Gunfire in the Skies

Like all commercial airliners, the Cathay Pacific Skymaster (a Douglas DC-4), bound from Bangkok to Hong Kong, was making the usual detour around Communist-held Hainan Island early one morning last week. It was well out to sea, in the approved international corridor. Suddenly, two prop-driven fighters, the red markings bright on their cream-colored paint, flew up alongside, dropped back, and stitched through the airliner from behind with cannon and machine-gun fire. The Skymaster's outboard port engine caught fire; the next burst knocked out the outboard starboard engine, and set the wing tanks ablaze. In the cabin, passengers cowered in their seats, but for some it was no protection against the fire from the attackers.

Intent to Kill. The Skymaster's dying radioman got off an S O S; then the defenseless British airliner flamed out of the sky, flattened out and slid onto the water. Nine persons including an American father and his two sons, aged two and four years, sank with the plane; nine survived on a life raft.

Said Pilot Philip Blown, a veteran of the Royal Australian Air Force and one of the rescued: "The fighters stayed on our tail and took turns spraying the fuselage. They shot us down with the intention of killing us. When they got too near for good shooting, they throttled back and then began firing again."

Cathay Pacific officials in Hong Kong got the distress message and phoned Communist Canton, asking permission to send rescue planes. Replied Canton: "You may send a civilian plane. Don't send a military plane or we will shoot it down."

Military planes came anyway. A French B-24 flew from Viet Nam and began circling the scene. From carrier decks roared eight U.S. Navy Skyraiders convoying a Philippine-based Air Force amphibian. The Reds, bustling about 100 yards away on tiny Taichow Island, did nothing as the U.S. amphibian, with fighter cover circling overhead, landed on the water, loaded the survivors and flew them off to a Hong Kong hospital.

Further Barbarity. In London the Foreign Office prepared a formal protest. The U.S., with three U.S. citizens dead, three wounded, also had something to say. John Foster Dulles announced that "the U.S. Government takes the gravest view of this action of further barbarity, for which the Chinese Communist regime must be held responsible."

This week Peiping radio broadcast a note in which the Chinese Communist government "expressed its regret at this accidental and unfortunate incident," offered to pay compensation and said its pilots had mistaken the British plane for a Chinese Nationalist bomber. A few hours later the State Department announced that there was more to the story than had been told: two U.S. planes, from two carriers assigned to "cover and protect" rescue operations, had shot down two Chinese Communist planes which had attacked them over the high seas while they were searching for survivors.

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