Hainan Island incident

A ten-day international incident between the United States and the People's Republic of China (PRC) resulted from a mid-air collision between a United States Navy EP-3E ARIES II signals intelligence aircraft and a People's Liberation Army Air Force J-8 interceptor on April 1, 2001.

The EP-3 was flying over the South China Sea at a point roughly midway between Hainan Island and the Paracel Islands when it was intercepted by two J-8II fighters. A collision between the EP-3 and one of the J-8s caused damage to the EP-3 and the loss of the J-8 and its pilot. The EP-3 was forced to make an emergency landing on Hainan without permission from the PRC, and its 24 crew members were detained and interrogated by Chinese authorities until a statement was delivered by the United States government regarding the incident. The ambiguous phrasing of the statement allowed both countries to save face and defused a potentially volatile situation.

Background

This sea area includes the South China Sea Islands, which are claimed by the PRC and several other countries. It is a strategically sensitive area.

The United States and the People's Republic of China disagree on the legality of the overflights by US naval aircraft of the area where the incident occurred. This part of the South China Sea comprises part of the PRC's exclusive economic zone based on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the Chinese claim that the Paracel Islands belong to China. This claim was acknowledged by Vietnam in 1958 but it has since reversed itself to contest the claim after the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. The United States remains neutral in this dispute, but patrols the sea regularly with naval ships and airplanes, during what it terms freedom of navigation operations. The PRC interprets the convention as allowing it to preclude other nations' military operations within this area, but the United States does not recognize China's claim for the Paracel Islands and maintains that the Convention grants free navigation for all countries' aircraft and ships, including military aircraft and ships, within a country's exclusive economic zone. Although the United States is not party to UNCLOS, it has accepted and complies with nearly all of the treaty's provisions.

thumb|right|An EP-3E of VQ-1

A PRC Sukhoi Su-27 force is based at Hainan. The island also houses a large signals intelligence facility that tracks civil and military activity in the area and monitors traffic from commercial communications satellites. The United States has long kept the island under surveillance; on May 22, 1951, for example, RAF Spitfire PR Mk 19s based at Hong Kong's Kai Tak Airport flew photo-reconnaissance missions at the behest of US naval intelligence.

In the air

On April 1, 2001, the EP-3 (BuNo 156511), assigned to Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron One (VQ-1, "World Watchers"), had taken off as Mission PR32 from Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan. At about 9:15 a.m. local time, toward the end of the EP-3's six-hour ELINT mission, it was flying at and , on a heading of 110°, about away from the island. Two Chinese J-8s from Hainan's Lingshui airfield approached. One of the J-8s (81192), piloted by Lt. Cdr. Wang Wei, made two close passes to the EP-3. On the third pass, it collided with the larger aircraft. The J-8 broke into two pieces; the EP-3's radome detached completely and its No. 1 (outer left) propeller was damaged severely. Airspeed and altitude data were lost, the aircraft depressurized, and an antenna became wrapped around the tailplane. The J-8's tail fin struck the EP-3's left aileron, forcing it fully upright, and causing the US aircraft to roll to the left at three to four times its normal maximum rate.

thumb|[[Shenyang J-8 81192, a different aircraft piloted by Lt Cdr Wang Wei in an earlier altercation with an American EP-3E.]]

The impact sent the EP-3 into a 30° dive at a bank angle of 130°, almost inverted. It dropped in 30 seconds, and fell another before the pilot, Lt. Shane Osborn, got the EP-3's wings level and the nose up. In a September 2003 article in Naval Aviation News, Osborn said that once he regained control of the aircraft, he "called for the crew to prepare to bail out".

thumb|right|The Shenyang J-8 (81192) in another altercation with a US reconnaissance aircraft in January 2001.

For the next 26 minutes, the crew of the EP-3 performed an emergency plan which included destroying sensitive items aboard the aircraft, such as electronic equipment related to intelligence-gathering, documents and data. Part of this plan involved pouring freshly brewed coffee into disk drives and motherboards and using an axe from the plane's survival kit to destroy hard drives. The crew had not been formally trained on how to destroy sensitive documents and equipment, and so improvised. As a result of the destruction, the plane's interior was later described as resembling "the aftermath of a frat party".

Wang was seen to eject after the collision, but the Pentagon said that the damage to the underside of the EP-3 could mean that the cockpit of the Chinese fighter jet was crushed, making it impossible for the pilot to survive. Wang's body was never recovered, and he was presumed dead.

Cause of collision

thumb|right|Area of the collision in the South China Sea.

