Descendants of the first Kuomintang pilot to return to the mainland in the 1950s recounted how my father piloted an uprising from Taiwan

Source: Global Times

Li Yuan dictated that Wang Fang sorted it out

My father, Li Chun, was born in 1928 in Shandong, in Lunan County (now Shilin County) in Yunnan Province.

After the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, my father's secondary school was forced to close indefinitely. At that time, it happened that the Whampoa Military Academy Air Force Branch was recruiting new recruits in Yunnan, and after several twists and turns, my father finally became a member of the Kuomintang Air Force. After the end of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, their cadets soon moved en masse to the Kuomintang Air Force Central Aviation School in Hangzhou and began their military careers.

Secretly joined the party before going to Taiwan

In the military academy, my father and a classmate surnamed Huang became friends with Mo Rebellion, and the two of them went in and out together to discuss the current situation, and many of Huang's insights and analysis had great inspiration and guidance for my father.

My father still remembers that one day Huang suddenly asked him what he thought of the Communist Party. My father said bluntly that the Kuomintang was too corrupt to govern the country and should be replaced by the Communist Party. After his father finished speaking, Huang immediately reminded him, "This can no longer be said to anyone, even if you have such a point of view, it can only be buried in your stomach and hidden in your head."

After hearing this, my father also felt lost his word, and he was very grateful for Huang's vigilance. After that, the relationship between the two became closer. At this moment, the situation in China is very chaotic, the Kuomintang has been defeated in the civil war, but the officials have stepped up corruption, and the people are living in the depths of the water. The students of the military academy were all dissatisfied with the current situation, but the Kuomintang authorities had stricter control over the minds of the students of the military academy, and also encouraged the students to expose "people whose ideology is not synchronized with the Kuomintang." Everyone had a feeling of panic and uncertainty.

One day, Huang said to my father with a serious look, "I have received news that our group of air force students are going to Taiwan with Chiang Kai-shek, the military is very strict, and we have no chance to resist or escape." I have a showdown with you, I am a member of the Communist Party of China, today I am ready to develop you to join the Communist Party, after coming to Taiwan we will engage in underground work, I am your single-line contact. ”

It turned out that Huang's inspection of my father had already begun, and he was very sure that his father would definitely agree to join the party. Things turned out as he expected, and my father did not hesitate to swear an oath to join the Chinese Communist Party.

That is, on the same night, the upper echelons of the military academy announced that students were not allowed to go out and were ready to obey orders. In the early morning of the third day, all the students of the aviation school were packed into a large truck and sent to the airport, and then flew directly to Taiwan.

Prepare to abandon the dark and cast the light

During his stay in Taiwan, my father and Huang actively collected various intelligence on the Kuomintang Air Force units where they were located, and collected them into materials to pass back to the mainland. Soon after, however, the Kuomintang intelligence agencies became aware that, according to the circumstances at the time, if the identity was exposed, they would definitely be shot. Faced with an emergency, the party organization quickly decided to evacuate. However, due to the haste of the incident, my father failed to evacuate in time and lost contact with Huang Classmate, and there was no contact information for the new connector.

At this time, Taiwan's political situation was becoming more and more tense, and every day "co-spies" were arrested, and every few days we could see the news that "so-and-so co-spies" had been shot. My father thought that sooner or later he would be found, and he was indeed a member of the Communist Party of China and was involved in many intelligence transmissions. Unable to contact the organization and unable to obtain instructions from the organization, he had no choice but to act alone to "abandon the dark and cast the light and take the opportunity to revolt." My father began to observe the arrangement of airport personnel and the deployment of aircraft. Getting on the plane was a piece of cake for my father, but getting the plane to the other side was a big problem. Because the Kuomintang, in order to guard against someone "defecting by plane," stipulates that each refueling can only be increased by half at most, so that if it does not fly across the Taiwan Strait, it will fall into the sea. My father's only hope was that a private intercession might be successful when a classmate with whom he had a good relationship was on duty as a refueling officer.

Thrilling flight back to the mainland

On January 3, 1950, the sun was shining over Okayama Airport in Taiwan, which was my father's training day, and it happened to be a good friend on duty as a refueling officer. Father thought that if he did not leave today, he would never have a chance to go again, and the only problem was whether he could add a full tank of fuel.

