Boroda: OTOH the US crew behaved like cowards.
They did cause their country considerable embarrasment, having to negotiate for their release, etc. On the other hand ditching the plane in the ocean would have put the crew's lives in considerable danger, let alone lost a valuable craft.
That a commander decided not to risk his people for diplomatic considerations (probably at the cost to his career) shows that he was not brainwashed.
Landing a top-secret aircraft loaded with scrambling and recon equipment at the Chinese airbase - I can't understand that.
How do you know they did not throw out the sensitive equipment over the 40 minute flight? As far as I know, such equiplent is designed to be removed, destroyed and thrown overboard in seconds.
They were military, weren't they?...
It does not mean the same here as in the Soviet Union. People are not expected to sacrifice themselves and their subordinates just to save a superior's face.
Smaller boat has an opportunity to turn/stop/accelerate, while a huge cargo ship is like a train...
I looked at that and some other articles about the incident and they provide no basis for that opinion, so please give us a references. Otherwise I wil have to assume it's just a crap of your personal invention - and pretty dumb at that.
How do you know that a boat was moving? Could it be it was standing still, as fishing boats often do - likely attached to a whole bunch of nets overboard? In which case it could have taken it considerable time to start moving, even if it chose to cut the nets - and it is the responcibility of a ship in motion to avoid collision with a stationary object in its path anyway.
What if the "smaller boat" was moving - it was a trawler. It was likely pulling a few miles of nets behind it. Do you have any idea how "easy" it is to "turn/stop/accelerate" with a few miles of nets? I am totally ignorant on the topic but I would bet you dollars to doughnuts on common sense alone that marine laws must provide a right of way for a fishing ship pulling nets/lines in case of impending collision.
funkedup: I remember when my friend's wife (Chinese) tried to explain to me how the P-3 caused that collision.
Not saying that P-3 caused the collision - most likely not. But given the risky and predictable behavior of the chinese pilot and technical aspects of the case, it certainly could - if they wanted to.
I surely would be sorely tempted to, if I were the american pilot - thinking "This bastard keeps flying at very low relative speed few feet underneath my wing - and he is barely controllable at such low speed/high angle. Let me suddenly drop my wing by a few degrees and give him a tap..."
People are known to occasionally give a sharp tap to the brake pedal whenever somebody is tailgating them at high speed. It may not be wise but considerations are the same - "my damage is likely to be minimal and certain to teach the bastard a lesson".
miko
