Introduction: The Qingming Memorial is to commemorate and remember those who should not be forgotten and the history that should not be forgotten.
【Text/Observer Network Columnist Tan Bin】
This year marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of the murder of the "April 8 Martyrs".
In 1946, twenty-two days before the Heichashan air disaster, Dai Kasa, deputy director of the Military Command Bureau of the Nationalist Government, suddenly died of an airplane hitting Nanjing Daishan.
Two months after the Heichashan air disaster, the Military Command Bureau was reorganized into the Secrecy Bureau of the Ministry of National Defense. Subsequently, on June 24, Chiang Kai-shek tore up the Double Tenth Agreement and launched a large-scale attack on our Central Plains Military Region, kicking off its anti-people civil war.
Dai Kasa was with Chiang Kai-shek. Image source: Baidu Encyclopedia
The three-month period from March to June 1946 tells us that the Black Tea Mountain Air Disaster had nothing to do with Dai Kasa and caused the Black Tea Mountain Air Disaster, which was the largest blood debt on the list of anti-communist crimes of the Military Command Bureau before its "death".
The murder of the "Four-Eight Martyrs" shows Chiang Kai-shek's determination to launch a civil war in the face of the world's great disobedience! Because my father Tan Zhengwen was the chief person in charge of the aftermath of the Heichashan air disaster, this article was featured to express his indignation and retribution for the Kuomintang reactionaries, so that he would like to commemorate the "Four And Eight Martyrs."
Seventy-five years ago, on April 8, Tan Zhengwen, who was a member of the Standing Committee of the Jinsui Branch of the Communist Party of China, minister of society, and director of the Jinsui Border District Public Security Bureau, received an urgent telegram from the central authorities at the substation, asking for an urgent investigation into whether a plane transporting several central leading comrades from Chongqing to Yan'an via Xi'an had been found.
Seeing the newspaper, the ominous premonition immediately made Tan Zhengwen nervous, and he quickly sent a telegram to the public security sub-bureaus of various regions and the public security bureaus of various counties to inquire separately.
It turned out that in the context of the negotiation of the "Double Tenth Agreement" in Chongqing, through the efforts of many central authorities, The Lieutenant General of the New Fourth Army, Chang Yeting, who had been imprisoned for five years since the Anhui Incident, was released on March 4. The day after his release from prison, he sent a telegram to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China requesting that he rejoin the party. On March 7, the central government approved it.
General Ye Ting then participated in a three-man military conference negotiated by the Kuomintang and the Communists. However, since the Kuomintang held its own so-called "National Participation Conference" in January, the resolution of the Political Consultative Conference and the Northeast Armistice Agreement are in danger of dying at any time.
General Ye Ting. Image source: Wikipedia
Faced with a grim situation, Zhou Enlai decided to assist his other two CCP deputies, Wang Ruofei and Qin Bangxian (Bogu), and flew back to Yan'an on April 8 by US military plane to report and ask the central authorities for instructions. At that time, Ye Ting's wife, Li Xiuwen, together with her 11-year-old daughter Yang Mei and her 3-year-old child A Jiu, came from Guangzhou to Chongqing for a reunion. Therefore, it was decided that General Ye Ting, his wife and children would fly back to Yan'an with his wife and children.
Deng Fa, who had just returned to China to attend the World Workers' Congress in Paris and subsequently attended the Congress of the British Communist Party, also postponed his return on the same plane. Also on board were Wang Ruofei's uncle, Mr. Huang Qisheng (67), and his grandson Huang Xiaozhuang.
Modern educator Huang Qisheng. Image source: Baidu Encyclopedia
Entrusted by the CPC and Chairman Mao, this veteran educator, on behalf of all circles in Yan'an, made a special trip to Chongqing to offer condolences to Guo Moruo and other anti-dictatorship and anti-civil war democrats who were injured by agents in the "School Field Mouth Blood Case."
At that time, also participating in the Kuomintang-Communist negotiations was the founding major general Wang Zhengzhu, who was then deputy director of the Operations Bureau of the Central Military Commission. He was ordered by Zhou Enlai to first take General Ye Ting out of prison, then to resettle Ye Ting's wife and children who had come to Chongqing from Guangzhou, and then to accompany Ye Ting's family back to Yan'an. After boarding the plane, due to a temporary other task, he was called off the plane by Zhou Enlai.
