Part 6/9:
As flight 7 neared Sakhalin Island, Soviet commanders coordinated a straightforward course of action with their interceptor jets. Their objective: confirm the identity of the intruder before potentially inciting an international incident.
However, under immense pressure, intuition succumbed to protocol failure as balloons of judgment were burst when a decision was made to engage the unknown aircraft. Miscommunication and lack of due diligence led to a tragic error—a missile was launched at Flight 007.