Before he got on the plane, he first set a lot of almost with his friends, and then said with a sudden thought, "Brother, today you helped me fill up the oil, the day before yesterday a few training sessions were pulled down, today taking advantage of the good weather, I will make up for them all." ”

When the friend heard that he was going to refuel in violation of the law, he said with a sad face: "I found out that I was going to go to jail, brother." My father said to him with a look of indifference, "I wrote a note to prove that I asked for additional training and had nothing to do with you." After the friend listened, his face was still embarrassed, and his father was fierce again and gave him a watch in his hand. The friend immediately changed his attitude, put the watch in his pocket as soon as he reached out, and then raised his hand to fill the fuel tank.

After getting on the plane, my father first pretended to fly around the prescribed airspace according to the training plan, and after finding that there was no abnormality, he suddenly turned the nose of the plane and flew straight to the direction of Fujian on the other side. At this moment, the airport radar found that the direction of the father's plane was not right, and immediately took off 3 fighter jets to catch up. Father vaguely heard Tatai say to him, "Li Chun, I have long suspected that you are a communist, but I didn't expect you to escape so quickly!" You're dead today. ”

My father desperately accelerated to Fujian, but because he was flying a trainer plane, the speed was not as fast as the fighter in the back. Seeing that the distance between the two sides was getting closer and closer, fortunately, my father's plane had crossed the middle line of the Taiwan Strait, and the chase plane behind did not dare to go further, and could only return to the main island of Taiwan.

Although he got rid of the chase behind him, the amount of fuel in his father's plane had bottomed out, and the oil lamp alarm kept ringing, and if he did not land immediately, he might organically destroy people. At this moment, there is no time to find the airport, and the only option is to find a flat beach to carry out the forced landing.

Fortunately, the beach was right in front of me, and my father found the opportunity to successfully land the plane on the beach. The roar of the engine alarmed the fishermen working on the seashore, who thought that the Kuomintang troops were going to "counterattack the mainland", many people rushed toward the plane with hoes, and some people who picked up the hoes were going to smash their fathers in Kuomintang uniforms on the head. My father hurriedly shouted, "I am a communist, I am driving an uprising, please call the leaders of the army." Hearing his father say this, the fishermen really did not do it again, and my father thought that "their consciousness is still quite high."

Soon, a military jeep arrived, and an officer jumped out of the car and introduced himself as the battalion commander of the Fujian front garrison, and his father was sent to the barracks by jeep. After a preliminary examination, the father's general situation was basically clarified, and the superior sent someone to take the father to Guangzhou.

Donate all cash prizes

After repeatedly checking the information provided by the father, the Guangzhou Military Region said that it could not verify the father's identity as a party member. My father said, "Classmate Huang is my introducer to the party, and he can prove that I am an underground party member of the CCP." However, after the Guangzhou Military Region investigated, it said that Huang had been using a pseudonym, and he might use other names after he was evacuated from Taiwan, and now he could not be contacted. Later, the organization said that the father's party membership could not be verified for a while, and he could only participate in the work as a non-party member for the time being.

Father still remembers that the officer of the Guangzhou Military Region who came to explain his work put a travel bag on the table and solemnly said to his father, "Here is a cash reward for you." According to the regulations, we will reward the Kuomintang pilots who flew the plane to revolt, and arrange for you to work in the aviation school and take on the heavy responsibility of training PLA pilots. ”

My father checked the cash in his travel bag, which was at least tens of thousands of dollars, which was an astronomical amount at the time. But he believes that "I am a Communist Party member and should not take the state's money." He donated all his money to the local government. Later, his father was sent to an aviation school in Hebei as a military instructor. In this way, he went from being a Kuomintang air force pilot to a pilot and instructor of the New China Air Force.

In the late 1970s, his father stumbled upon a classmate who had introduced him to the party, who had left at this time. After the two people, who had not seen each other for many years, got in touch, Huang immediately wrote materials to the organization, proving that his father was a veteran member of the Communist Party of China who joined the party in 1948. In this way, the father's organizational problems were also successfully solved.

In December 2018, his father passed away in Beijing, ending his wonderful and legendary life.