http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28747-2001Apr2.html
Buying time needed to destroy equipment had they merely ditched it may have been recovered....smart thinking on the ACs part

MAYBE ITS ALL IN THE PLAN? LET EM HAVE ONLY WHAT YOU WANT EM TO HAVE.

The pilot had 23 other lives onboard.

Nay, It couldn't be that simple...could it??

What a weird question!!

sgtar15

It is real easy to be a judge and jury when someone else's life is on the line. Twenty three men, Plus the fight crew in the cock pit with a damaged plane. If the flight crew bailed everyone would have most likely died from exposure in that cold water before air rescue could have intercepted those brave sailiors. The Commander of that plane did the right thing by landing the plane and protecting his crew from danger. Landing a damaged plane in hostile teritory takes a lot of balls and most likely will be awarded a the flight cross for his action. Good to go      

its all hind sight.. monday morn QB... ditching a low wing aircraft is not fatel , nore is the water in the south china sea. the pilot made a comand decision though and shouldnt be second guessed by some one not in a simalar sittuation... my opinion is he blew it ... yes he should have diched.... but i am only an aircraft mech not a pilot....pat

AMEN,  especially since none of us know what orders he had, what communications he had from higher up, etc.  Instead of second guessing, and making judgements most of us aren't qualified to make, Let's just show our support for our people, whether with yellow ribbons, supportive letters to the editor, our prayers, letters to the Chinese embassy, whatever.

Weather conditions for the china sea can change real quick like and the elements in cool or cold water for an extended time can screw your day real fast. There are a lot of varibles in what could have been done in this situation, but i will take dry land survival over the sea any day of the week, including being in the middle of the Omen desert. It might be a different story if we were talking about a Stelth aircraft like the B2 or something in the skunk works inventory for intel evesdroping etc. Even with the Gary Powers loosing his aircraft the U.S.  still survived the cold war and got our man back alive in one piece which is the more important than any piece of equipment or spent tax dollars.

I regret using the term spy plane this was not a "spy plane"  it was a recon or surveillance aircraft operating in commerical airspace...not unlike a ship outside a countrys territorial limits..the chinese went outside their own airspace to harrass by flying too close and making dangerous passes towards and arround the aircraft according to the report I cited they have been doing this all along gettin closer in each encounter. A case can be made for this not being an accident but since it cannot be proven that this was done on purpose- but this pilot was known for being a hot dog pilot without a lot of flight time logged in this aircraft-the pilots are rewarded for flying as close as they can and probably have competition with each other to get close..?
Looks like this probably was an accident caused by a pilot trying to win the respect of his peers and superiors...probably saw the movie top gun too many times

I was in Navy Aviation for 10 years. Much of that time as a crewman. The pilot did exactly what he should have done.
1. There are destructive devices incorporated into the sensitive portions of the electronic equipment.
2. Ditching a large/heavy airplane at sea will most likely result in nearly immediate destruction of the plane and/or it's crewmen.
3. There are materials other than electronic equipment which must not be allowed to come into the hands of others, especially not Chinese hands.
4. The pilot would have contacted higher authorities and followed their orders. That you can be sure of.

Maybe someone here knows- Why the hell are we flying some sh!t heads around in a spy plane to begin with.
What happend to the articles of war for military-IE.. I will not be captured. I will try to escape if captured.
They should have ditched the plane![x]

My guess is that so we can monitor potential foes rather than be taken by complete surprise in the event of hostilities.



I guess someone forgot to tell the rest of us that our nation has declared war on China. Maybe they are part of an elaborate disinformation scheme. Who knows? Why risk killing yourself if other methods are available to avoid compromising your nation's security?

The pilot did the right thing. The aircraft had no nose, no flaps, and no airspeed indicator. No way he chould have ditched with any reasonable degree of safty. His call, and I think he made the right one.

I get awfully tired of this "spy plane" shit. They aircraft was in international waters, not shooting video of china, but passivly monitoring information being broadcast out of the country.

Aviator

We are in the bussiness of death and destruction. At times safety is not a factor. The pilot should have ditched the plane no matter the cost. Landing in china should not even have been an option. They will give this guy the royal shaft when he gets home. He screwed the pooch.

Could the fact that women were on board, be part of the pilot's decision not to ditch???



