In late March 1985, it was still bitterly cold in Shandong Peninsula. As usual, we had to go to sleep at 9:00 pm when a military bugle was blown.
“BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!!!!” I was so reluctantly woken up by the loud knocks and commotion in the Hallway and thought who in the heck woke me up from my sweet dreams.
“Emergency! All crews meet at the war room in 15 minutes with your combat gear!”
I put on my flying suit and boots with my eyes closed and mumbled to my navigator: “What is going on?”
“I don’t know! I don’t think we are going to war,” he replied.
“Maybe it is a drill! The big shots want to check if we are really combat-ready,” my gunner said.
We were at war with Vietnam back then at our southern border in a small scale skirmish and often fought to control hilltops, but no air strike was involved whatsoever. Air-attacking by either side would escalate the war to the level of potentially out of control. So I did not believe we were going to bomb the Vietnam.
Our crew was in the war room in about ten minutes. The room was already filled with lots of people and the atmosphere was tense. Our regiment commander sat on front chair facing us with the political commissar by his side and a large map of Yellow Sea was hung on the wall behind them. Their faces looked grave.
He looked at his watch and then about the room, “First battalion?”
“We are ready!” the first battalion leader replied.
“Second and third?” the regiment commander asked again.
The second and third battalion leaders answered ‘ready’.
Then our regiment commander stood up and walked toward the map with the pointer on his hand.
“Comrades, there is a moving target at latitude of XX and longitude of XX in the international waster on the Yellow Sea. The high command at the Navy headquarter ordered us to destroy it. We have decided to let First battalion to do the job first. The second and the third battalion can go back to your rooms but stay ready when we need you to fly sorties.”
We looked each other and wondered what was going on over the high sea.
The room became less crowded after the second and the third battalion left.
Then our political commissar stood up and gave a speech, “Comrades, we feel honored that the naval high command assigned this glorious task to our regiment. We must accomplish it successfully. It is time to repay the party and people.”
Our regiment commander rolled out a large photo of a high-speed battle boat and pinned it on the board hanging on the wall. “A high-speed torpedo training boat has not returned to the naval base this afternoon; we have information that the boat is on its way to South Korea and trying to defect. We must destroy the boat and punish those traitors who dare to betray our party, our country and our people,” continued the political commissar.
The room became deadly silent; we could hear a pin drop. Then the commander began to announce who flew the first sortie and who flew the second and the third.
It was an honor for me to be selected to fly first sortie. I was 22 at the time and just finished all-weather training and became a combat-ready pilot two months ago. I was assigned to be left wingman (左僚机) to our squadron leader （长机）who was a 32-year old experienced pilot.
The area belongs to international water and there were a lot of ships and fishing boats. It was dark that night; identifying the target by optical instrument was not an option. We had to use radar; however, there was a high risk to get a wrong target without visual identification. The consequence of bombing a foreign ship was so great that we were warned that we had to be 100% sure that it was the right target before releasing bombs.
My squadron leader took off first and I followed him. We climbed to 3000m and then kept level -flight toward the east. The navigator in lead plan （长机）turned on his radar and began scanning for the target. As we flew above high sea, the stars in the sky and dotted lights of boats or ships on the sea made us feel we were in the galaxy; there was no end in any direction and we felt we were in deep space. After a while, the navigator report to our squadron leader that there was no way to identify the target by radar since there were so many moving dots on the radar screen. Our squadron leader radioed the control tower and suggested that we needed to drop flare bombs (照明弹) so that we can search target under the flare light.
“Keep searching by radar and look for fastest moving target. We will send second sortie with flare bombs.” replied the control tower.
We made countless circles above the area and our fuel was low hours later. Finally control-tower ordered us to return. We flew back with a sense of loss because we did not accomplish our task.
It was clear that we needed to lower our altitude to 100-200m and drop flare bombs and light up the sky so that we could see the target visually. After landing our aircrafts, we went to see our regiment commander and reported to him our findings and suggested to use flare bombs.
Higher command granted our request to use flare bombs, but insisted we should keep the altitude above 2000m even though we told them that flare bombs did not work efficiently at a high altitude.
The second squadron took off with flare bombs. They reported that flares did not help them much because of the high altitude. Their repeated request to lower the altitude to 200m was not granted by naval high command. They had to return when their fuel was low.
Then the third squadron took off…
We did not understand why naval high command did not grant us to lower flying altitude to 200m. Later we learned that naval high command wanted to watch us on their ground radar screen so that they could be sure no plane would defect altogether with the boat. There was a blind spot for radar if altitude was lower than 200m.
At the day break, we were told to go back to sleep and the mission was canceled.
A day later, we learned part of the true story of the incident.
A naval torpedo training boat was hijacked by two sailors before it returned to its base after a training exercise that afternoon. Two gunmen controlled the weapon room and killed six of fellow comrades and wounded three (there were 19 people on board). Originally, we thought that the whole crew were traitors and tried to sink their boat ( I do not think Navy would order us to bomb it if they knew the true story). We were glad we did not accomplish that mission; otherwise, many more innocent people would have been falsely accused and killed.
China mounted an extensive diplomatic pressure on South Korea to get the boat and the crew back including two gunmen. Days later, South Korea handed over the boat and crew including two gunmen to China in international water in the Yellow Sea. It was said that South Korea tricked two gunmen by telling them that they were going to send them to Taiwan; however, for the sake of the safety, they had to put them in a big container so that they would not be easily detected by Chinese Navy in case Chinese Navy wanted to intercept them. Only after they came out of the container in Qingdao, they realized they were back to their naval base again.
It was said that the Taiwanese ambassador to South Korea was recalled after the incident because he did not do a good job to get their freedom fighters to Taiwan. Were they really freedom fighters? Traitors? Unhappy sailors? Confused young men? Only they knew? To me, they were murders, for sure!
