This is a series of articles, written with contributor Simone Bovi, about military and civilian airspace violations.
Simone is was born in Novara (Italy) in 1978 and he graduated in law at the “Università degli Studi di Milano”, introducing a thesis regarding the use of force against aerial intruders and international law. He’s an aviation enthusiast, who makes research on the Italian Air Force during WWII and Cold War incidents and he currently works for an Italian airline, in the security and ground operations field.
As you will discover by reading the various episodes, even if the first recorded violation dates back to the “dawn of flight”, this kind of event is among the “most current” in the modern scenarios when airspace violations (actual or presumed) periodically cause close encounters between fighters, bombers, reconnaissance aircraft and civil planes belonging to friendly and unfriendly nations with subsequent increased tension between countries and various types of diplomatic reactions.
Just to have an idea of how frequent these events are, you can browse through the pages of this website where you will find the description of many interceptions performed by the Italian Air Force fighters in the Cold War era and nowadays (have a look at the articles published at this page).
The various episodes provide a more detailed view of some of the most famous airspace violations recorded all around the world.
- Airspace violations – Prologue
- Episode 1: The USAAF faces Yugoslavian Yak-3s
- Episode 2: Cold Baltic Sea, hot Baltic skies (U.S. PB4Y-2 Privateer vs. Soviet La-11s)
- Episode 3: Swedish Affair (Swedish Catalina vs. Soviet Mig-15s)
- Episode 4: The lost Constellation (El Al Constellation vs. Bulgarian Mig-15s)
- Episode 5: “Dragon Lady 360 missing”
- Episode 6: Shot down over Sinai (Lybian Arab Airlines B727 vs. Israeli F-4s Phantom)
- Episode 7: Tragedy on the way home (Korean Airlines B-747 vs. Soviet Sukhoi Su-15)