Ditto. On Fox News yesterday, a guy finally brought that up...

While I agree, I dont think that anyone should be judgemental just yet. It is very possible the crew was forced to land.

An active duty, former EP-3 pilot called in to the Rush Limbaugh show today.  She said that while a number of P-3A/B/C aircraft have ditched successfully in the past, no EP-3 has ever ditched, period.  Apparently there is a problem because of the radome under the fuselage potentially acting like extended landing gear would if they were to ditch gear down.  In other words, the radome could cause the aircraft to pitch down on contact with the water.  This would cause the aircraft to breakup violently with survival unlikely.  Add to that the conditions reported; dark with an unknown sea state, no flaps, one engine out and degraded controlability due to wing and nose damage.  You might as well have told them to deliberately crash the plane into the sea or a mountain on the island.

9div_doc - you hit the nail on the head. This is not a spy plane, we were conducting normal SIGINT,ELINT OPs in International airspcae and they DID harass US.

I would be more willing to bet that this a planned provacation by the Chinese. If I were the Chinese, it would not be hard to realize that the military has recieved alot of bad press lately about crashes and to suggest the words "Spy Plane" would just explode over our media.

It is a simple example of Wag the Dog. you have to remember that the media is just trying to make a story that a 12 year old could understand, and sometimes, the reporters have little knowledge or they simply don't care about how the U.S. and other countries operate.

This is not unlike the USS Pueblo incident in Jan. 1968, in my book.

I'm sure they'll keep the plane and make a fuss about it. Heck, they'll probably make it a National Monument in order to exploit for their propaganda.

I just hope we get our guys back.

On that note, those that have been returned oin the past in high profile cases such as these routinely get sh*tcanned out of the military.

All that aside, I still respect Commander Bucher for taking care of his men.

I do not know what the Commander's orders were, but if I were in International airspace and got hit, I would find land and deal with it too, after I cleaned my shorts.

Francis Gary Powers was a totally different case he accepted the risk of a high altitude photo recon flight over the USSR and got knocked out of the sky.

His orders were to blow the U-2 and inject himself with a lethal dose out of a needle.

Let's try to keep things in perspective.

I'm probably one of the few members that has had a force landing (twice)in a aircraft (although, nothing hit me on either occasion)so here's my two cents.

A P3, damaged would simply desegregate on impact with the water. You can't slow this aircraft down for a survivable impact with the water.

I'm guessing there was time to destroy any sensitive materials and equipment before landing. Our people are not that dumb and some of the process is automatic.

The commander of this flight took the correct action. He preserved the lives of his crew. Personally, I'd be scared to death landing anywhere in China or any of the chain islands in a damage airplane.

I also believe there is much more to this story than what the press has reported. Hey China, keep the plane, it's obsolete anyhow, just get our people back.

My two cents off.

The pilots only had 20 minutes from contact to landing.  They had to get down fast!  Contrairy to popular committing suicide is not easy for a healthy person.

Dear V2,
I doubt the ACC is going to get the "Navy Cross"
for giving the CHICOMS the "Crown Jewels"; the
only one off its kind packed to the proverbial
gills with our most advanced technology which is
being reverse engineered as we chat and will
soon be used against our guys.

Let us just ignore their fellow servicemen and 240 million Americans here at home plus our
allies that will be in greater harms way for
his actions.

