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Updated: Tuesday June 3, 2014 MYT 6:57:47 AM
A TAIWAN passenger plane, which went missing more than half a century ago, has been confirmed crashed following the recovery of its propeller recently, major Chinese dailies reported.
The PBY-5A amphibious plane –also known as the “Blue Swan” – belonged to TransAsia Airways.
Carrying seven army officers and four crew members, the cross-strait flight from Matsu Island in the Taiwan Straits to Taiwan Island went missing on Oct 1, 1958. It departed from Matsu airport at 5.45pm.
“Altitude 1,000-feet, 80-mile from Taipei”, was the last message it sent to the control tower before the plane disappeared from the radar. A search team comprising the navy and air force units from the United States and Taiwan had failed to locate the plane.
The disappearance of the flight remained mysterious until several months ago when a fishing boat trawled up its propeller.
The cause of the crash however is still unknown.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 69529.html
A propeller believed to belong to the amphibious PBY-5A plane has been found by fishermen in the Taiwan Strait near where it lost contact in October 1958, the China Times reported.
The discovery confirms the fate of the aircraft’s passengers but the mystery of what happened to the plane, known as the “Blue Swan” or “Blue Goose”, is no closer to being solved.
Its disappearance at the height of the second Taiwan Strait Crisis sparked accusations from Taiwan that it had been shot down or hijacked by the Chinese army.
Others said it had been forced to land in mainland China and some news reports claimed the US servicemen were being held by the Communist government but no evidence was found to support any of the theories.
The commercial aircraft had been chartered by the military to carry four US servicemen and three commanders from the Taiwanese army from the Matsu Islands to Taipei.
Routine contact was made with the Matsu Islands after departure and the plane continued at altitude of 1,000ft to avoid Chinese radar.
All contact was lost 37 nautical miles from Matsu in the Strait’s 15-mile-wide “no radar zone” and no wreckage was found in intensive searches by the US Air Force, Navy and Taiwanese authorities.
According the Cold War Museum in Virginia, experts believe the structure of the seaplane means most debris would have floated on the surface of the ocean.
Contemporary reports speculated that it was brought down by a storm but military investigations did not conclude that weather was a major factor.
As well as the servicemen, four Taiwanese civilian crew members were killed.
Major Robert C. Bloom, Captain Wayne F. Pitcher, Private First Class Claude L. Baird and Dwight H. Turner , a US Navy “radioman” were members of the elite Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) Matsu Defence Command.
The US was supporting Taiwan (the Republic of China) in a conflict with mainland China after it bombed the islands of Quemoy and the nearby Matsu Islands with the suspected intent to invade.
It continued the Taiwan Strait Crisis that started in 1954, when a series of Taiwanese islands in the strip of ocean were seized by China and the US joined the conflict amid fears of Communist expansion.
The crisis calmed days after the Blue Goose’s disappearance after the US threatened to use nuclear weapons against China.