The 1954 Cathay Pacific Douglas DC-4 shootdown was an incident on 23 July 1954, when a Cathay Pacific AirwaysC-54 Skymaster[4] airliner was shot down by People's Liberation Army Air Force fighter aircraft. The event occurred off the coast of Hainan Island, where the plane was en route from Bangkok to Hong Kong, killing 10 of 19 passengers and crew on board.[2][5]
Although the four-engine propeller-driven Douglas (registered VR-HEU) was a C-54 Skymaster, the incident is known as "the DC-4 shootdown" because the C-54 is the military version of the Douglas DC-4.[3][6][7][8] The crew of six was headed by British captain Phil Blown. In all, one flight crew member, two cabin crew members and seven of the thirteen passengers were killed in the attack and subsequent crash of the airliner.[2]
The aircraft had been manufactured by the Douglas Aircraft Company with construction number 10310 and delivered to the USAAF on 16 May 1944, where it served for less than two years.[4][10] It was bought on 19 February 1946 by KLM and first operated by KLM West Indies before returning to KLM main line in February 1948.[10] It was sold to Cathay Pacific in August 1949.[10]
Flight and attack
On 22 July 1954, VR-HEU took off from Bangkok at 20:19 GMT after being delayed in Bangkok for an hour due to mechanical problems on its No. 2 engine. The flight was bound for Hong Kong. [11][12][13]
At 23:40 GMT, when the DC-4 was cruising at 9,000ft (2,700m) and roughly 10 miles (16km) east of the international air corridor line off Hainan Island and only 31 minutes from Hong Kong, two Lavochkin La-11 fighters of the 85th Fighter Regiment, 29th Fighter Division, People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF), appeared behind VR-HEU, one above it on the DC-4's starboard rear side and the other on its port side. At approximately 23:44 GMT, the fighters opened fire, hitting the two outboard engines (numbers 1 and 4) which caught fire.[14][15] The number 4 engine's auxiliary and main fuel tanks were also ablaze.
While captain Phil Blown took evasive actions to avoid further damage, co-pilot Cedric Carlton issued blankets to passengers instructing them to place them on the back of their seats for protection against the bullets. Radio operator Stephen Wong made an initial distress call at 23:45 GMT: "Kai Tak Tower, Cathay XXX, Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! No. 1 port engine on fire, losing altitude, requesting all possible assistance."[7][12] Wong made 10 mayday calls before VR-HEU ditched. Cathay Pacific engineer G. H. Cattanach, travelling as a passenger, tried to make the passengers comfortable when it became known that the plane was going to ditch.
VR-HEU began losing altitude and at 5,000-foot (1,500m), its rudder control was shot off. Travelling at 350 miles per hour (560km/h; 300kn), Blown tried his utmost to evade incendiary bullets fired by the fighters by taking evasive action, weaving the Skymaster left and right. At 2,000-foot (610m), the right aileron was shot off and the plane began uncontrollably turning right. The captain then countered the increasing turn by shutting down engines 1 and 2 and applying full power on engine 3. Approximately 2 minutes after the initial attack, unable to maintain controlled levelled flight, Blown decided to ditch the Skymaster in rough open seas that included 15-foot (5m) waves and a 25-knot (13m/s) wind.
The starboard wingtip was the first to hit the water, severing the right wing between the number 3 and 4 engines.[16] The impact caused the tail to break off and float off 50 yards (46m) from the main wreckage. The main fuselage now floated at an angle of 45 degrees with the rear open fuselage pointing towards the sky.[12]
After the plane ditched into the ocean, the attacking fighters, flying at around 1,000-foot (300m), ceased firing at the Skymaster, made a turn around the wreckage, and headed towards Sanya. While ten passengers and crew were killed by bullets and the subsequent ditching, nine others survived and escaped from the sinking plane. Blown and his co-pilot escaped through a broken starboard[16] sliding window, which had water coming in fast.
With all survivors floating on the water with no life vests, co-pilot Carlton suddenly noticed that a Mrs Thorburn was hanging on to a raft still in its case. Fearing the bright yellow rubber raft might attract the attention of PLAAF fighters, it took Carlton twenty minutes to finally inflate the rubber dinghy and lift all nine passengers in. Once all were on the dinghy, concern remained that the attacking planes might return; some of the dazed, injured passengers, with their clothes in shreds, hid under a plastic sunshade covering the edges of the dinghy. Although Blown and passenger Peter Thacher kept watch, the attacking planes never returned.[7][11][12][13][17]
Rescue efforts
US Air Force SA-16 rescuing survivors
An Air Vietnam plane en route to Hong Kong from Hanoi, which had altered its course as a results of the calls, spotted the sinking plane and a dinghy one and a half miles from the Hainan coast. It circled for forty minutes before heading for Hong Kong. Thanks to those calls, the RAF in Hong Kong immediately redirected a Saigon-bound Vickers Valetta military transport and further despatched a Short Sunderland flying boat and an Avro York military transport, as well as two de Havilland Hornet fighters of 80 Squadron,[18] from RAF Kai Tak to the reported position of the C-54. A fully armed French PB4Y-2 Privateer also took off from Tourane (Da Nang), French Indochina (now Vietnam) after intercepting the emergency radio call.