                         Tuesday, April 3, 2001 4:32 p.m. EDT
                         Hackworth: Navy Brass Ordered Spy Plane Not to
                         Ditch, ChiComs Didn't Get Secrets
                         The pilot of the Navy reconnaissance plane downed after a collision
                         with a Chinese jet fighter on Sunday was ordered to land on the
                         Chinese Island of Hainan by the Navy's Pacific Command,
                         according to military expert Col. David Hackworth.
                         "The pilot of that aircraft would have, by the time he landed at that
                         base, been talking to the four-star admiral, [Dennis C.] Blair, the
                         commander of the U.S. forces in the Pacific," Hackworth told WABC
                         Radio's Sean Hannity late Tuesday.
                         "He got his instructions from the top guy."
                         Hackworth said sources inside the military have told him the Navy
                         pilot "was talking to Pacific Command and he was told to land
                         there."
                         The former military consultant for CBS News and Newsweek
                         explained why the pilot might not have been able to ditch his plane
                         even if he'd wanted to.
                         "A lot of folks who are experts on this particular airplane tell me it is
                         so loaded, it's so heavy with all kinds of gear - spy gear, if you will -
                         that if it came down it would break apart and the 24 people who
                         were on the reconaissance mission wouldn't have been able to bail
                         out."
                         "Some people say they probably didn't have parachutes anyway,"
                         Hackworth told Hannity.
                         Citing "intelligence operators who have flown this airplane and
                         others like it," Hackworth said that the crew would have destroyed
                         most if not all of the high-tech hardware on board.
                         "Standard procedure for when something like this happens and you
                         have to make an emergency landing is to ditch it in the sea," the
                         highly decorated Vietnam veteran said.
                         "While you're coming down, you go through the procedure of
                         shredding every document, taking the hard drives out of computers
                         - they're given little axes to break them up."
                         How likely is it that the crew, under stress, might have failed to
                         destroy their top secret spy tools? Not very, Hackworth contended.
                         "There was one officer on the aircraft, a United States Marine - and
                         you can believe me, he would do his duty as the security officer
                         responsible for damaging, destroying, breaking up, shredding all of
                         this high-tech gear."
                         "The intelligence is not in the equipment that's been destroyed,"
                         Hackworth added. "It's in the heads of the crew members."
                         Citing the recent bombing of the

Please don't spread anymore BS.
The ACC should have flown a course 180 degrees
away from the Island or towards our nearest
sub and ditched at sea, thereby giving the air
crew more time to destroy secret data and hardware and put the wreckage on the bottom
where the CHICOMS could not get to it.

"spy plane", "crown jewels" come on now you can't believe that--can you? I mean, if it were so I can tell you they would have been ordered to ditch--no question. The real "spy planes" are the ones that regularly fly over that country, undetected. During the late sixties and 70's we used the Taiwanese for this task due to proximity and deniability. Today we don't need proximity. And what they can't detect we don't have to deny. The Chinese must be feeling pretty stupid to have sacrificed a plane and pilot(however poorly trained)to catch what amounts to the milkman.

V2, Wake up! The plane was the "CROWN JEWELL"
of the skunk works inventory for intel
evesdroping etc.. The one and only! The real deal! It could not be any worse!

If anyone ordered him to land on CHICOM soil
they should be cashiered out of the service.
Ditching at sea is hazzardous but not as you
would led us to believe.

What it does is what it is. SPY!
I am so tired of people like you that are so
tired. Go take a nap!

FINALLY a voice of reason is heard!

But not in CHINA!

Spoken like a woman! No will; no way! Lets
surrender! Forget about the parachutes, the
ditching gear, the autopilot, the flares, all
the design and engineering, the hours of training, I want a hot meal and a dry bunk
tonight!

Oh yeah, the P3 Orion, which my friend's dad was flying as a sub hunter in Vietnam, is one of our real "crown jewels" alright. The basic airframe is decades old. Yeah, the real worry is the electronic hardware, and, more likely, software on board, but are some of you people really so ignorant as to think that the military doesn't have contingency plans and procedures to prevent sensitive equipment and information from falling into the wrong hands. I'm quite sure the Chinese got nothing but an old rebuilt airframe filled with now useless circuit boards.

As far as ditching a P3 at sea, I'll have to ask my friend's dad what his thoughts are about it the next time I see him. I do know he was the Commander of a P3 that crashed and flipped over at Whidbey NAS when an instructor was attempting to demonstrate, obviously unsuccessfully, how to perform a short airstrip landing. It may not be as easy an aircraft to handle as you are implying or leading us to believe.

I think you missed my point entirely. They could very well have been forced to land by the CHINESE fighters. (land or be shot down)

ET TU? I guess they are not building Texans like
they use to. It is a spy plane! Come on now,
repeat after me, it is a spy plane, it is a spy
plane. See that was'nt so hard. They spy on us,
we spy on them. Those that know, KNOW! Those
that delude themselves are STUPID, RECKLESS
and a DANGER to the survival of WE THE PEOPLE!

It is a SURVEILLANCE plane. There is a difference. The term "spy" conjurs up images of covert operations and cloak and dagger stuff. These guys were openly flying over International waters merely monitoring whatever transmissions they were able to.

