Even the most experienced crews make mistakes though I wonder at the wisdom of sending a vulnerable aircraft into a sensitive area knowing that the Soviets were acting aggressively...
I also wonder what the role of ground based radar was here. Should they have been monitoring the aircraft's progress? The previous quote does say that they were later confirmed (how?) as being off course.
The crew did eventually realise they were going the wrong way and headed back to the air corridor but sadly the MiGs caught up.
Will the BOI now be in the public domain?