Meanwhile, the civilian-operated Manila rescue control centre in the Philippines, on picking up the SOS call from Wong, alerted the 31st Air Rescue Squadron of the USAF at Clark Air Force Base. Captain Jack T. Woodyard, on first alert duty that day and about to depart on a routine training mission in his Grumman SA-16 Albatross, 51-009,[19] immediately took off. A second Albatross followed Woodyard 35 minutes later.
The Hornets were the first to arrive on the scene, followed by the Valetta, Sunderland, York and the Privateer. While the Hornets carried out a thorough search of the area for survivors, the French Privateer informed the Albatross, which was fifty miles away, "We have spotted the dinghy with survivors; looks like two of them from here."[20] The British and American planes were not able to communicate with each other as they were on different radio frequencies.
Captain Woodyard carries six-year-old Valerie off the plane
Captain Blown, on seeing the Sunderland arrive, tossed a packet of green sea dye overboard to make the dinghy easier to spot. The Sunderland acknowledged this by setting off a smoke flare but, unable to land in the atrocious conditions, had to circle helplessly for two hours until Woodyard's Albatross finally arrived; this too circled for an hour before landing on the calmer side of Dazhou Island, where it taxied towards the dinghy in rough water before pulling all survivors on board and taking off for Hong Kong, escorted by the Sunderland. AAP and Reuters reported at the time that three survivors were picked up by the Sunderland.[21]
The last passenger to be hoisted on board was the badly injured Rita Cheung, who had broken her left leg in two places and had suffered a deep gash on her forehead. She died aboard the rescue aircraft, ten minutes before the plane reached Kai Tak.
Radio operator Stephen Wong was also killed. It is believed his head was impaled on a drift meter during the ditching of the airliner.[7][11][12][13][17]
Theories for the attack
There were several hypotheses for the attack, which included:
The United States Ambassador to Thailand, "Wild Bill" Donovan, former head of the OSS (the forerunner of CIA) was to have traveled on a Civil Air Transport plane that same week.[17]
The official line from Peking was that the Cathay Pacific airliner was mistaken as a Republic of China plane on a mission to raid a military base at Port Yulin on Hainan Island.[22]
The shooting down of VR-HEU raised tension between the People's Republic of China, Britain and the US. The British Foreign Office, through its chargé d'affaires in Peking, Humphrey Trevelyan, delivered Britain's protest to Communist China two days later. The US Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, issued a sharp statement condemning the attack, saying the United States took the gravest view of the act of further barbarity and that the Chinese Communist regime must be held responsible.[12]
The shootdown probably harmed the PRC's chances of admission into the United Nations. US Republican Senator H. Alexander Smith interrupted a marathon debate in the Senate over atomic legislation to read Mr. Dulles's statement before calling the situation "critical". Republican Representative Walter Judd, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, expressed the view that the incident was another reason why Communist China must not be admitted to the United Nations.[12]
The PRC admitted responsibility three days later by apologising and making compensation to Cathay Pacific and the victims.[3][22]
Blown, who had been in command of VR-HEU at the time it was shot down, was hailed as a hero. He continued flying for Cathay Pacific for three to four years after the incident, and then retired to New South Wales, Australia, where he died in a nursing home in September 2009, aged 96. Former Cathay Pacific director of flight operations, Nick Rhodes, has commented on the bravery shown by Captain Blown on that day, and commended him for the dedication he showed to ensuring the survival of his passengers.
Cargo airlines are airlines mainly dedicated to the transport of cargo by air. Some cargo airlines are divisions or subsidiaries of larger passenger airlines. In 2018, airline cargo traffic represented 262,333 million tonne-kilometres with a 49.3% load factor: 52.1% for dedicated cargo operations, and 47.9% within mixed operations.
Cathay Pacific Airways Limited (CPA), more widely known as Cathay Pacific, is the largest carrier of Hong Kong, with its head office and main hub located at Hong Kong International Airport. The airline's operations and subsidiaries have scheduled passenger and cargo services to over 190 destinations and present in more than 60 countries worldwide including codeshares and joint ventures. Cathay Pacific operates a fleet consisting of Airbus A321neo, Airbus A330, Airbus A350, and Boeing 777 aircraft. Cathay Cargo operates two models of the Boeing 747. Defunct wholly-owned subsidiary airline Cathay Dragon, which ceased operations in 2020, previously flew to 44 destinations in the Asia-Pacific region from its Hong Kong base. In 2010, Cathay Pacific and Cathay Pacific Cargo, together with Cathay Dragon, carried nearly 27 million passengers and over 1.8 million tons of cargo and mail.
