Charlie Wu’s （吳載熙） Last Flight

Last summer, aviation historian Clarence Fu told me the following story (I added the Chinese characters):

In yesterday’s monthly meeting of our aviation historian club, we invited ex RoCAF F-104 pilot Huang Tong-rong （黃東榮） as our guest. He siad on Feb. 17, 1966, he received an order to scramble 4 Starfighters to go into mainland China to rescue a “friendly aircraft”. He saw a high contrail heading east and some curved contrails below that contrail. Later he found it was an U-2, so the 4 F-104s circled the U-2 to protect it.  When they reach Kinmen island, other aircrafts took over and they went back to CCK AFB. Later he found out the U-2 pilot was Wu Chai-shi （吳載熙） and regreted to know that Wu was killed while tried to land in Shuenam （水湳） AFB on the same day. Huang don’t know why Wu chose Shuenam. CCK has a much longer runway and is not far from Shuenam.

A few days ago, another aviation enthusiast sent me an account of the same incident:

近日聽兩位分別為八十，六十歲自台中水湳基地退役的空軍老人說，吳載熙當年在水湳失事的事實是：吳本人遭中共空軍米格機機槍掃射，身中數槍，勉強撐到台中水湳，下滑進場時，人已昏迷，飛機落地後，已無法由他自己踩煞車，衝進跑道最尾端的排水溝中翻覆，待u2相關作業的中美雙方人員趕到台中，卸下底片，將吳自座艙中救出時，他人已殉職，飛機失事後，水湳場上的人員奉命不準接近，只能遠遠的觀看，…

Both accounts contradict the official story that Wu was killed in a training mission.  So I searched my collection of declassified CIA documents to find out the true cause.  It turned out that Wu was indeed flying a training mission when he was killed.

The following cable was issued shortly after Wu’s U-2F crashed (check the date).  It clearly states that Wu was on a training mission (Paragraph 3).  Also the aircraft did not ditch but slammed into a farm house, which would cause some difficulties for the salvage effort later.

The following two cables provide a more detailed picture of the crashed aircraft.  So it was unlikely that the films were removed from the aircraft at the same time as Wu was rescued from the cockpit, as described by the second account in the beginning of this post.

The following text was taken from the IDEALIST Operational Summary and Status (February 1966).  As it said, there was no operational overflight mission during that month.  There was no overflights in January 1966 either.

The following was extracted from a mission listing which tallies the 511 U-2 missions from June 20, 1956 through May 18, 1968.  The first column is the serial number of the mission.  There was no operational mission in February 1966.  Also note that the mission on September 8, 1967 involved enemy actions and the pilot was killed.

The text  below is excerpted from the Office of Special Activities, 1954-68, Chronology.

Hopefully you have been convinced that Charlie Wu was killed on a training mission.  If not, I hope you will after reading the official investigation report.  Nowhere in the document were enemy actions ever mentioned.  Have a nice day!