China’s air force turns 70 with tales of its dare-to-die Korean war pilots
- For the young, inexperienced fliers of the People’s Volunteer Army, crashing into an enemy plane was always an option, according to unprecedented article by an official military newspaper
- ‘Almost all of the Chinese pilots in the Korean war were prepared to die,’ retired communications officer says
Despite Beijing’s reluctance to declassify documents relating to its involvement in the conflict – estimates on the number of Chinese soldiers killed in it range from 149,000 to 400,000 – a report by PLA Daily published on Saturday leaves little doubt as to what was expected of the fliers of the nation’s nascent air force.
The article quotes several sections taken from the memoirs of Li Han, a Chinese pilot with the People’s Volunteer Army (PVA) who was just 27 at the start of the war.
The PVA was the name given to the Chinese expatriate troops who “volunteered” to fight alongside the North Koreans, so as to distinguish them from the PLA and prevent China from fighting an official war with the United States, which supported South Korea.
While he was aware of the greater experience of the enemy pilots – most were veterans of the second world war and had been described by China’s then leader Mao Zedong as being “armed to the teeth” – Li said he and his fellow fliers from the PLA Air Force, which had been established just a year earlier, had no shortage of courage or a sense of duty.