回答: 中国空军小粉红击落民航客机，美军报复险引发大战 由 DNA4200 于 2021-11-13 18:28

https://web.archive.org/web/20090105170720/http://www.helianthus-productions.com/USreport.html 6park.com
LAST July twenty-third some Chinese communist aviators without mercy shot down a civilian airliner in the South China Sea, killing nine persons outright. This is the story of how my crew and I managed to rescue the other nine, one of whom died in our plane en route to the hospital. 6park.com
Kai Tak airfield, Hong Kong: Captain Woodyard carries six-year-old valerie Parrish, of Iowa Park, Texas, from his plane.  valerie's mother survived, but her father and two prothers were killed.
U.S. INFORMATION AGENCY 6park.com
Kai Tak airfield, Hong Kong: Captain Woodyard carries six-year-old valerie Parrish, of Iowa Park, Texas, from his plane. valerie's mother survived, but her father and two prothers were killed. 6park.com
     In my outfit - the 31st Air Rescue Squadron - two plane crews share the "alert" duty. The "first alert" crew sleeps and eats on the flight line, ready for immediate call at any hour; the "second alert" gang can go to their homes here on the Clark Air Force Base, but must be on half-hour call. During their duty week - about one week out of three - one of the alert crews alternates with the other, twenty-four hours on first alert, then twenty-four hours on second alert. In this way the duty is divided among the crews flying our six Grumman Albatross amphibian planes - SA-16's, we call them. 6park.com
     On the hot, humid morning of July twenty-third we - three officers, three enlisted men - happened to be on first alert. We were up early, .planning some routine flying, during which we would stay within easy radio range of the base in case they assigned us a mission. This flight was intended to give my copilot, Captain Arnold, some check-out experience in the twin-engined Albatross. The Albatross is a fine plane, as you will see, but often there is some trickiness involved in landing on the waves in a 30,000 pound aircraft, and perhaps a bit more in taking off again from those same waves. As I found out several years ago, it's very different from flying land planes. It takes practice. 6park.com
     We have our own area here at Clark AFB and our own rescue control center in a small building alongside the taxiway. At 8:35, as we were warming up the engines and talking to the tower, Capt. Don Shaw came running out of the control center. He said, "They want the pilot and navigator at the control center right away. Looks like we have a mission for you!" 6park.com
     This was the sort of day when everything goes just right, like the pieces fitting into a jigsaw puzzle. As soon as I got to the control center with Capt. Albert Smith, the navigator, I determined that we might need more fuel. Normally we carry 975 gallons - 675 in the main tank and 150 in each drop tank - enough for more than eight hoursí flying. But I immediately called maintenance and said, "Better give us three hundred more" - which meant topping off the two drop tanks to their capacity. Maintenance got on the stick and brought the fuel truck over pronto. They put two men on each hose and filled the two drops simultaneously under Arnold's supervision. Arnold completed the preflight run up. 6park.com
     In the control center Smith and I were given a brief message relayed from the civilian-operated Manila rescue control center, which had picked up an SOS from a DC-4 passenger plane belonging to Cathay Pacific, a British air line which flies between Singapore, Bangkok and Hong Kong. This plane, with eighteen people on board, had an engine on fire at latitude 18ƒ06' and longitude 110ƒ06', was traveling at a true air speed of 207 m.p.h. at 9000 feet and was losing altitude fast. That was all. 6park.com
     The co-ordinates placed the plane in distress about twenty miles southeast of Hainan, a big, 13,000-square-mile island off the China coast. This was more than 700 nautical miles and more than four hours' flying time across the South China Sea from the Philippines. It was logical to assume that other planes would be searching for the DC-4 also-Hong Kong is only about two hours north of the co-ordinates and Tourane, Indochina, is only a little over one hour. But in this business everybody pitches in to do what he can to save lives. 6park.com
     We were airborne at 8:55, only twenty minutes after the SOS was received at our Clark control center. At first we headed for Hong Kong, assuming that the Cathay Pacific pilot had continued on course in that direction. I knew that his was an emergency case, but the loss of one engine in a DC-4 is not so bad as most people imagine-he might make it all the way to Hong Kong. Of course, the pilot could set it down on one of the nearby Hainan airfields, but that would mean suffering the consequences of communist imprisonment. 6park.com
     One thing we didn't want to do was get behind the plane in distress. If we did we'd be in the position of the dog 100 yards from the rabbit's hole, trying to catch the rabbit which was only 100 feet from the hole. No chance of contact until too late. I had Captain Smith figure how long a DC-4 on three engines would take to get from Point X to Hong Kong; his figures showed that even at the slowest speed the DC-4 would get there before us. 6park.com
     Meantime, Capt. Dale Baker, on second alert at Clark AFB, took off in his Albatross thirty-five minutes after we had left. He headed for the last reported position. Our plan was for him to work north from there while I would work south from Hong Kong. 6park.com
The Philippine-based rescue plane picked up the survivors about 4 mi. east of Red-held Hainan.
