Difference between revisions of "Kashmir Princess"

From Wikispooks
Jump to navigation Jump to search
(assassination attempt on Chinese PM)
 
m (Adding internal references to KMT/CIA)
Line 11: Line 11:
 
The '''''Kashmir Princess''''' was a chartered [[Lockheed L-749 Constellation|Lockheed L-749A Constellation]] aircraft owned by [[Air India]].  On 11 April [[1955]], it was damaged in midair by a bomb explosion and crashed into the [[South China Sea]] while en route from [[Bombay]], India, and Hong Kong to [[Jakarta]], Indonesia.<ref>http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19550411-1</ref> Sixteen of those on board were killed, while three survived.<ref>http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-07/21/content_350313.htm</ref>  
 
The '''''Kashmir Princess''''' was a chartered [[Lockheed L-749 Constellation|Lockheed L-749A Constellation]] aircraft owned by [[Air India]].  On 11 April [[1955]], it was damaged in midair by a bomb explosion and crashed into the [[South China Sea]] while en route from [[Bombay]], India, and Hong Kong to [[Jakarta]], Indonesia.<ref>http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19550411-1</ref> Sixteen of those on board were killed, while three survived.<ref>http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-07/21/content_350313.htm</ref>  
  
−
The target of the assassination was the Chinese Premier, [[Zhou Enlai]],<ref>http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/sunday-times/deep-focus/Dj-vu-from-30000-ft/articleshow/45747222.cms</ref> who missed the flight due to a medical emergency and was not on board. The KMT and CIA are major suspects in this case.
+
The target of the assassination was the Chinese Premier, [[Zhou Enlai]],<ref>http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/sunday-times/deep-focus/Dj-vu-from-30000-ft/articleshow/45747222.cms</ref> who missed the flight due to a medical emergency and was not on board. The [[KMT]] and [[CIA]] are major suspects in this case.
  
 
==Explosion==
 
==Explosion==

Revision as of 16:45, 16 February 2022

Event.png Kashmir Princess  
(Flight, Air disaster, Assassination attempt, State terrorism)Rdf-entity.pngRdf-icon.png 5
Lockheed L-749A Constellation, Western Airlines JP6994448.jpg
A Lockheed Constellation similar to the incident aircraft
Formation11 April 1955
Extinction11 April 1955
CIA/KMT assassination attempt on Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai on the way to the Bandung Conference.

The Kashmir Princess was a chartered Lockheed L-749A Constellation aircraft owned by Air India. On 11 April 1955, it was damaged in midair by a bomb explosion and crashed into the South China Sea while en route from Bombay, India, and Hong Kong to Jakarta, Indonesia.[1] Sixteen of those on board were killed, while three survived.[2]

The target of the assassination was the Chinese Premier, Zhou Enlai,[3] who missed the flight due to a medical emergency and was not on board. The KMT and CIA are major suspects in this case.

Explosion

The aircraft departed Hong Kong at 0425 GMT carrying Chinese and Eastern European delegates, mainly journalists, to the Asia-Afro Bandung Conference in Jakarta.[4] At approximately 0925 GMT the crew heard an explosion; smoke quickly entered the cabin from a fire on the right wing directly behind the No. 3 (or right inboard) engine. Upon hearing the explosion and seeing the fire-warning light for the baggage compartment come on, the captain shut off the No. 3 engine and feathered its propeller, fearing the engine would catch fire. This left three engines running. The crew sent out three distress signals giving their position over the Natuna Islands before the radio went dead.

The captain tried to land the plane on the sea, but the depressurising cabin and the failing circuits made that impossible. Additionally, smoke was seeping into the cockpit. Left with no other option, the crew issued life jackets and opened the emergency doors to ensure a quick escape as the plane plunged into the sea below.

Crash

The starboard wing struck water first, tearing the plane into three parts. The aircraft maintenance engineer (ground engineer), navigator and first officer escaped and were later found by the Indonesian Coast Guard. The remaining 16 passengers and crew members, however, drowned at sea.[5]

Investigators believed that the explosion had been caused by a time bomb placed aboard the aircraft by a Kuomintang secret agent who was attempting to assassinate Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, who had been scheduled to board the plane to attend the conference but had changed his travel plans at the last minute.[6]

Passengers

Passengers of the chartered flight included three staff members named Li Ping, Shih Chi-Ang and Chung Pu Yun of the Chinese delegation to the Bandung Conference and one staff member of the delegation of the Viet Minh from the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The rest of the passengers were journalists – five from China, one from Austria Dr. Friedrich Albert (Fritz) Jensen (Jerusalem) an Austrian Communist Party member and veteran of the Spanish Civil War against General Franco.[7] and from Poland, Jeremi Starec.[8] Chok-Mui Raymond Wong aka Huang Zuomei, MBE the Hong Kong branch director of Xinhua News Agency, also a former Major in the Hong Kong-based communist guerilla unit East River Column was also on the aircraft and is said to have been quite close to Zhou Enlai.[9][10][11][12]

Zhou Enlai

The target of the assassination attempt, Zhou Enlai, had planned to fly from Beijing to Hong Kong and then on to Jakarta on Kashmir Princess. An emergency appendectomy delayed his arrival in Hong Kong;[13] he left China three days after the crash and flew to Rangoon to meet with Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Burmese Prime Minister U Nu before continuing on to Bandung to attend the conference.

