MovieChat Forums > Thirteen Days (2001) Discussion > How high was that spy plane when it was ...

How high was that spy plane when it was shot down?

posted 14 years ago by hondadriver1973
7 replies | jump to latest

I ask this for 2 reasons.

1) The scene is well done and the pilot dodges 3 missiles before his plane is destroyed. The music score is touching when Costner gets the sad news and rushes to see his associate about it.

2) Back in 1996 when TWA 800 was lost, the official word was that no known type of missile had the range needed to shoot down a commercial jet liner - yet the pilot of the spy plane mentioned to O'Donnell (Costner) that he flies at an altitude of 72,000 feet (MORE THAN 13 MILES UP) and HE got shot down.

The point:
Has anyone ever heard the altitude of this spy plane when it was shot down? I still wonder about TWA 800.

[–] efs2 14 years ago

I do not know how high the U-2 was flying, or the aircraft's ceiling. However, the most likely culprit in the shootdown of the U-2 was an SA-2. I think it was the best Soviet SAM available in 1962. And according to the site linked below, it could reach an altitude of 27km or 40km, according to the model in question. That's 16+ and 24+ miles, respectively.

As for TWA Flight 800, I don't know who said there was no SAM that could reach it, but my best guess is that he/she was addressing speculation that the aircraft was shot down by a terrorist or other such criminal on a boat and was referring to a shoulder-fired SAM. Those weapons are generally available on the black market. However, such missiles are infrared guided and have much less of a range than the large RADAR-guided missiles, such as the SA-2. Typically, shoulder fired SAMs have a ceiling of a mile or two. As a trans-Atlantic flight, TWA Flight 800 would have been at 40,000 feet or higher when it was disabled.

http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/russia/airdef/v-75.htm

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[–] raf-33 14 years ago

Two months before the crisis another U2 was shot down by an SA-2 over either korea or china so the chiefs of staff knew the Russians were manufacturing SAM's that could kill them but didn't bother to bring it up during the crisis.

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[–] nebka23 14 years ago

There is Francis Gary Powers flight on May 1 1960 where he was shot down over Degtyarsk, Ural Region so the Soviet Union knew how high the plane could fly and had the knowhow to bring it down

[–] Fozzy_Fozzbourne 13 years ago

Wasn't Powers shot down at about 70,000ft

[–] e8n2 13 years ago

NO! He had engine problems and had descended down to a lower altitude where the Soviet missiles could get to him. Besides Powers, the Russians also downed some of their own planes that they had sent up to get him.

[–] Fozzy_Fozzbourne 12 years ago

Oh right e8n2, i never knew that about Powers shootdown

[–] agamemnon_b5 12 years ago

e8n2 is incorrect. Declassified documents released in 2010 showed that the supposed decent of an aircraft on radar was most likely a MiG-19 flown by a Sr.Lt. Sergei Safronov. Some MiG-19's were shot down, but that was after the U-2 was shot down and only because the Soviet commander didn't know the U-2 had been shot down (the MiGs had inpropper IFF transponders).