MAP BY JAMES LEWICKI 6park.com
The Philippine-based rescue plane picked up the survivors about 4 mi. east of Red-held Hainan. 6park.com
     When we were about forty minutes out of Clark I asked my radio operator, A/3c Lawrence Rodriguez, to contact Hong Kong for interpretation of the original distress signal. Nothing more had been heard from the Cathay Pacific plane. Obviously, something was seriously wrong or there would have been some news. I changed course to head toward a point midway between Point X and Hong Kong. A little while later we radioed Hong Kong again. Still they could tell us nothing except that search aircraft had been dispatched from Hong Kong. Now I had Smith plot a course which would bring us only fifty miles north of Point X - I estimated that the pilot would require fifty miles to nurse the plane down from 9000 feet and ditch it. 6park.com
     We contacted Captain Baker's AIbatross to tell him of our change in plan. He told us he had just intercepted a message on 500 kilocycles - the international distress frequency - saying that survivors had been sighted on a raft at position 18ƒ36' and 110ƒ28'. The raft had been spotted by one of the Hong Kong planes, a British Short Sunderland flying boat. We expected that the raft would be taken care of by the big boat, but we figured we could help out in the search for other scattered survivors. 6park.com
     A third course alteration of only four degrees took us directly toward that position. We pushed our Albatross up to 165 knots indicated, which at our altitude means about 210 m.p.h. actual speed. The drop tanks began to drag. We steamed on toward the new position, which was about seventy miles northeast of the original Point X. The pilot had covered fifty miles plus twenty since he sent out his lone distress signal. It took Navigator Smith only a minute to ascertain that the raft's position was within the twelve-mile zone which the communists had designated as their international boundary. About an hour from our destination Hong Kong called to say that no military aircraft were to approach the scene of the incident-all were ordered to remain well clear of Hainan Island. I instructed the radio operator merely to acknowledge the message. 6park.com
The communists had an arrogant answer... any other "war planes" would be "fired upon without warning if they approached land."
     What happened, I learned later from the July twenty-eighth New York Times, was this: The Hong Kong Civil Aviation Department radioed to White Cloud Airfield at Canton, reporting that there had been an accident and giving details and markings of the search planes taking off from Hong Kong. The communists had an arrogant answer; they said the Sunderland flying boat could remain, but any other "war planes" would be "fired upon without warning if they approached land." This message, Mr. Eden hotly told Parliament later, went against "all international custom and behavior." 6park.com
     At 12:30 P.M. - I noted the time later in the controller's log at Clark AFB - our own people had advised our Albatrosses to stay out of the twelve mile zone. By the time we received that message we were already within the zone and on the water. 6park.com
     About seventy-five miles from the raft's given position we established radio contact with a French Privateer-a modified version of the old B-24-which had flown up from Tourane, Indochina, to help by dropping some rescue gear, since it was unable to land on water. When we got within fifty miles and descended to 1500 feet, the Frenchman came on again - he spoke English with a cockney accent - with the news we wanted to hear, "We have spotted the dinghy with survivors; looks like two of them from here." 6park.com
     I asked the Frenchman where the other planes were - the Sunderland, the York and the Cathay PBY that had been sent from Hong Kong. He said they were flying search patterns, but he hadn't been able to raise them on his radio; what happened was that he was using 121.5 megacycles while the British planes were on 119.7, a frequency we were also having trouble tuning in. 6park.com
     We asked the Frenchman for a UHF tone to steer by. This he gave us, and we made a beeline for him. Fifteen miles out we asked him to guide us to the raft and to drop a drift signal as a marker. After that, from about four miles out, we spotted the raft through the broken clouds - a round yellow raft or, as the British will have it, a "dinghy" - bobbing up and down with the swells, about four miles from Hainan Island and about two and one half miles south of a small island with high cliffs named Tachou Tao. In any case, well within the twelve-mile limit. 6park.com