Boomer,
RE: crown jewels- refers to the spy equipment
not the airframe.

 They were obviously ordered to land the aircraft, they had ample time to talk directly to COMFLTPAC and comply with orders..
 As far as ditching, etc. they tell me tnat getting KIA is a normal consequence of putting on the uniform.....

Gee, Hangfire sure is a brave guy to tell all of us how this incident should have been played out.  Ditch the plane and f-ck em all on board!  Hey, great idea!  That would show them!  I am glad to see you like to play with other peoples lives so easy.  I bet if you were on board you would be screaming to go home to mommy.  

If it was so valuable of a plane and contents it would not have been flown so close to China unescorted and with no means of escape.  Its like when the Soviets flew Bear bombers all around Alaska.  Its to show what we are able to do and that we will do it, which is listen in to their unsecured communications.  Although with the Soviets it was just flexing of muscles.  We were doing that too, I believe, but actually gathering good info too.  The Chinese are pissed because we are succeeding while they lost face for losing a plane.  So they retaliate by holding hostages, demanding an apology (no one even cares about that outside of the liberal US press) and hoping for a backdoor deal on us not helping out Tiawan.  They, like the rest of the third world, believe too much of what they see on CNN as to what they know of the USA.  Hopefully G W will show the world, first hand, that we aint the Clinton USA.

Openly flying over international waters monitoring CHICOM military voice, fax, data,
radar, microwave transmissions; pinpointing,
probing, ploting air defense, missle batteries,
and a myriad of outher unknown duties. Spy,
surveil, eavesdrop, recon all conjur images of
trying to find secrets that someone else does'nt
want you know. Whatsupwithyourhead?

I never implied "f-ck em all
on board!" I am not playing with outher peoples
lives! I am pointing out that in my opinion the Pilot made a grevious error in landing the
plane on Chinese soil whether ordered to or on
his own. Gun Toter is your handle and I assume
that you have/carry a gun and you are/have
trained to use a gun to protect yourself and
outhers. Can you envision any situation whereby
you would give up your gun an thereby put yourself and outhers in harms way? What I am
asking is would you ever surrender?

Spying is being somewhere your not supposed to be collecting data.

Surveylance is being somewhere you are allowed to be collecting data.

You could not call a Russian agent a spy for surfing the DOD website but you could if he were into their computers.

Heres what they got:
[url]www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/4/1/234033.shtml[/url]

Really now!! These people did nothing wrong AND were in international airspace. If its land in china or be shot down I would take my chances being shot down. Thats not to say they would actually do it (I dont think they would). Nevertheless china should not have been an option.

Another thing that maybe could have been done is not to leave the plane once it landed or set a bunch of flares off inside to burn the whole thing up.

I really believe this guy/guys did the WORST thing out of several options.

Number 1 is probably (at least I hope so) true.
Number 3 is definitely true.
If all such sensitive materiall was destroyed beyond recovery before landing, then I don't have a problem with them landing. If not, then



All who sign up for the armed forces realize, or should realize, that getting killed is definitely a possibility. If the choice is between compromising national security and taking your chances on a forced landing, the choice is, or should be, clear if they took their enlistment oaths seriously.

That being said, I hope all the Chinese got was a headache from breathing all the smoke fumes from destroyed equipment/papers, and all our guys get home.

It's a spy plane and nothing else. Some may know it by a different name but it is still a spy plane and always will be. Its main purpose is to spy. There is no difference between spying in Los Alamos and spying off the coast of someone elses country. Some like to call it a recon/intelligence gathering plane. It may seems acceptable to some because other countries don't have the same level of electronic equipment and/or the expertise.... that is until now. Or it could be a test to see how many people buy into this excuse to make it come across as legitimate. It is still a form of spying.

As I see it, if you look at China over the past decades, China has pretty much kept to itself. I don't recall China going around invading other countries and sticking its nose where it don't belong. Even the feared takeover of Hong Kong by the Chinese didn't materialize.  It was a bunch of B.S. propaganda to feed the sheep into a frenzy, and it worked. Same thing here. China has always claimed Taiwan as part of their country for decades. It is only until recently that this became an issue only because the U.S. decided to make it so. If the U.S. would have kept its mouth shut everything would have continued as before. But now the Chinese felt challenged and felt the need to respond. So here we are.