In addition to Ye Ting, a famous general of the Northern Expedition and a hero of the Anti-Japanese War, this US military transport plane also concentrated three members of the CPC Central Committee. Among them, Wang Ruofei (50 years old) and Qin Bangxian (39 years old), secretaries general of the CPC Central Committee, General Ye Ting (50 years old), and Deng Fa (40 years old) of the workers' movement and secret war, are all revolutionaries in the right year and are also tough opponents of the Kuomintang reactionaries in the next civil war. These people, this opportunity, why did not Chiang Kai-shek have evil thoughts and murderous intentions?
Therefore, Du Jitang, the special agent captain of the "Sino-US Special Technical Cooperation Institute" where Ye Ting was imprisoned, was instructed by the leader of a certain military command to plan a murder plan to destroy the flight instrument with a secret agent who knew a little about the structure of the aircraft.
According to the flight records and technical files, Du Jitang ordered Wang Pinghu, chief of the eyeliner dispatch section of the Air Force, to arrange for Yang Yaowu, a special agent of the military command, to pretend to be a mechanic to get on the plane during a routine maintenance before the flight, and secretly placed magnets on the reverse side of the altitude table and the magnetic compass meter. (The above details are transferred from the 2006 Xinhua Daily Telegraph forwarding a reminiscence article published in the newspaper before Du Jitang's death)
In addition to the three sergeants on the U.S. military crew, Captain Ranch, who was a member of the Flying Tigers, served as the captain.
When the plane flew to Xi'an, it was already felt that the flight was somewhat abnormal, and the flight altitude at that time must have been low. But Captain Ranch was proud of his skills and insisted on continuing to fly.
When Xi'an refueled and flew to Yan'an, the sky not only hailed, but also blew strong winds. The interference and destructive effect of the "latent" magnet became more and more destructive, causing the aircraft to deviate seriously from course, flying from north to northeast, entering a trance state, and issuing a disoriented alarm telegram.
At about 1:00 p.m. on April 8, Chairman Mao, Zhu De, Ren Bishi, Lin Boqu, and other central leading comrades gathered at The Dongguan Airport in Yan'an to greet the plane transporting comrades-in-arms. At about two o'clock, the sound of the plane's engine was faintly heard, and then the sound faded away. The people waited worriedly in the drizzle until four o'clock and then dispersed.
In fact, the military plane of the trek had already flown to the Heichashan area of Xingxian County, Shanxi, east of the Yellow River. It was raining down the hill and it was already snowing on the hill. Black Tea Mountain is not high, only more than two thousand meters.
However, in the case of misleading and poor visibility of the high meter, the plane crashed into the boulder of the black tea mountain flank, and the aircraft was destroyed!
The next day, on the afternoon of April 9, a district party secretary from the Heichashan area rushed to the Jinsui Public Security Bureau to report the bad news that a plane had crashed in the Black Tea Mountain in the afternoon of April 8. At the same time as urgently reporting to the Jinsui Sub-Bureau and the Central Committee, the General Bureau of Public Security immediately sent competent personnel to The Black Tea Mountain to control and protect the scene of the plane crash.
On the morning of the 10th, Tan Zhengwen led his secretary Gu Yizhi (who was also the head of the confidential unit) to lead a team to The Black Tea Mountain. The dry grass on the mountain was filled with a strong smell of gasoline, and the wreckage of the plane was scattered on the hillside not far from the boulders that had been hit, the head and tail were separated, and the fuselage exploded and caught fire.
Tan Zhengwen
Farther away from the east and west sides of the wreckage, the remains of four martyrs, Wang Ruofei, Qin Bangxian, Deng Fa and Ye Ting, were first found. The four of them probably sat together, their bodies broken, but all intact. In addition to Ye Ting, Tan Zhengwen was familiar with these three central committee members. He forcibly suppressed his grief and ordered the public security officers to carry the remains of the martyrs to a dilapidated house on the hillside, where he personally guarded them and took pictures to keep their evidence.
In the early morning of the 11th, people shed tears and continued to search for and identify the remains of other martyrs who had fallen everywhere. Including Ye Ting's wife Li Xiuwen, her son and daughter, and Mr. Huang Qisheng, including Comrades Li Shaohua, Peng Zhaozuo, Wei Wanji, Zhao Dengjun, and Huang Xiaozhuang. We sacrificed a total of thirteen people. All four members of the U.S. military crew died in the cab, crushed to pieces, and most of them were scattered near the nose of the aircraft and could only be transported away with baskets.
