Documents / FOIA release
This is a Central Intelligence Agency transcript, dated 23 October 1992, of a Radio Khabarovsk news report. It covers the three-month search for Captain Vladimir Molokanov, who went missing on 24 July near the Okhotsk Sea coast while flying an Su-27 near the Shantarskiye Islands. Proposed explanations included an accident, loss of consciousness, escape abroad and abduction by a UFO. The search team head said an accident was the main explanation, but none had been confirmed.
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CLAS UNCLASSIFIED CLAS UNCLASSIFIED AFSN OW0111135692 DDAT 921023 SLIN Khabarovsk Radio Khabarovsk Network in Russian 0945 GMT 23 Oct 92 SUBS [From the "Kray News" program SUBJ Search Continues for Downed Su-27 Pilot Full Text Superzone of Message 1 ] [Text] The fruitless search for Vladimir Molokanov, a military pilot who went missing on 24 July near the Okhotsk Sea coast, has been going on for three months. On that day, Captain Molokanov, pilot first class, was returning in an Su-27 from the site of anti aircraft and missile training in Chukotka. However, he did not reach his regiments's airfield in Komsomolsk-Na-Amure. Contact with the interceptor was suddenly lost at noon local time, when it was in the area of the Shantarskiye Islands. Various explanations for the incident have been offered -- an accident, loss of consciousness by the pilot, escape abroad, and abduction by a UFO. But none of these have been confirmed as yet. 3 Aleksandr Nosov, head of the search team, said that the search in the area where the supposed accident occurred, an analysis of radio exchanges with the pilot, and an examination of the extraordinary event by experts so far have yielded no results. The only prevalent explanation is an accident. On its way home the jet suffered a failure in the regulators of both engines, but since it was possible to continue flight with such a malfunction, this was what Molokanov was advised to do. No confirmation for any other explanation has been found. 4 As for an escape abroad, both foreign and military intelligence and the diplomatic corps have carried out an investigation. No trace was found of the vanished Su-27 in Japan, the United States or South Korea. 5 This is the second time that a military pilot has mysteriously disappeared from this air regiment. (endall) 230945 130111.011 01/1357z Nov BT #0053 NNNN
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 1 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.