In 1981, after the end of the self-defense counterattack against Vietnam, Vietnam not only did not learn its lesson, but continued to follow the pro-Soviet and anti-China road. With no future in sight, 10 Vietnamese pilots flew a special plane to China. So what was the treatment of these people later?
A turn in the political line
Against the backdrop of the Sino-Vietnamese standoff, the 10 Vietnamese pilots who defected to China risked crossing the border air defense zone between the two countries and landed at a Chinese airport in a yellow-green UH-1H helicopter, causing an international sensation.
Logically, the pilots are all carefully cultivated military forces in a country, and there is no deficiency in living conditions, so why did these 10 Vietnamese pilots choose to defect to China? It all started with Captain Qiao Qinglu, the leading Vietnamese Air Force captain.
Qiao Qinglu was born into a military family, his father was a member of the Viet Cong, and in his early years he studied revolutionary experience in China. Under the influence of his father, Qiao Qinglu was full of good feelings and yearning for China, and later he listened to his father's advice, learned flying techniques, and became the most shortage of pilots in the Vietnamese army.
In the 1960s, Vietnam was in a difficult situation to resist the United States, and the project launched by China at this time to aid Vietnam to resist the United States played a key role in Vietnam's construction, so Qiao Qinglu became a pro-China member of the army. The pro-China factions of these Vietnamese troops all agreed that if Vietnam wanted to achieve a stable development environment, it would need to rely on China's strength.
However, after Le Thanh came to power, the political climate in Vietnam took a sharp turn. Lê Doện was a die-hard anti-China faction, who regarded China as Vietnam's biggest imaginary enemy in taking the road of hegemonism, so he used propaganda machines to smear China, and even smeared China's project of resisting US aggression and aiding Vietnam. This aroused the extreme disgust of the pro-Chinese faction, including Qiao Qinglu.
Defect to China
In 1979, when Lê Sun continued to intensify the contradictions between China and Vietnam, China could not bear it and launched a counterattack in self-defense against Vietnam, which defeated the Vietnamese army in only one month. At the same time, the People's Liberation Army also destroyed all the projects to aid Vietnam as a punishment for Vietnam.
Qiao Qinglu did not want to see Sino-Vietnamese relations reach such an irreconcilable point, and he believed that Lê Sung's deterioration of Sino-Vietnamese relations would seriously destroy Vietnam's future development prospects. Therefore, after seeing that Li Sun was obsessed and once again sent an army to invade and occupy Laoshan in China, Qiao Qinglu could no longer bear the environment of the pro-Chinese faction in the country and was determined to defect to China.
However, when Vietnam trained pilots, it only trained aircraft operations, but did not train aircraft mechanical and electrical knowledge, so Qiao Qinglu also needed to find companions who knew how to maintain aircraft.
After years of his connections in the army, Qiao Qinglu found members of the pro-China faction such as Huang Chuntuan, Li Yushan, and Yang Wenli to act as technicians, who also had the idea of defecting to China and were reliable companions. In addition, Qiao Qinglu and others also found several companions with black market experience, and they won the opportunity to take the opportunity to defect to China in exchange for secretly obtaining fuel oil. In this way, Qiao Qinglu's defection squad expanded to 10 people.
After several months of preparation, in 1981, Qiao Qinglu and others officially implemented the defection plan. They flew an American UH-1H helicopter from a Vietnamese airfield and headed straight for Chinese airspace. In the process, they were chased by Vietnamese MiG-21 fighters without any danger, but fortunately they set out early, and by the time the Vietnamese fighters arrived at the border, they had successfully entered Chinese airspace.
After learning of the defection of the Vietnamese pilots, China's Guangxi Military Region immediately arranged for the airport to let Qiao Qinglu and others land, and gave them a warm welcome. The news of "Vietnamese pilots fleeing the reign of terror in Le Thanh" has also gone viral internationally, slapping the Authorities in Le Son.
Later treatment
After Qiao Qinglu and others arrived in China, the Vietnamese authorities in Lê Thanh Tần Vil Tsìn vilified them and smeared them as "traitors to Vietnam." However, people in Vietnam know that the rule of the Le Thang clique has long been unpopular, and many people privately regard Qiao Qinglu and others as heroes who resist the tyranny of Le Thanh.
As for Qiao Qinglu and others in China, they were received a friendly reception by the Chinese government. On the one hand, the American UH-1H helicopter piloted by Qiao Qinglu has helped the research and development of Chinese helicopters a lot; On the other hand, the political significance of Qiao Qinglu and others defecting to China this time is quite important, and it is helpful for China to grasp the right to speak.
Of the 10 people who defected to China at that time, except for 1 who chose to defect to their French relatives, the remaining 9 people stayed in China and received help from the government in terms of living conditions.
Qiao Qinglu and others also discovered at this time that China had entered the era of reform and opening up, the people's spiritual outlook was full of vitality, and the atmosphere of innovation in society was in stark contrast to vietnam, which was poor and impoverished under the rule of Lê Sun. At this point, they are even more thankful that they have made a wise choice.
Among them, because Qiao Qinglu once studied at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics and had a deep affection for China's aviation colleges, he later chose to work in a Chinese aviation college, and married and had children in China, living a peaceful life. The American UH-1H helicopter he originally flew to China was stored at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics for people to visit, becoming a special souvenir of that period of history.