     In the raft we could see two figures. Neither of them waved or even moved. Why hadn't the Sunderland gone in to pick up the survivors? I realized quite well when I got down low and had a good look at the sea. The swells were eight to ten feet high, which, the Sunderland pilot told me later in Hong Kong, would have tom his heavy boat to pieces. 6park.com
     The Albatross is no toy - it is sixty-five feet long and has a wing span of eighty-five feet. But it has one great advantage - it has reversible props which can stop, it an incredibly short distance from where it first hit the water. "You just pretend it's a helicopter, stall it on top of a wave, and then you've got a seagoing yacht," the boys say. That's not quite correct, but almost. 6park.com
     The landing would be a rough one, I knew. But I had put the Albatross down in rougher seas, 80 I prepared to go in and pick up the survivors. I circled the raft, dropped a smoke signal, told the other planes my intentions and started looking for a place to land. 6park.com
     During the four-hour flight I hadn't thought of using the small island, Tachou Tao, as a shelter, because I hadn't imagined the raft so close in. But once I saw it, I knew the swells would be smoother inshore. The wind was out of the south, about fifteen knots. So I flew between the high humps of the island, skimming over the fishing village On the flats, and took a look at the north side; there I estimated that the swells were only five or six feet high. I also became curious about the natives' lack of interest, even though I had heard it is the Chinese nature to watch a man drown without throwing him a rope. Despite rumors to the contrary, I believe the survivors when they say the Chinese paid no attention to the incident during the four or five hours the raft bobbed offshore. 6park.com
     At this point I shall try to describe what the sea was like. From east to west, a 200-foot ground swell was running-that is, a swell with crests about 200 feet apart. But there was another pattern crisscrossing it almost at right angles, and this One had crests spaced only fifty feet apart, we estimated. But what we needed to know almost exactly was how much space there was between the crests. 6park.com
     First we threw out smoke markers; then we flew parallel to the crests to check their bearings. We used a stop watch to time the crests as they passed the markers. Divide the number of swells into the time elapsed to get the period. The period squared, times five, gives the distance between the crests in feet. 'If, for example, you count five crests in thirty seconds, the period is six, which, when squared, becomes thirty-six. Multiply thirty-six by five and you get 180 feet between crests. Above all, it's essential to heed the old flight-line verse 6park.com
Avoid like hell
The face of a swell
- because a fifteen-ton plane smacking head on into a swell might as well fly into a brick wall. 6park.com
     So I decided to land toward the island, parallel to the fifty-foot system. This way, though it meant landing crosswind, I would skim fewer crests - only one every 200 feet. There were some rocks near the island, so we couldn't go in too close and take full advantage of the shelter, but it was a lot better than the open sea. 6park.com
     I started dragging the aircraft into the island from about two miles offshore. I let it descend gradually, feeling my way down until my keel barely touched the ground swell, to make sure my eyes weren't playing me any tricks. I let the tail touch, kissing off two crests, but retaining control and air speed. I stalled her on the third crest of the ground swell and applied full reverse. In that way I slowed the aircraft to almost nothing by the time the next crest was encountered 200 feet away. Captain Arnold asked, "What the devil are you doing here when the raft is way out there?" 6park.com
     It had been, after all, only a normal, open-sea, rough-type landing. The reversible props had done the trick. As soon as we could turn ninety degrees we were off toward the raft, climbing the heavy water we found outside the shelter of the little island. 6park.com
     Because the Albatross sets low in the water, we couldn't see more than a few hundred feet; the wind seemed to have kicked up a bit, too, because we noticed the smoke from the signals was lying nearly flat on the surface. I asked my Frenchman in the Privateer to check my course toward the raft, and he told me to bear a little more to starboard; The Sunderland came over also and asked if he could be of help. I asked him to stand by; thus far everything was under control. 6park.com
