From the South China Morning Post this week in: 1960
Taipei, January 12
A Chinese Communist MIG jet fighter was reported to have crashed and burned while trying to land on Formosa. Reports from the scene said the pilot died in the flames - burned beyond recognition - after his plane hit a rock after coming down on a beach. It was the first reported defection of a Communist plane to the Nationalists since the Nationalists were driven off the mainland in 1949. Nationalist radio stations have broadcast defection appeals to the mainland with instructions on how to fly safely to Formosa.
Hongkong, January 14
Leung Wai-lam, 33, a radio operator, was sentenced to 18 months' gaol by Judge BJ Jennings at the Victoria District Court for operating an unlicensed radio communication station in a village in Shaukiwan.
Chief Inspector L.C. Smith, prosecuting, said that towards the end of December, a Government monitoring officer picked up a radio signal on a certain wave length. He listened to it for several days before pinpointing the source to be a stone hut in Holy Cross Village, Shaukiwan. At 3.35p.m. on New Year's Eve the signal stopped. Police who had been standing by broke into the hut and arrested the accused. They found a radio transmitter and receiver with a morse key and a pair of earphones. The set was still warm and had a range of 2,000 miles. Lying about were paper pads with coded messages.
Stations of this kind usually relayed messages about black market prices of gold and silver. The monitoring officer was able to recognise the 'touch of the morse signal' as that of one man just as a handwriting expert was able to identify the handwriting of a particular person.