The Ministry of Health of the Jinsui Military Region dispatched Dong Bingkun, a surgeon at the International Sixth Peace Hospital, to clean, embalm, orthop, plastic surgery, and dressing up the remains of the martyrs.
The rest of the Jinsui Public Security Bureau, the Xingxian District Bureau, and the Xingxian Public Security Bureau, led by Comrades Jin Zhaodian, director of the first room of the General Bureau, and Di Fei, director of the second room, concentrated their efforts on meticulously searching, collecting, investigating, and sorting out the relics of the martyrs: a large number of top-secret documents and cadre files, as well as watches, pens, glasses, photographs, badges, coins, and so on.
On the 12th, after the end of the on-site work, Tan Zhengwen instructed the secretary Gu Yizhi to draw a detailed schematic map of the scene, marking the dispersion of the aircraft wreckage and the distribution of the martyr's remains in detail. By the 17th, Gu Yizhi had drafted a special report on the Heichashan air disaster in accordance with Tan Zhengwen's requirements.
From Black Tea Mountain to Lanxian Airport, about one hundred and fifty miles. When escorting the coffins of the martyrs, all villages along the route set up martyrs' spiritual halls and erected memorial arches, and the party and government cadres of various special districts and counties came to guard the spirits and offer sacrifices with a heavy heart. Along the way, more than 6,000 people spontaneously came to carry the coffin.
On the 17th, presided over by Li Jingquan, secretary of the Jinsui Sub-bureau, people from all walks of life in the Jinsui Border Region held a memorial meeting for the "Four And Eight Martyrs" at Lanxian Airport.
According to the instructions of the central authorities, the Jinsui Sub-bureau sent Tan Zhengwen to escort the remains of the "Four Or Eight Martyrs" back to Yan'an on a special plane of the US military on the 18th, and reported in detail to the central authorities. Tan Zhengwen asked Gu Yizhi to prepare the report materials, the scene schematic map, a full set of reproduction photos and all the relics, and prepare them for the trip.
On the morning of the 18th, when Tan Zhengwen and his party rushed to lanxian airport, the US military plane was already waiting. At first, the US military crew requested the shipment of US military remains first, which was rejected by Tan Zhengwen. After explaining the importance of the status of the "Four Or Eight Martyrs," the bodies of the three central leaders and Ye Ting and his relatives were wrapped in white silk, tied to a simple stretcher and carried to the plane, and placed flat in the cabin. The remains of the remaining six martyrs and the remains of U.S. military personnel were re-transported by another plane.
After the relics and other relics were also all in the cabin, Tan Zhengwen and Gu Yizhi each boarded the plane with guns and sat next to the window. Both of them took a plane for the first time in their lives, and they were involved in the aftermath of the air crash throughout the whole process, and their mood was inevitably a little nervous. About an hour later, around 1 p.m., the plane arrived safely in Yan'an.
At Dongguan Airport, there were many people, and leaders such as Liu Shaoqi, Zhu De, Ren Bishi, Lin Boqu, Xu Teli, Cai Chang, and Yang Shangkun led more than 10,000 people to stand solemnly and greet the martyrs' families. After the plane landed, Yang Shangkun, director of the CPC Central Office, personally took a jeep to pick up Tan Zhengwen and Gu Yizhi, who had just disembarked from the plane, and Tan Zhengwen went directly to the central authorities to report.
Gu Yizhi, who had slept "dead" in the car, was sent to the Guest House of the Central Ministry of Social Affairs and woke up the next day. Nine consecutive days of grief-stricken overtime made this astute, capable, and energetic young cadre physically and mentally exhausted.
At 10:00 a.m. on the morning of the 19th, 30,000 people from all walks of life of the party, government, military, and people in Yan'an solemnly held a public memorial meeting to mourn the "Four-Eight Martyrs" at Dongguan Airport.