     About halfway between the landing point and the raft Captain Baker flew over. I told him there didn't seem to be any damage to the aircraft. He said, "Roger, we'll cover you," He made some passes for photo coverage - our own plane's camera wasn't operating properly and we didn't get a picture out of the whole episode. 6park.com
     Amazingly enough, the sea seemed to get smoother as we ended our two-and-one-half-mile taxi jaunt and approached the raft-another piece of the jigsaw meticulously fitting into place. But a few minutes later the crew was having a hard time keeping their feet as we approached the raft. Smooth or rough, the South China Sea is no. lake. We circled the raft once to check the condition of the survivors. Could they lend a hand with a line after we threw One to them? They signaled that they could. My engineer, Sgt. Douglas Blair, stood, line in hand, in the bow hatch, about five feet forward of my pilot's seat, outside the cabin. 6park.com
     It appeared that we would have to make a two-engine approach, taxi past the raft and back up to it-these reversible props make it possible to taxi backward. But again the sea smoothed out for us. So I used only the starboard engine, cut the port engine and stopped its props 80 that the blades were split, permitting the raft to float under the prop without conking one of the survivors. Captain Smith stayed at his navigator's table to handle communications between bow and stem, but Arnold and Rodriguez went aft to help the medical technician, A/2c Cecil Smith. 6park.com
Woodyard's plane taxis along the turbulent South China Sea toward the survivors' raft.  "It was a miracle," says Woodyard, "that nine survived."
U.S. AIR FORCE 6park.com
Woodyard's plane taxis along the turbulent South China Sea toward the survivors' raft. "It was a miracle," says Woodyard, "that nine survived." 6park.com
     The plane nestled alongside the raft - one of the best approaches I've ever made on any kind of water. The crew could practically hand the line to the man standing in the raft, who turned out to be Capt. Philip Blown, the pilot of the downed DC-4. He folded back the tarpaulin which had covered the raft. 6park.com
     "Two, three, four! No, my God, it's loaded!" I exclaimed, according to what the crew said later. Up to now, nobody had been certain there were more than two people in the raft; the Sunderland had once estimated three. We had some trouble when the pitching of the aircraft started sawing the lines in two, but the passengers were brought on board in good order, beginning with a little six-year-old girl, Valerie Parrish, of Iowa Park, Texas, whose mother also survived, but not her two baby brothers or her father, who had been the Java representative of an American aviation-export company. 6park.com
     The little girl was shivering, so Rodriguez put his flight jacket around her. "It was worth my whole career to pull that little girl out of the raft," Arnold said later in speaking of the rescue. 6park.com
     A sad sight these passengers of mine were. The terrific impact of their 160 m.p.h. crash landing had for the most part torn their clothes off them. Several had deep gashes in their arms and legs, although the salt water had stopped the bleeding. One Chinese girl who had boarded the plane at Bangkok, Rita Ong, had a deep wound in her forehead and a leg horribly mangled. She also was obviously suffering from internal injuries. Mrs. John Thorburn, redheaded wife of an official of the Chartered Bank in Hong Kong, had an ear which appeared nearly severed. 6park.com
     Captain Blown, the last man off the raft, was a sight when he came forward to report to me. For this Australian I will say this: he was a cool one; he maintained as much dignity as any man could who was badly cut and bruised, covered with orange-colored dye marker, and dressed only in his shorts. 6park.com
     "We were shot down," he said quietly. "Watch out for yourself. There may be other fighters in the area." 6park.com
     This was a shocker. Remember that nobody - at least nobody in the noncommunist world - had any idea up to this time that the Cathay Pacific plane had experienced anything except engine trouble. If the communist pilots had had their way, the outside world would never have known, and all the passengers would have carried their secret to their salt-water grave. 6park.com
     Immediately I called Captain Baker in the Albatross overhead and asked him to switch to the rescue frequency to prevent the communists' hearing what I was going to say. Then I communicated Blown's revelation and asked him to caution the other aircraft. 6park.com
     Obviously, we had beat get out of this area quick as a flash. If the communists would shoot down a civilian air liner, what wouldn't they do to a United States Air Force plane tossing helplessly on the open sea? 6park.com
