Russian flyover takes Navy by surprise?
Dec. 7, 2000: On the 59th anniversary of the Japanese attack on the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor, WND reported a more recent surprise “attack” on the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk by a pair of Russian warplanes in the Sea of Japan.
The flyover of the carrier’s tower — at 500 knots and 200 feet — On Oct. 9, 2000, occurred without the ship’s commander getting a single plane into the air. And when an aircraft was finally launched — 40 minutes after the first alert was given — it was a plane used for electronic jamming, not a fighter. By then, the Russians had made three passes over the Kitty Hawk. The Pentagon admitted the Russians were easily in a position to destroy the ship if the planes had hostile intentions.
“We went down as low as possible and from the direction of the Japanese coast – without crossing the Japanese border, of course,” Aleksandr Renev, the reconnaissance mission’s squadron commander, told the BBC. “We went over the aircraft carrier. It looked as if they were not expecting us.”
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