No surprise.

Wish there were some closure for those families. That would be a burden, living your whole life not knowing about a loved one's fate.

I do feel sorry for them and their families.

But, wouldn't America have done the same thing if Russian planes were over flying the country??

So ultimately the culprit is the American government, not the Chinese or Russians.

Saeed, of course every country has a right to try to interdict foreign spying efforts. The difference is we would have worked to get remains home, answer families' legitimate questions -- and certainly deal humanely with survivors. I truly believe this -- and remember that during the Cold War Soviet expansionist intentions threatened political and economic freedoms in many nations.

quote:

Originally posted by Bill/Oregon:
Saeed, of course every country has a right to try to interdict foreign spying efforts. The difference is we would have worked to get remains home, answer families' legitimate questions -- and certainly deal humanely with survivors. I truly believe this -- and remember that during the Cold War Soviet expansionist intentions threatened political and economic freedoms in many nations.

Exactly!
Americans, even while fighting in their own defense, rarely lose sight of their humanity.

I'm not so sure our govt would have been at all transparent about engaging Soviet intel ops with force in those days. It would have depended on the nature of the intrusion and the nature of our countermeasures. If publicizing the event would have shed any light on US doctrine, tactics, hardware and countermeasures, I really doubt we'd even acknowledge we engaged.

This was the cold war. We were as paranoid as the Soviets about----everything. We also had a greater ability to hide things from the public than we do today.

If the US could shoot, shovel and shut up during the Cold War, it probably did exactly that.

quote:

Originally posted by Saeed:
I do feel sorry for them and their families.

But, wouldn't America have done the same thing if Russian planes were over flying the country??

So ultimately the culprit is the American government, not the Chinese or Russians.

You sound like a broken record. As usual.

If you like the magazine article you would really appreciate the book that this information looks like it is based off of. William Burrows "By Any Means Necessary" goes into amazing detail on quite a few of the early cold war reconnaissance shootdowns up until the early 60's. Very sobering reading but personally answered a lot of questions that I had about that period.