Editing Korean Air Lines Flight 007 (section)

===Soviet search and rescue mission to Moneron Island===
The Soviets did not acknowledge shooting down the aircraft until September 6, five days after the flight was shot down.<ref name="Oberdorfer"/> Eight days after the shoot-down, [[Marshal of the Soviet Union]] and [[Chief of the General Staff (Russia)|Chief of General Staff]] [[Nikolai Ogarkov]] denied knowledge of where KAL&nbsp;007 had gone down; "We could not give the precise answer about the spot where it [KAL&nbsp;007] fell because we ourselves did not know the spot in the first place."<ref>{{cite speech |author=Marshal [[Nikolai Ogarkov]] |date=September 9, 1983 |location=Moscow |title=Press conference}}</ref>

Nine years later, the Russian Federation handed over transcripts of Soviet military communications that showed that at least two documented search and rescue (SAR) missions were ordered within a half-hour of the attack, to the last Soviet-verified location of the descending jumbo jet over [[Moneron Island]]. The first search was ordered from [[Smirnykh (air base)|Smirnykh Air Base]] in central Sakhalin at 18:47 UTC, nine minutes after KAL&nbsp;007 had disappeared from Soviet radar screens and brought rescue helicopters from Khomutovo Air Base (the military unit at [[Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk Airport]] in southern Sakhalin), and [[Soviet Border Troops]] boats to the area.<ref name="ICAO93-93"/>

The second search was ordered eight minutes later by the Deputy Commander of the [[Far Eastern Military District]], General Strogov, and involved civilian [[Naval trawler|trawlers]] that were in the area around Moneron. "The border guards. What ships do we now have near Moneron Island? If they are civilians, send [them] there immediately."<ref name="ICAO9596">ICAO, '93, Information Paper No. 1., pp. 95–96</ref> Moneron is just {{convert|4.5|mi|km}} long and {{convert|3.5|mi|km}} wide, located {{convert|24|mi|km}} due west of Sakhalin Island at {{Coord|46|15|N|141|14|E|region:RU_type:isle|name=Moneron Island}}; it is the only land mass in the whole Tatar Straits.