The World - News from Jan. 31, 1985

A Soviet missile that crashed in Finland last month had been aimed by mistake at the West German city of Hamburg but was shot down by Soviet fighter planes, the London Daily Express reported. The paper said that war-plan flight data were erroneously fed into the missile and that, within seconds of the launch, Moscow so informed Washington by military hot line. U.S. and Soviet authorities cooperated in keeping the story secret to avoid endangering arms control negotiations, the paper added. A Pentagon spokesman expressed doubt that there was any truth to the report.