In 1956, China was still not at peace, and the United States, which had just been hit head-on in the Korean War, had forgotten its scars and forgot its pain, frequently dispatched aircraft to invade China's territorial waters and airspace, and still did not die after being shot down and injured as many as 12 aircraft, and turned to night operations with technological superiority to wantonly spy on China's intelligence. The Kuomintang, which fled to Taiwan in defeat, was supported by the United States and frantically clamored to "counterattack the mainland," and its ambitions were quite inflated.
It all started with VQ-1, the first electronic anti-radar squadron of the U.S. Navy in Japan. This electronic reconnaissance unit, nicknamed "Global Watchmen," is the vanguard of spying on Chinese mainland intelligence, and they use the cover of darkness and the advanced P4M-1Q long-range patrol reconnaissance aircraft to not only often sail along China's territorial waters for reconnaissance, but sometimes even directly break into China's territorial airspace to collect electronic information, which makes the officers and men of our army overwhelmed.
However, before 1955, the Chinese Air Force had not yet established a large-scale pilot team with night combat capabilities, nor did it have the record of shooting down enemy planes at night, and officers and men could only rely on ambushes to achieve limited results in the face of the arrogant behavior of US reconnaissance aircraft.
In order to change this passive situation and defend the blue sky of the motherland, the Air Force sent 108 pilots to learn from the Soviet Air Force, and by 1956, it had made the strengthening of night training a top priority, and at the same time stepped up the construction of radar intelligence networks, and achieved remarkable results.
The Americans who learned the news could not sit still, and sent reconnaissance planes to try to investigate the construction of Radar in our country.
At 23:17 on August 23, 1956, the lights of Wanjia were gradually extinguished, but the soldiers in the ground command post of the air defense force in East China were like arrows, and they were nervously watching the situation of detecting the radar transmission -- a large aircraft swung into the territorial waters of China's East China Sea and came straight to Shanghai and Ningbo.
In the face of such a provocation, Chu Futian, deputy commander of the 2nd Division of the Chinese Air Force, immediately made a decision and ordered the pilot on duty, Zhang Wenyi, to take off quickly to meet the enemy aircraft.
At that time, the sky was clear, the moonlight sprinkled all over the sea, and the enemy reconnaissance plane did not realize that the great trouble was coming, and continued to fly in the direction of Zhoushan Island.
After the duty commander waiting next to the radar sensed the intention of the enemy plane, in order to ensure that he could shoot down the enemy plane within the effective range of the radar, he urgently ordered the pilot to increase the speed to 850 kilometers per hour. Zhang Wenyi, a pilot who had already been tempered by thousands of hammers, judged that he might miss the enemy plane in combination with the actual situation, so he took the initiative to open the engine accelerator in order to quickly meet the enemy.
Fifteen kilometers... Five thousand meters.... A kilometer....... Zhang Wenyi pressed forward step by step, his back against the bright clouds, searching for his prey like an eagle.
At 0:17:20, Zhang Yunyi keenly noticed that a large plane about 800 meters above the front left had revealed its tracks and caught it!
He suppressed his excitement and continued to shorten the distance without hesitation, while reporting to the command post: "Enemy aircraft have been discovered." ”
At this very moment, the enemy plane had been flying in China's territorial airspace for a full 23 minutes, heading straight for Ningbo. At 17:50, the command post gave the order to allow the attack.
Zhang Wenyi quickly drove the plane forward and fired artillery at a distance of 600 to 700 meters from the enemy plane to deter the enemy plane. After disengaging, he ran to the enemy plane again, fired decisively at about 400 meters, and hit accurately! The left wing of the enemy plane instantly ignited a spark, and Zhang Yunyi saw this scene and was even more desperate to chase, swooping down to the bottom of the enemy plane, pulling the trigger on the belly of the machine, and the cannon issued a sharp roar, emptying the shell within two seconds.
The enemy also wanted to do a battle of trapped beasts, firing wildly at our planes, Zhang Yunyi saw the situation and rose to 1800 meters, looked down at the enemy planes being swallowed up by flames, and after gliding for a distance in a crooked way, fell into the Chinese territorial waters fifteen kilometers southeast of Qushan Island. Subsequently, the pilot Zhang Yunyi returned victoriously and landed at Shanghai Hongkou Airport.
Subsequently, based on the salvaged body of the pilot and the wreckage of the aircraft, our army judged that it was a P4M-1Q electronic reconnaissance aircraft belonging to the US Seventh Fleet.
As soon as the news came out, the United States was shaken by the whole country, and in order to shirk its responsibility, it falsely claimed that the US plane was shot down by the Chinese Air Force on normal patrols on the high seas in an attempt to deceive international public opinion. In order to make the play more realistic, the U.S. government brazenly decided to come up with their killer weapon, the Seventh Fleet.
At that time, the US Seventh Fleet was sitting on several aircraft carriers such as "Lexington", "Essex" and "Hornet", in addition to 450 aircraft, more than 60,000 navy and Marine Corps, and was the largest fleet in the United States and even in the world.
