OT somewhat. China, our aircraft, delays.

From: Joe <rigdonj_at_intellistar.net>
Date: Mon Apr 9 14:03:44 2001

At 05:52 PM 4/8/01 -0700, you wrote:
>Do you remember when we would call that "an Army weather plane doing
>meteorological research"?
>
>When did we start calling them spy planes?

   AFTER Gary Powers was shot down in his "unarmed weather recon" plane and
he and the plane and it's equipment were put on public display in the USSR.
Before that most people in the US were naive enough to believe that we
didn't do such things. ROFL!

>
>
>What WOULD we do if the roles were reversed?

    Shoot it down of course.

   But this isn't exactly the same thing. This flight was over water and
not over land. We (the US), the Russians, the Cubans and a number of other
countries have been doing this for YEARS and it's been common for the
"enemy's" aircraft to escort each others aircraft. I've been in aircraft in
the North Atlantic that were escorted by Russian fighters and our fighters
also regularly escorted their aircraft. In the vast majority of the cases
there was no trouble. I'm sorry but I don't see any secret plots in the
recent US/Chinese incident. It's not uncommon for aircraft in close
formation to collide and I think it was an accident. Now both governments
are acting like tough guys and unwilling to admit any fault or apologize.
It's all rather childish IMO. Does anyone have a count on the number of
Cuban, Russian, North Korean and other communist aircraft that have landed
in US controlled bases that we've kept and reverse engineered? I can name
at least four that I personally know of.

     Joe
Received on Mon Apr 09 2001 - 14:03:44 BST