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China Airlines Flight 611 (CI611/CAL611) was a regularly scheduled passenger flight from Chiang Kai-shek International Airport in Taiwan to Hong Kong International Airport in Hong Kong. On 25 May 2002, the Boeing 747-209B operating the route disintegrated in midair and crashed into the Taiwan Strait, 23 nautical miles northeast of the Penghu Islands, 20 minutes after takeoff, killing all 225 people on board. The in-flight break-up was caused by metal fatigue cracks resulting from improper repairs to the aircraft 22 years earlier. As of 2023, the crash remains the deadliest in Taiwanese history, as well as the most recent accident with fatalities involving China Airlines, and the second-deadliest accident of China Airlines, behind China Airlines Flight 140.
The Douglas C-54 Skymaster is a four-engined transport aircraft used by the United States Army Air Forces in World War II and the Korean War. Like the Douglas C-47 Skytrain derived from the DC-3, the C-54 Skymaster was derived from a civilian airliner, the Douglas DC-4. Besides transport of cargo, the C-54 also carried presidents, prime ministers, and military staff. Dozens of variants of the C-54 were employed in a wide variety of non-combat roles such as air-sea rescue, scientific and military research, and missile tracking and recovery. During the Berlin Airlift it hauled coal and food supplies to West Berlin. After the Korean War it continued to be used for military and civilian uses by more than 30 countries. It was one of the first aircraft to carry the President of the United States, the first being President Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II.
The Douglas DC-4 is an American four-engined (piston), propeller-driven airliner developed by the Douglas Aircraft Company. Military versions of the plane, the C-54 and R5D, served during World War II, in the Berlin Airlift and into the 1960s. From 1945, many civil airlines operated the DC-4 worldwide.
This is a list of aviation-related events from 1949:
This is a list of aviation-related events from 1954:
This is a list of aviation-related events from 1976.
The Lavochkin La-11 was an early post-World War II Soviet long-range piston-engined fighter aircraft. The design was essentially that of a Lavochkin La-9 with additional fuel tanks and the deletion of one of the four 23 mm Nudelman-Suranov NS-23 cannons. Like the La-9, the La-11 was designed to be a low to medium-altitude general-purpose fighter, although the additional fuel tanks were added with the intent of employing the La-11 in the escort fighter role.
Active from 1951 to 1975, Air Viet Nam was South Vietnam's first commercial air carrier, headquartered in District 1, Saigon. Established under a decree by Chief of State Bảo Đại, the airline flew over two million passengers, throughout the Vietnam War, and until its collapse due to the Fall of Saigon.
Hong Kong Airways was a flag carrier of British Hong Kong during the late 1940s and 1950s.
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Cathay Pacific Flight 780 was a flight from Juanda International Airport in Surabaya, Indonesia, to Hong Kong International Airport on 13 April 2010. On board were 309 passengers and a crew of 13. As Flight 780 neared Hong Kong, the crew were unable to change the thrust output of the engines. The aircraft, an Airbus A330-300, landed at almost twice the speed of a normal landing, suffering minor damage. The 57 passengers who sustained injuries were hurt in the ensuing slide evacuation; one of them received serious injuries.
The crash of Canadian Pacific Air Lines Flight 3505 occurred on 21 July 1951 when a Douglas DC-4 four-engined piston airliner registered CF-CPC of Canadian Pacific Air Lines disappeared on a scheduled flight for the United Nations from Vancouver, Canada, to Tokyo, Japan. Neither the aircraft nor the 31 passengers and six crew have been found. The incident marked the first aircraft loss during the Korean Airlift.
The Kweilin incident occurred on 24 August 1938 when a Douglas DC-2 airliner named Kweilin carrying 18 passengers and crew was shot down by Japanese aircraft in China. There were fourteen fatalities. It was the first civilian airliner in history to be shot down by hostile aircraft. The pilot was American and the crew and passengers Chinese. As it was unprecedented for a civilian aircraft to be attacked, there was international diplomatic outrage over the incident. In the United States, it helped solidify the view that Japan was morally wrong in their war against China, however the incident was not enough to spur the US into action against Japan despite Chinese entreaties. The Kweilin was rebuilt, renamed as the Chungking and destroyed by the Japanese army in a second attack two years later.
On April 8, 1954 Trans-Canada Air Lines Flight 9, a Canadair C-4 North Star four-engine commercial propliner on a domestic regular scheduled flight, collided in mid air with a Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) Harvard Mark II single engine military trainer on a cross-country navigation exercise over Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.
The 29th Fighter Division, also called the 29th Air Division was a fighter division of the Chinese People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) based in Quzhou, Zhejiang province. Headquartered at Quzhou Air Base, the unit was under the control of the Eastern Theater Command Air Force. The 29th operated Sukhoi Su-30MKK, Chengdu J-7H, and Shenyang J-8B aircraft in support of air operations in the East China Sea and Taiwan Strait. As of 2019, the division commander was Xu Xueqiang. Since the near complete abolition of divisions from the PLA command structure around 2017, the previously subordinate 85th and 87th Fighter Regiments of the 29th FD survived as the 85th and 78th Fighter Brigades, respectively.
Accidents and incidents in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan are not included.
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