Both the cause of the collision and the assignment of blame were disputed:

The US government stated that the Chinese jet bumped the wing of the larger, slower, and less maneuverable EP-3. After returning to US soil, the pilot of the EP-3, Lt. Shane Osborn, was allowed to make a brief statement in which he said that the EP-3 was on autopilot and in straight-and-level flight at the time of the collision. He stated that he was just "guarding the autopilot" in his interview with Frontline. The U.S. released video footage from previous missions which revealed that American reconnaissance crews had previously been intercepted by the same aircraft.
The Chinese government stated that, according to Wang Wei's wingman, the American aircraft "veered at a wide angle towards the Chinese", in the process ramming the J-8.

Neither claim can be verified since the Chinese government took possession of both aircraft's flight recorders, and has not publicly released data from either one.

Three US diplomats were sent to Hainan to meet the crew, assess their conditions and to negotiate the crew's release. The diplomats were first allowed to meet with the crew three days after the incident. US officials complained about China's delays in this regard.

The 24 crew members (21 men and 3 women) were detained for 10 days in total and were released soon after the US issued the "letter of the two sorries" to the Chinese. The crew was only partially successful in their destruction of classified material. Some of the material they failed to destroy included cryptographic keys, signals intelligence manuals, and the names of National Security Agency employees. was the letter delivered by the United States Ambassador Joseph Prueher to Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan of the People's Republic of China to end the incident. Upon delivery of the letter, China released the detained crew and eventually returned the disassembled aircraft. The United States stated that it was "not a letter of apology"–as then characterized by state-owned Chinese media outlets–but that instead it was "an expression of regret and sorrow".

There was further debate over the exact meaning of the Chinese translation issued by the US Embassy. A senior administration official was quoted as saying "What the Chinese will choose to characterize as an apology, we would probably choose to characterize as an expression of regret or sorrow". General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Jiang Zemin accepted the expression of "very sorry" as consistent with the formal apology that China had sought, and so China released the Americans thereafter.

Aftermath

The crew of the EP-3 was released on April 11, 2001, and returned to their base at Whidbey Island via Honolulu, Hawaii, where they were subject to two days of debriefings.

thumb|right|The EP-3 crew arrives at Hickam AFB in Hawaii. Pictured saluting is U.S. Air Force [[Senior Airman Curtis Towne.]]

US Navy engineers said the EP-3 could be repaired in 8–12 months, but China refused to allow it to be flown off Hainan island. The disassembled aircraft was released on July 3, 2001, and was returned to the United States by the Russian airline Polet Flight in two Antonov An-124 Ruslans. Repairs were performed at Lockheed Martin in Marietta, Georgia, for reassembly and to make it flightworthy again. The aircraft was then flown to L3 in Waco, Texas for missionization as they were the main provider of EP-3 maintenance and modernization at the time. After being returned to service, 156511 was transferred to VQ-1 in 2012, and on October 21, 2024, it was retired to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base and three days later moved to Pima Air and Space Museum for display.

The incident occurred ten weeks after George W. Bush's presidential inauguration and was his first foreign policy crisis. Both countries were criticized after the event: the Chinese for making a bluff which was called without any real concessions from America other than the "Letter of the two sorries"; and the US first for being insensitive immediately after the event and later for issuing the letter rather than being more oppositional. The United States tried to be conciliatory in order to try to avoid Chinese objections to US foreign policy, which became more important after the September 11 attacks and at the beginning of the war on terror.

Among the Chinese public, the incident created negative feelings towards the United States and increased feelings of Chinese nationalism.

After the collision, China briefly lessened aggressiveness in monitoring of reconnaissance flights. Flights of US surveillance aircraft near the Chinese coastline continued as before the incident.

As of 2009, Hainan was the home of the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) Hainan Submarine Base, an underground facility capable of supporting nuclear ballistic missile submarines. During March 2009, Chinese ships and aircraft approached the USNS Impeccable, an ocean surveillance ship of the US Navy while operating south of Hainan. Pentagon officials characterized the actions as "aggressive" and "harassment". In August 2014, the US protested when a Chinese Shenyang J-11BH came within of a patrolling Boeing P-8 Poseidon aircraft and performed aerobatic maneuvers including a barrel roll. In May 2016, the US protested when two Shenyang J-11BH aircraft reportedly came within of a US EP-3 on "a routine" patrol approximately east of Hainan Island. China responded by demanding an end to US surveillance near China.

Hainan Island incident

Background

In the air

Cause of collision

Aftermath

See also

References

Citations

Sources

Further reading

External links