Cathay Pacific VR-HEU - Rescue Efforts

Rescue Efforts

An Air Vietnam plane en route to Hong Kong from Hanoi and which had altered its course as a results of the calls, spotted the sinking plane and a dinghy one and a half miles from the Hainan coast. It circled for 40 minutes before heading for Hong Kong. Thanks to those calls, the RAF in Hong Kong immediately redirected a Saigon-bound Vickers Valetta military transport and further despatched a Short Sunderland flying boat, an Avro York military transport, as well as two de Havilland Hornet fighters from the 80 Squadron, from RAF Kai Tak to the reported position of the C-54. A fully armed French PB4Y-2 Privateer after intercepting the emergency radio call, also took off from Tourane (Da Nang), French Indochina (now Vietnam).

Meanwhile, the civilian-operated Manila rescue control centre in the Philippines, on picking up the SOS call from Wong, alerted the 31st Air Rescue Squadron of the USAF at the Clark Air Force Base. Captain Jack T. Woodyard, on first alert duty that day, about to depart on a routine training mission in his Grumman SA-16 Albatross, 51-009, immediately took off. A second Albatross followed Woodyard 35 minutes later.

The Hornets were the first to arrive on the scene, followed by the Valetta, Sunderland, York and the Privateer. While the Hornets carried out a thorough search of the area for survivors, the French Privateer, piloted by an apparent Englishman with a Cockney accent, informed the Albatross which was 50 miles away, that "We have spotted the dinghy with survivors; looks like two of them from here." The British and American planes were not able to communicate with each other as they were on different radio frequencies.

Captain Blown, on seeing the Sunderland arrive, tossed a packet of green sea dye overboard in an effort to assist rescue personnel. The Sunderland acknowledged this by setting off a smoke flare. Unable to land in atrocious conditions, the amphibious Sunderland circled helplessly for 2 hours before Woodyard's Albatross finally arrived and circled for an hour before landing on the calmer side of Ta-Chow Island, where it taxied towards the dinghy in incredibly rough water before pulling all survivors on board and taking off for Hong Kong escorted by the Sunderland. A.A.P. and Reuters reported at the time that 3 survivors were picked up by the RAF Sunderland.

The last passenger to be hoisted on board was a badly injured Miss Rita Cheung, who had broken her left leg in 2 places and had suffered a deep gash on her forehead. She died aboard the rescue aircraft, 10 minutes before the plane reached Kai Tak.

Radio operator Stephen Wong was also killed. It is believed his head was impaled on a drift meter during the ditching of the Cathay Pacific airliner.

There were several hypotheses for the attack, which included:

• VR-HEU was carrying a Chinese Nationalist ambassador;
• The United States Ambassador to Thailand, "Wild Bill" Donovan, former head of the OSS (the forerunner of CIA) was to have travelled on a Civil Air Transport plane that same week.

The official line from Peking, however, was that the Cathay Pacific airliner was mistaken as a Chinese Nationalist (Kuomintang) plane on a mission to raid a military base at Port Yulin on Hainan Island.

On 26 July 1954, during the survivor search operation, two Douglas Skyraiders from the aircraft carriers USS Philippine Sea and Hornet shot down two Chinese People's Liberation Army Air Force La-9s off the coast of Hainan Island. It is not known whether they were the same La-9s that shot down VR-HEU.