The U.S. spy plane crew held in China for 11 days arrived at their home base Saturday, greeted as heroes by thousands of family members, friends and well-wishers as the pilot offered a harrowing account of the collision with a Chinese fighter jet.
The military plane that brought them here from Hawaii taxied to a giant hangar, where hundreds of sailors and officers in dress blues stood at attention. The crowd of an estimated 7,000 people waved flags and signs. “We are so proud of you,” one sign read.
There were emotional reunions on the tarmac as families rushed into the arms of individual crew members who had been greeted first by government and military officials.
Before the crew left Honolulu early in the day, the pilot of the U.S. surveillance plane, Navy Lt. Shane Osborn, said that he and his crew had carried out their mission by the book and had no reason to apologize.
Standing in the early dawn light prior to his crew’s departure for Washington from Hawaii, Osborn described what happened just before and after the Chinese jet collided with his EP-3E reconnaissance aircraft.
“I’m here to tell you we did it right,” Osborn said. “No apologies necessary on our part.”
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Osborn and fellow crew member Senior Petty Officer Nicholas Mellos gave the crew’s first public account of what transpired aboard the crippled aircraft and what happened after they landed at the Chinese military base.
“The first thing I thought was, `This guy just killed us,”‘ Osborn told about 100 members of the media and military and a handful of civilian well-wishers.
“Mayhem!” said Mellos as he described the frantic minutes after impact. The plane fell 7,500 feet before Osborn was able to gain minimal control, he said. “Thank God for the training we do every day.”
The crew appeared happy and eager to get home as they stood in a line outside the military plane before boarding for the trip home from Hawaii.
Osborn said his reconnaissance plane rolled about 130 degrees–almost upside down–after the collision. At that point he ordered the crew to prepare to bail out. As the plane rolled, he said, he looked up and saw the South China Sea.
“That’s pretty close to inversion,” he said. “The plane was almost in an inverted dive.
“I was very concerned that I could bring the plane down.”
Osborn said he finally regained control at 10,000 feet.
“At that point I called the emergency destruction plan,” he said, referring to standing orders that the crew destroy intelligence data if it is threatened to be compromised. “I can’t go into any more detail than that.”
Osborn’s account of what caused the crash was detailed and matched versions already provided by Washington officials.
He said the plane had been flying “straight, steady, holding altitude, heading away from Hainan Island, on autopilot, when the accident occurred.”
On the first two passes, the Chinese fighter came within 3 feet of the left wing, he said. On the third pass, the Chinese pilot apparently realized he was closing too fast and, instead of passing under the American plane, tried to swing his plane to cut speed, U.S. diplomats said, quoting what the crew said during debriefings.
The fighter plane hit the outermost engine on the left wing, then the inner engine, then flipped up into the nose of the EP-3E, shearing it off. The impact broke the Chinese fighter in half and the debris spiraled into the sea, according to the U.S. version.
“Prior to the impact, there was a time when their aircraft came within 3 to 5 feet of my aircraft,” Osborn said. “They would come up close . . . make gestures, pull back a little, and they came up again and made more gestures. His nose hit our nose, and his tail went up.”
Osborn confirmed earlier accounts of the efforts the crew made to make contact with the Chinese.
15 mayday calls made
“We made at least 15 mayday calls. . . . I know we were transmitting. I can’t tell you what they heard and what they didn’t hear because I wasn’t in their tower.”
Once on the ground, the pilot said, the conditions were generally good.
Osborn said the Chinese were polite, respectful and fed them well but that the crew suffered lack of sleep and experienced unpleasant interrogations. The crew was questioned for 4 to 5 hours on the first night, Osborn said. After that, they were awakened frequently and at irregular intervals.
“I tried to steal some sleep when I could,” he said.
None of the other 22 crew members spoke at Saturday’s news conference in Hawaii; they lined up behind Osborn and Mellos before boarding the C-9 military aircraft behind them, engines running, ready to transport them to their home base in Washington’s Puget Sound.
China denies any blame
China bluntly denied on Saturday U.S. assertions that the F-8 Chinese fighter caused the collision with the U.S. surveillance plane. It also said it was abandoning its search for the missing pilot, Wang Wei, who was officially declared dead.
The American crew’s 11-day captivity ended Thursday with what the Chinese accepted as apologies by President Bush. Secretary of State Colin Powell on Friday described that characterization as “Chinese propaganda.”
U.S. officials, including Bush, insist the crew was blameless and that U.S. reconnaissance missions around China are not hostile.
In Honolulu, the crew wrapped up 26 hours of meetings with investigators in which they discussed their ordeal and the plane they left behind on the Chinese island.
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Spokesmen for Pearl Harbor Naval Base declined to discuss what the crew was telling investigators. But officers who had contact with the crew offered some details:
– The investigators were local Navy personnel, intelligence experts and specialists from Washington and elsewhere, including psychologists.
– Some are experts on particular equipment that either was destroyed or may have fallen into Chinese hands.
– The crew had a fast-food working lunch on Friday, insisting they wanted to get through the debriefings as quickly as possible. Their schedule had called for 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. meetings on Friday.
– The crew requested and read news clippings on the helicopter crash that killed seven Americans and nine others in the Vietnam search for MIAs, and other events that occurred while they were being held.
– Adm. Thomas Fargo, Pacific Fleet commander, in one session offered the crew members stacks of letters from around the country offering words of encouragement and support for their actions in landing their crippled plane in China.