian refugee camp, taken by the rebels in fierce hand-to-hand fighting Wed-

Horse carcasses

hunters' salvation CALDWELL, Idaho (AP) Two hunters suffering from hypothermia on a freezing, windswept mountain say they stayed alive by shooting their horses, cutting them open and crawling inside the carcasses for shelter Richard Dailey, 35, and Steven McCoy, .27, said Wednesday they used the horses as shelter last week when high winds and snow trapped them on a 7,000-foot-high ridge. The respite gave them the strength they needed a few hours later to stagger down the mountain and find their truck, they said. The men had become soaked to the skin and pummeled by sleet and trapped by high drifts. “If you’ve never been there, you probably couldn’t imagine it, but the wind must have been blowing 80 miles an hour,” said Dailey. Experienced in cold-weather survival techniques, Dailey saw McCoy becoming more affected by the cold and figured his friend had only about an hour left to live. Finally, the horses were killed, each man shooting the other’s animal. They slit the bellies, hollowed out a space by removing internal organs and crawled inside. “The thought of the blood and guts was a little bit gross, but I didn’t care. You can’t imagine how cold we were,” said Dailey.

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A Boeing 747 has three independent inertial systems. Only one is needed to navigate, but the extra systems provide backups and cross-checks. When connected to a plane’s automatic pilot, inertial systems guide a plane from one way point to the next without requiring any actions by the crew. Airlines have procedures, however, for a crew to check the displayed positions and to check the inertial positions against positions supplied by available VOR or other systems on the ground. According to the longitude-error theory, here is what probably happened on Flight 007: The distance from takeoff at Anchorage to the first way point, Bethel, is 350 nautical miles. Normally, a crew might navigate to Bethel by tuning in the Bethel VOR. With the 10-degree error in the Anchorage coordinates, the inertial computers thought that Anchorage was 300 miles east of the real Anchorage and that the distance to Bethel was 650, not 350, miles. “Whatever scenario you try,” an ICAO official said, “you have to make the assumption the crew weren’t paying much attention. They’d flown R 20 so many times, they probably treated it like a milk run.”

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YASSER ARAFAT Vows to fight on

nesday. The camp was Arafat’s last Middle East stronghold. Most of today’s fighting was in an area called Mankubin, just southwest of Baddawi. Rockets, machineguns and rocket-propelled grenades were being fired by both sides. “We will win. I keep telling you,” Arafat claimed.

The rebel leader who personally led Wednesday’s assault and capture of Baddawi declared a total victory. “We’ve won the war and we have finished Arafat,” said Ahmed Jibril. “We shall not move a single inch toward Tripoli.” Jibril spoke today at Arafat’s one-time headquarters in the camp. He urged Arafat to surrender and “receive the punishment he deserves for the mistakes and crimes he committed against the Palestinian people.” Lebanese police said today the death toll has climbed to 43 from Israel’s air raid Wednesday on a Bekaa Valley base of pro-Iranian extremists suspected of engineering truckbomb attacks on U.S., French and Israeli posts in Lebanon. In Israel, military sources quoted by Israel radio said officials decided to launch the Bekaa Valley air strikes after it became clear the United States did not intend to retaliate.

Victim of vendetta, Foatsays GRETNA, La. (AP) - Feminist Ginny Foat says her acquittal on an 18-year-old murder charge is a “symbolic victory” for women who are battered and abused, adding that she hopes to “go back to California and put my life together.” Cheers and tears swept a packed state District Court chamber Wednesday as jurors announced they had found Ms. Foat, 42, innocent of killing an Argentine businessman in 1965. The six-man, six-woman jury took only two hours to reject the testimony of Ms. Foat’s former husband, John Sidote. Sidote claimed that he and Ms. Foat, then a barmaid in a seedy Canal Street bar, had lured 62-year-old Moises Chayo to the outskirts of New Orleans. He testified they clubbed Chayo with a tire iron after robbing him of $1,400 he was carrying to pay his son’s hospital bills. However, Ms. Foat testified that Sidote’s accusations were born of malicious vengeance because she left him after enduring five years of physical and psychological abuse. Ms. Foat, who was president of the California chapter of the National Organization for Women when she was arrested in January, was mobbed by friends and supporters after the verdict was announced.

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