 The U.S. has been itching to get in on with China for some time. The powers sure seem to show a big set of balls when it is the regular joe guinea pig that is the one going to put his ass on the front line.
  Be careful what you wish for. China is no Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Nicaragua, Cuba, Lebanon, Somalia, Kuwait/Iraq, Yugoslavia, combined.

Levi, you should get a new name. Levi's are not permitted on this board.
Leave the pilot & aircrew alone. They got down and damaged everything important.
And excuse me, but technically we are not at war with the PRK, at least not yet.

Levi, you are an asshole. Probably a troll. In any event, your moronic post speaks for itself.
[frag]

Well big whoop-dee-doo! If they didn't want us to know things, don't you think they would encrypt their communications? You know, kind of like the Soviets did by building covers over their submarine construction facilities and pens to prevent our satellites from seeing what they were up to? Let me guess, those poor innocent Soviets or Chinese aren't doing the same thing to us, right? And wow, so now just turning on my CB or shortwave radio to see what I can hear is a form of spying? Who'd have ever thunk it? Maybe I should go out and get myself a black trench coat to help play the part!

Get real, people. What, we should arrest our technological/electronic warfare develepmont/capacity or eavedropping on their broadcast communications just because some other country isn't as advanced as we are? Hello???? McFly????? Is anyone home???? How do you think we got to be the world superpower that we are and maintain that position? By sitting on our hands whilst awaiting our poor wittle ol' potential foes to catch up to us? Crap, how naive can some of you be?

Hangfire, save all that crap about the "Crown Jules" and that obsolete plane for someone else to swallow. The Commander in that plane and his brave crew more than likely distroyed all of the sensitive materials and equipment before ever making their final approach on Chinese soil. Dont start taking what i said out of context as i was refering to the distigished flying cross and not the navy cross for saving his crew under deress and vary dangerous circumstances. Remember this is a general discussion board so show a little respect as i spent eight years in the fleet and you sound like a R.E.M.F. if i ever heard one. Go write some more Tom Clancy books Jr.  V 2  

my thought after seeing the photos of the airplane are this( i spent 10 years as an aircraft mech in the marine corps in whidbey island and now have 12 years as a mech in a major airline). the aircraft was flyable... the radome is missing the pitot heads are gone the flaps are damaged and one of four engines has to be shut down...
not too bad considering it has had a mid air collision, fly the damn thing to the nearest us air base or one of our allies fields. the ep3 can fly on 3 engines , and does so quite well. flaps only needed at low speed and during landing which the pilot was able to handle so it seams. pitot is used for air data like air speed  altitude and air temp which the pilot by landing shows was not as important as some may think. he flew 50 to 80 miles depends on who's story you believe quite well thank you.
the pilot needed to get his shit together and fly his airplane.
i have seen comercial airliners fly farther in much worse shape than this after an encounter with mother nature...pat

Eh, you armchair death commandos don't know jack shit about EP-3 ops or what the first priority is in an emergency.

I'll let you in on a "secret"....While this aircraft is a recce bird it is not one of the "super secret squirrel" aircraft. The Army, Navy and Air Force all operate some sort of "super secret squirrel" aircraft.

IF this aircraft was a "national asset" you can count on the fact that it was taking orders from someone who is probably in the service but who wears civie clothing to work everyday.

The P-3 series of aircraft can and do have an excellent record of ditching on the open seas.
[img]http://www.vpnavy.com/jfrankel/vp47p3ditch.jpg[/img]
[img]http://www.vpnavy.com/jfrankel/vp47p3ditch1.jpg[/img]

However, if the sea state is above a certain height then ditching is not recomended. The same goes for parachuting out of the aircraft. If the water is below a certain tempature then bailing out is not recomended.

I HAVE flown in "National Asset" aircraft, I have been intercepted by Soviet aircraft and have intercepted Soviet aircraft. Nowhere in any manuals, SOP's, training or briefings does it mention anything about "taking it for the team". It's all about survival.

So all you guys go ahead and keep reading you Tom Clancy training manuals and back seat flying of the EP-3's in your mind.
I, along with a few thousand other Naval Aviatiors are secure in the knowlage that these guyes did the right thing:
Land the aircraft safely with the same amount of peoplethat you took off with alive.