In order to intimidate China, the Seventh Fleet rushed out of its nest and sailed to the East China Sea in a mighty way, and on the one hand, it sent planes to wantonly violate China's territorial airspace in demonstrations.
On the other hand, in order not to allow the flyers to be captured, the US command ordered the "boxer" aircraft carrier to extensively search the flight personnel at the crash site and salvage the wreckage of the aircraft. However, due to insufficient intelligence, the more than a dozen ships of various types dispatched by the US military did not find any survivors, only two bodies that had long been cold.
On the Chinese side, although diplomatic relations with the United States had not yet been established at that time, and the situation was on the verge of war, the Chinese government still maintained the greatest degree of restraint and, in the spirit of humanitarianism, sorted out the bodies of the two American pilots salvaged and sent them back to the United States through the British Embassy.
But this is not a sign of weakness.
Just a few short years ago, the Chinese Volunteer Army braved the freezing cold weather and crossed the Yalu River to resist the United States and aid Korea. In the case of backward weapons and equipment and insufficient logistics supply, relying on combat wisdom and tenacious willpower, they marched all the way to the vicinity of the 38th Line, creating a miracle in the history of human warfare, and Chinese people never feared power and challenges!
The air force of the East China Military Region quickly held an operational meeting, and Commander Nie Fengzhi calmly analyzed the current situation: First, although the United States has sent a huge aircraft carrier combat group, the aircraft carrier is an aircraft carrier after all, and it is impossible to sail ashore, so it is not worth panicking.
Second, the united states can now mobilize less than 200 carrier-based fighters, and although they have a relatively strong offensive capability, they will not and cannot fly to China's territory to land under the obstruction of our army's anti-aircraft artillery and fighter jets.
Finally, if the United States really wants to fight, then it is far from enough to rely on the current military strength, and there is no continuous large-scale reinforcement, which shows that the US government does not really want to start a war again, but only tries to intimidate and threaten our country.
Subsequently, in accordance with the spirit of the Central Military Commission's directive of "neither showing weakness nor being strong," General Nie Fengzhi decided to prepare for war in an all-round way and ordered all levels of the East China Military Region to make preparations for battle, and the air defense units were responsible for firmly holding their positions and providing good air defense cover in case the US Air Force invaded China's territorial airspace and bombed, causing losses to the people, and all units of the Air Force cooperated with the navy and army to prepare together to deal with the worst situation that might come.
China's ground air defense forces, naval aviation units, and fighter air forces guard the national territory around the clock, and fighter planes constantly patrol the skies over the coast, not giving the US aircraft the slightest opportunity to take advantage of, and never bowing to the unreasonable intimidation of US imperialism.
While the army was actively preparing for war, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs also issued a solemn statement on September 2, 1956, pointing out that the US military plane clearly invaded China's territorial airspace on August 23, and the wreckage after being shot down was also salvaged by the local People's Liberation Army and militia in China's territorial waters.
In the face of overwhelming evidence, the US government can no longer continue to deceive the international community, and the Seventh Fleet has returned to its military bases in the Pacific after a brief period of rampant hegemony, once again playing a disgraceful role on the stage of history, ending this farce.
As for the twelve U.S. military pilots whose bodies were not found in the salvage and whose whereabouts were unknown, people often came to China to look for them for decades.
Among them was a missing person named James Dean, who, because of his personal relationship with U.S. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, was very concerned about his disappearance, constantly searching for various intelligence about the incident, and his wife traveled to China for decades to search.
Although there was little hope, and the conclusion of the investigation by Javier, a senior intelligence officer in the US Navy, also believed that due to the aircraft's nose entering the water first, the probability of Dean surviving as the pilot was extremely small, Rumsfeld still hoped for a miracle and repeatedly made requests to the Chinese side.
With the development of Sino-US relations, on July 18, 2006, during the invitation of our military delegation to visit the Pentagon in the United States to meet with Rumsfeld, it personally handed him a special letter, which is a copy of the secret archive of the Chinese People's Liberation Army recording the actual situation of the Sino-US air war that year, indicating that the Chinese side did not capture the US pilots, hoping that Rumsfeld can let go of this emotional burden that has been sunk in his heart for half a century, and at the same time express that this battle is also the sacred mission of the Chinese Air Force to protect the security of territorial airspace and sea.
Although Dean's story is emotional, his tragedy is ultimately caused by American hegemonism. In the past and in the future, the evil acts of violating the sovereignty of other countries, interfering in their internal affairs and stealing their intelligence are doomed to have no good results and are bound to be unanimously condemned by all peace-loving peoples of the world.
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The ghost of the US Seventh Fleet in the Taiwan Strait is not dispersed in Wei Yuejiang
For the first time, a Chinese warplane shot down a record of the invading US military at night, Lu Wenzhi
Shadow of the Taiwan Strait - Wang Yongqin of the US Seventh Fleet