The US has released documents belonging to the Air Force Research Institute in Alabama, detailing a covert war few know about that took place between Beijing and Washington 63 years ago, in which pilots died and others were captured. According to the newspaper, ” Asia Times,” the documents said that in 1960, at the height of the Cold War between the US and Russia, China had risen as a new military power with ambitions to influence American influence.
At that time, Washington began training an air fleet of U2 Spy reconnaissance aircraft to infiltrate Chinese territory, seize important objects and find out what was happening inside them, and at that time there were no advanced satellites available for the task. .
However, an incident suddenly occurred that forced her to abandon this plan, only an American reconnaissance aircraft was shot down by a Russian missile after it penetrated Russian airspace and flew over military bases.
Although America claimed at the time that it was a private research aircraft, the Soviet Union proved its purpose was reconnaissance and surveillance after its American pilot was captured and interrogated.
The documents are complete: “At that time, America found itself in a difficult situation and began to plan differently.”
Immediately, Washington turned to Taiwan (which is in self-government and considered by China to be part of its territory, and relations between the two sides are strained) to implement their plan through it, and things went as follows:
Agreements were concluded with the island, under the guise of which spy planes were secretly transferred to the island to carry out missions within China. The American goal was to learn about Chinese military bases, submarine bases, and types of aircraft that the Chinese make. Washington selected the newly manufactured U-2, also known as the Dragon Lady, for the mission due to its ability to fly at high altitudes and actually allowed it to reach an amazing, unprecedented 70,000 feet; This made him immune to anti-aircraft missiles. Taiwan secretly named these aircraft the “Black Cat Squadron” upon arrival, with Taiwanese leader Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Jing personally in charge of the squadron. From 1960 to 1974, 220 reconnaissance sorties were conducted, covering an area of more than 10 million square kilometers in mainland China. China learned of the plot and, as a result of its flourishing cooperation with the Soviet Union, received the necessary military and technical support to thwart it. Beijing shot down 5 planes and killed its pilots, and the planes failed to provide the required accurate positioning.
Mike Hua, one of the spy plane pilots, says in the documents: “The idea was that black cats would go out at night, U-2s usually take off in the dark, and their cameras are eyes, which were very stealthy, quiet and hard to reach.” .
“When the People’s Liberation Army learned how to prevent U-2 operations in later years, 10 pilots died while flying over China, and the Chinese on the mainland began to develop launch sites for missiles and introduced high-precision maneuvering techniques to move the position of the radar along the movement of targets,” he added, the pilot explains.
In addition to killing pilots, Beijing captured two pilots during missions, with the last pilot released in 1982; That is, approximately 20 years after these facts.
After the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union officially ended in the late 1980s, Washington ordered the rest of the US aircraft squadrons to return to air bases in South Korea.