     Captain Blown said he was certain there were no. other survivors than the nine we had picked up. Nevertheless, we took one last look through the floating debris. We found nothing except a litter of seat cushions, splintered wood of life jacket cases and some anti-exposure suits. The most lifelike object we encountered was a child's rag doll, about fifteen inches long, floating face down, swirling dumbly in the restless sea. 6park.com
     As we taxied back toward our little island, which, though it was enemy territory, offered us shelter for our urgently desired take-off, I told the crew to hang the JATO bottles on the hatches aft. JATO - it means jet-assisted take-off - gives a plane the boost needed in rough water. We might have made it without JATO, though we were now more than 1000 pounds overloaded, but I doubt it. If I couldn't have taken off I'd have taxied eastward until a surface vessel picked us up. The Navy at Sangley Point had ascertained that there was a ship within six hours' steaming of our position. 6park.com
     Here occurred the only funny incident of this fateful day, though it didn't amuse us at the time. These JATO bottles weigh 190 pounds each, and one of them-the starboard bottle-had to be lifted head-high. Arnold Rodriguez and Airman Smith struggled mightily trying to put it in place, but the canvas cover On the snap latch wouldn't unzip. Arnold came forward to tell me that they couldn't get the blankety-blank thing secured. 6park.com
If the communists would shoot down a civilian air liner, what wouldn't they do to a United States Air Force plane tossing helplessly on the open sea?
     At that moment we received a blood chilling radio report from one of the planes topside, "Unidentified fighters approaching!" 6park.com
     Arnold dashed aft; the next time I looked back the pesky bottle was fastened all right and they were swinging the hatch closed, ready for take-off. I believe Arnold suddenly found himself with the strength of ten, and did it all by himself. 6park.com
     The "unidentified". planes turned out to be Skyraiders off a United States Navy carrier-the same type of planes which three days later shot down two communist fighters which attacked them, also near Hainan. You can imagine what relief we felt when we learned the identity of these planes. Just why the communists didn't attack us during our sixty minutes on the water we'll probably never know. 6park.com
     I elected to take off from inshore the island seaward, cross downwind, about forty-five degrees true. It was a unique take-off, describing a quarter-circular pattern to take advantage of the smooth water. The aircraft has a tendency to keep turning with torque to the left, but on this day it was counteracted by the wind until I made the turn for the take-off. When I fired the JATO bottles and we were airborne, we were headed about forty degrees from the path we were making when we started the run. The wind was right, the swells were right and we had just enough protection from the island. The jigsaw pieces were still falling just where we wanted them. 6park.com
     Tourane, Indochina, was closer, but I knew the medical facilities at Hong Kong were better. So we checked the fuel supply and after determining that it was sufficient, we headed for Hong Kong. 6park.com
     Captain Blown told me his story. That morning he had been flying the Bangkok-Hong Kong leg of his trip as usual, skirting Hainan Island, as all planes must if they don't want to encounter the belligerent Chinese. The DC-4 was plainly marked "Cathay Pacific" and had a Union Jack three and a half by five feet painted on its tail. Copilot Carlton was the first to notice a cream-colored, red-nosed, propeller-driven fighter plane 100 yards above the airliner, about 150 yards astern. Blown looked to his side of the plane and round himself facing a twin of the other fighter. 6park.com
     Both pilots were horribly surprised when the two fighters began to pump machine-gun bullets into the unprotected plane. The No.1 engine began to smoke. Carlton ran aft to help the stewardesses pass out lifebelts to the passengers. He came back and reported that a fire had started in the No. 4 engine, and the main gas tank was flaming. Blown began to zigzag, losing altitude as he twisted and turned. The fighters shot away the instrument panel. Soon they had knocked out his rudder controls. 6park.com
     "I sent one of the crew aft to get life jackets," said Captain Blown, "I might as well have sent him before a firing squad." 6park.com
... by the time they realized their mistake they must have determined to shoot us to bits, so we could tell no tales.