"Four or Eight Martyrs" Public Memorial Assembly
The conference was presided over by Liu Shaoqi, Zhu De, Ren Bishi, and Yang Shangkun, and was presided over by Zhu De and Liu Shaoqi, accompanied by Lin Boqu and He Long, and Kang Sheng read the sacrifice text. On the same day, all walks of life in Chongqing also held a memorial meeting for the "Four-Eight Martyrs." Zhou Enlai's tears flowed and he gave a eulogy. It can be said that the two districts of red and white, heaven and earth are sad!
When my father Tan Zhengwen reported to the central authorities on the air disaster in Heicha Mountain, he explained that the repeated investigation of the crash site and the wreckage of the aircraft ruled out the possibility of creating an explosion and self-detonation in the air, and determined that it was an explosion that hit the mountain. And three doubts are listed in this regard:
First, flight technology. Captain Ranch is a veteran pilot with three thousand hours of flight experience and reliable technology. There are no driving technical problems.
2. Flight direction. Xi'an to Yan'an should be a direct flight to the north, the route is simple, but it deviates from the course and flies to the Black Tea Mountain, which is far east of the Yellow River in the northeast. If technical accidents are excluded, there must be something wrong with the magnetic compass for navigation.
3. Flight altitude. The C-47 transport plane flew at a normal altitude of more than 6,000 meters, but it crashed into the black tea mountain flanking boulder, which was only 2 kilometers. Even if the visibility of the local weather of Black Tea Mountain is low, it will not fly low.
If a technical accident is ruled out, there must be something wrong with the altimeter as well. Because the plane did not yet have a "black box" at that time, and the Liberated Areas and our security departments did not have experience in handling air disasters and reconnaissance means, although they had great doubts, they had no choice but to announce to the outside world in the caliber of "foggy and foggy, crashing into mountains and crashing into the mountains." However, the truth of the Heichashan air disaster has not been solved, and it has always been a great apology in his father's heart for the central authorities and for the "Four-Eight Martyrs".
However, the Kuomintang and the Communists thus established a new rule: after that, if our personnel were to travel by plane, they must be accompanied by a person of the rank of major general or above. Its intention to prevent someone from making a ghost out of it is very clear.
But as the saying goes, "It is difficult to lock a villain" when a locker is a gentleman. In the Black Tea Mountain air disaster, the US crew companions were killed, and did not let the mastermind and the killer have a half-hearted obstacle. Therefore, if there is a real need for a higher standard, abandoning a cadre at the level of major general will not be able to stop the Kuomintang reactionaries from continuing to do evil.
In 1955, when Ye Ting's eldest son, Ye Zhengda, returned to China after studying in the Soviet Union, when he went to visit Premier Zhou Enlai, he talked about the Black Tea Mountain air disaster, and the premier bluntly said, "Someone must have done something!" The premier was familiar with Both Ye Ting and Chiang Kai-shek, and he spoke of Ye Ting's merits and integrity, as well as of Chiang Kai-shek's vileness and ferocity.
He said, "Who is Chiang Kai-shek?" This man does everything he can to deal with political enemies! It is easy to say that this person "uses spies to manipulate dissidents in order to exclude dissidents." In his later years, Lieutenant General Ye Zhengda talked about the murder of his father, and he still couldn't bear to hate the Kuomintang agents!
In March 1946, after Dai Kasa's violent death in the Daishan plane collision, whether Mao Renfeng could "take over" in the Military Command Bureau and whether he could make meritorious contributions in the first battle after taking over the mantle of "Boss Dai" was about April 8, which was a major event that Mao Renfeng was haunting before April 8.
Therefore, who was the "leader of the military command" who gave Dujitang the order to murder the "Four Or Eight Martyrs"? Is it Mao RenFeng? Did Mao Renfeng personally receive Chiang Kai-shek's secret killing order? This remains a mystery. Is the "Dujitang" who is dying to reveal the secret really has someone? If it is a "pseudonym", there must be bitterness, which is a new mystery.
"April 8" Martyrs' Monument. Image source: Baidu Encyclopedia
In the past fifteen years, although the people concerned have checked in many ways, they are still unsure. However, no matter how analytical and reasoning we are, in essence, the Black Tea Mountain air disaster was a murder case caused by the Kuomintang reactionaries (Chiang Kai-shek, Mao Renfeng and the like) assigned by the secret agents of the military command, which is indeed a true historical fact.
This blood debt crime committed by the Kuomintang reactionaries before the civil war will be forever nailed to the pillar of historical shame in front of the monument to the "Four Or Eight Martyrs."
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