B-57 BOMBER DOWNING OVER BEIJING (October 7, 1959)
Posted by Mitch Williamson in Aircraft on Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Martin RB-57A-MA
According to Chinese People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) accounts, Nationalist forces on Taiwan began a reconnaissance program against the mainland in early 1959, using U.S.-made RB-57 reconnaissance aircraft. Because the PLA Air Force had just organized its own surface-to-air missile units, the PLAAF records the October 7, 1959, shoot-down of a reconnaissance model B-57 (RB-57) over Beijing as a successful operation by its newly established air defense missile forces. The PLAAF missile defense forces had become operational only in late September 1959. As a Taiwan-launched B-57 reconnaissance aircraft entered the air defense zone around Beijing around noon on October 10, the PLAAF fired three SA-2 surface-to-air missiles, bringing down the aircraft and ending high-altitude reconnaissance against the mainland with B-57 aircraft. This forced the Nationalist Air Force, with U.S. support, to use U-2 aircraft for military reconnaissance flights over mainland China. The PLAAF had received its first SA-2 missiles from the Soviet Union only in October 1958, just after the Taiwan Strait Crisis of that year.
REFERENCES Kenneth W. Allen et al., China's Air Force Enters the 21st Century (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 1995).
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