     From the smoke and shattered metal of the cockpit, Blown yelled over his shoulder, "Brace yourselves for ditching!" The plane hit the water with a tremendous thud. The crash tore out one of the cockpit windows, and it quickly filled with water. Blown swam through the bubbling foam toward the sunlight. 6park.com
     Blown estimated that three to five or the eighteen passengers were killed by the fighters' guns; four to six died from the crash itself. Blown himself saw three lifeless bodies in the water before the Albatros arrived. He knew his radio operator's head had been impaled on his drift meter; his engineer was thrown against the bulkhead with such force he went clean through it. 6park.com
     It was a miracle that nine survived. The nine floated and swam for an hour before copilot Carlton noticed the box which Mrs. Parrish was hanging onto. It turned out to contain a twenty-man rubber raft. He spent twenty minutes inflating it and then pulled the nine survivors on board. Four men, four women and little Valerie - three out of six Americans still lived, three out or five British, three out of seven Chinese. 6park.com
     Even while we were climbing toward Hong Kong I told Arnold to take the aircraft, and went aft to see if I could do anything for our passengers. The Albatross contains four passenger plane seats; these were occupied by three of the women - Mrs. Parrish, Mrs. Thorburn, Stewardess Esther Law, who had a broken nose and battered face, and by Valerie. The cruelly crushed Rita Ong had been placed on the deck aft; she moaned now and again, and said to the medic, Smith, "Don't let them come back and shoot us any more." We didn't dare move her to one of the two litters forward unless we could set the broken bones. It was never to be; she died halfway to Hong Kong. 6park.com
     Two of the men, Carlton and a Bangkok Chinese named Fong, sat on boxes between the seats. Blown and the other man sat on the edge of a litter just aft of the pilot's seat. This other man, an American Defense Department employee named Peter Thatcher, traveling from Singapore, had been shot through the leg, as I recall, but was not seriously injured. He wore an anxious look when he said to me, "I am carrying important classified information in my head. Don't let them give me anesthesia unless a representative of the American consulate is present." I told him not to worry; I'd see that the consulate was informed. 6park.com
     Mostly these people were simply bewildered by the fate that had befallen them. They said hardly a sentence. Tears were not shed. Mrs. Parrish was in such a state of shock she didn't realize she had a broken collar bone. Only once did she murmur, "I've lost my husband and both my sons." 6park.com
     We landed on Kai-Tak aerodrome in Hong Kong at 4:15 P.M. and taxied in front of the military-operations building, where we were met by ambulances and a large group of officials and newspapermen. 6park.com
Victim No. 10, Rita Ong, survived the ordeal at sea only to die aboard the rescue plane.  The Reds "apologized" for the shooting, claiming the airliner was mistaken for a Chinese Nationalist plane.
U.S. INFORMATION AGENCY 6park.com
Victim No. 10, Rita Ong, survived the ordeal at sea only to die aboard the rescue plane. The Reds "apologized" for the shooting, claiming the airliner was mistaken for a Chinese Nationalist plane. 6park.com
     Why did the communists shoot down the Cathay Pacific plane? Were they trying. to force the plane to land on Hainan so they could pry Thatcher's secrets out of him? One rumor had it that the United States Ambassador to Thailand, "Wild Bill" Donovan, former head of the OSS, was the man they were gunning for-actually, I have read, he was scheduled to travel on a CAT - Central Air Transport- plane that same week. CAT is the American-financed air line founded by General Chennault and is sympathetic to the Nationalist Government on Formosa. The Chinese communists themselves admitted, in apologizing to the British for shooting down the plane, that they thought it was a Chinese Nationalist aircraft. 6park.com
     Alter he got back to Singapore and his old job, Captain Blown told reporters on August twentieth he was by then convinced the communists mistook his aircraft for a CAT plane, and "by the time they realized their mistake they must have determined to shoot us to bits, so we could tell no tales." That speculation will do for me until a better one comes along. It might even be possible that the Chinese pilots didn't or couldn't read any further than the first three letters of "Cathay Pacific." I do hope that the two planes the Navy shot down three days later contained the same inhuman individuals who made a widow of Mrs. Parrish.