Declassified US documents expose past defeat in war against China

The United States released documents that were owned by the Air Force Research Institute in Alabama, who recount the details of a hidden war that not many know about, which took place between Beijing and Washington 63 years ago, in which pilots were killed and others were captured. According to the “Asia Times” newspaper, it was stated in documents that in 1960 At the height of the Cold War between the United States and Russia, China’s star has risen as a new military power with ambitions which could affect America’s influence.

At that time, Washington began preparing an air fleet of “U2 Spy” reconnaissance aircraft to penetrate Chinese territory, capture important sites and find out what was happening inside them, and in at the time there were no advanced satellites available to do the job.

However, an accident suddenly occurred that forced her to withdraw this plan, only an American reconnaissance plane was shot down by a Russian missile after penetrating Russian airspace and flying over military bases.

Although America claimed at the time that it was a private aircraft for scientific research operations, the Soviet Union proved its purpose was reconnaissance and surveillance after its American pilot was captured and interrogated.

The documents complete: “At that time, America found itself in a difficult situation and started planning in another way”.

Immediately Washington turned to Taiwan (which is self-administered and considered part of its territory by China, and relations are tense between the two sides), to implement its plan through it, and things went like this:

• Agreements were concluded with the island, under the pretext of which spy planes were secretly transferred to the island to carry out missions inside China.
• The American goal was to learn about Chinese military bases, submarine bases, and the type of aircraft Chinese made.
• Washington selected the newly manufactured U-2, also known as the Dragon Lady, for the mission due to its ability to fly at high altitudes, and actually allowed it to reach an astonishing and unparalleled altitude of 70,000 feet; This made it immune to anti-aircraft missiles.
• Taiwan secretly referred to these aircraft upon their arrival as the “Black Cat Squadron”, and Taiwanese leader Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Ching personally supervised the squadron.
• From 1960 to 1974, 220 reconnaissance missions were conducted, covering aarea of more than 10 million square kilometers in mainland China.
• China became aware of the plot and, thanks to its flourishing cooperation with the Soviet Union, received the necessary military and technological support to counter it.
• Beijing shot down 5 planes and killed its pilots, and there were no planes in capable of providing the accurate location tracking required.

Mike Hua, one of the pilots who flew the spy planes, says in the documents: “The idea was that the black cats come out at night, the U-2s usually take off in the dark and their cameras are their eyes which were very stealthy, quiet and hard to get.”

“When the People’s Liberation Army learned to prevent U-2 operations in the following years, 10 pilots died during missions over China, and the Chinese on the mainland began developing missile launch sites and implemented high-speed maneuvering methods precision to move the radar positions in based on the movement of the targets,” he added. explains the pilot.

In addition to killing pilots, Beijing has captured two pilots while on missions, and the last pilot released was in 1982; That is, after about 20 years of these facts.

After the official end of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, Washington ordered the return of the rest of the American air squadrons to air bases in South Korea.