Some historians have argued that Zhou may have known about the assassination plot beforehand and that the premier did not undergo an appendectomy at the time. Steve Tsang of Oxford University wrote in the September 1994 edition of The China Quarterly, "Evidence now suggests that Zhou knew of the plot beforehand and secretly changed his travel plans, though he did not stop a decoy delegation of lesser cadres from taking his place."[14]

Investigation

The day after the crash, China's Foreign Ministry issued a statement that described the bombing as "a murder by the special service organizations of the United States and Chiang Kai-shek",[15] while Hong Kong Governor Sir Alexander Grantham maintained that the plane was not tampered with in Hong Kong. However, on 26 May, an Indonesian board of inquiry later announced that a time bomb with an American-made MK-7 detonator was responsible for the crash and it was highly probable that the bomb was placed on the plane in Hong Kong.

The Hong Kong authorities offered HK$100,000 for information leading to the arrest of those responsible. They questioned 71 people connected with the servicing of the Air India flight. When police began to focus on Chow Tse-ming, a janitor for Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Co., he stowed away to Taiwan on a CIA-owned Civil Air Transport aircraft. The Hong Kong police reported that a warrant charging a murder conspiracy was issued, but the man with the name Chow Tse-ming in the warrant had flown to Taiwan on 18 May 1955, and Chow Tse-ming had three aliases.[16]

The Hong Kong police concluded that the Kuomintang had recruited Chow to plant the bomb to kill Zhou Enlai. Apparently, he had bragged to friends about his role in the bombing, and had also spent large amounts of money before he left Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Police tried to extradite Chow, but Taiwan refused and denied that Chow was a KMT agent.[citation needed]

Steve Tsang collected evidence from British, Taiwanese, American and Hong Kong archives that points directly to KMT agents operating in Hong Kong as the perpetrators of the aircraft bombing. According to him, the KMT had a special-operations group stationed in Hong Kong responsible for assassination and sabotage. Designated the Hong Kong Group under Major-General Kong Hoi-ping, it operated a network of 90 agents. In March 1955, the group recruited Chow for the assassination because his job at the airport gave him easy access to the Air India plane, and offered him HK$600,000 and refuge in Taiwan, if necessary.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry document declassified in 2004 also indicates that the KMT secret service was responsible for the bombing.[17]

China had from the outset accused the United States of involvement in the bombing, but while the CIA had considered a plan to assassinate Zhou Enlai at this time,[18] the Church Committee reported that these plans were disapproved of and "strongly censured" by Washington.[19] In a 1971 face-to-face meeting in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Zhou directly asked Henry Kissinger about US involvement in the bombing. Kissinger responded, without really denying involvement, "As I told the Prime Minister the last time, he vastly overestimates the competence of the CIA."[20]

What also speaks for CIA involvement, is the fact that the United States did not want to let the Bandung Conference succeed.

Commemorations

The captain of the plane, D.K. Jatar & stewardess Gloria Eva Berry who perished in the crash, later along with co-pilot M.C Dixit & ground maintenance engineer Anant Karnik and navigator J.C. Pathak became the first civilians to be awarded the Ashoka Chakra Award for "most conspicuous bravery, daring and self-sacrifice". Gloria was the first woman to ever receive the Ashoka Chakra for outstanding bravery.

In 2005, the Xinhua News Agency hosted a symposium to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the crash; three Xinhua journalists had been among the victims.[21]


 

The Official Culprits

NameDescription
CIAThe most high profile of the US intelligence agencies, a covert agent of foreign policy. Funded by a 'black budget' derived from the global drug trade, the CIA is experienced at assassination, blackmail, instigating coups and other such covert deep state actions. Its scrutiny in the early 1970s however led to the development of more secure bases for the most sensitive deep state operations.
TaiwanA large island of mainland China. De facto independent despite claiming to be the legitimate government over all of China.


Rating

5star.png 12 December 2021 Terje 
Many thanks to our Patrons who cover ~2/3 of our hosting bill. Please join them if you can.


References

  1. ↑ http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19550411-1
  2. ↑ http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-07/21/content_350313.htm
  3. ↑ http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/sunday-times/deep-focus/Dj-vu-from-30000-ft/articleshow/45747222.cms
  4. ↑ http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-07/21/content_350313.htm
  5. ↑ http://www.airwhiners.net/whine_cheez/20040726.htm
  6. ↑ http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-07/21/content_350313.htm
  7. ↑ https://gedenkbuch.univie.ac.at/index.php?L=2&person_single_id=40291
  8. ↑ https://zbc.ksiaznica.szczecin.pl/Content/4136/GK_1955_91.pdf
  9. ↑ Karnik, A.S (1958). Kashmir Princess: A.S.Karnik. Printed by J.S.Pereira. Bombay: Jaico Publishing House, Madras.
  10. ↑ https://gwulo.com/node/17894
  11. ↑ https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1323455/then-now-welcome-comrades
  12. ↑ Wong, Raymond (2009). East River Column. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
  13. ↑ https://books.google.com/books?id=weAqDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA37
  14. ↑ "Target Zhou Enlai: The 'Kashmir Princess' Incident of 1955," The China Quarterly. Number 139, September 1994.
  15. ↑ Steve Tsang, The Cold War's Odd Couple: The Unintended Partnership Between the Republic of China and the UK (New York: IB Tauris, 2006), 181.
  16. ↑ "Police Seek Chinese in Crash Case" from Daytona Beach Morning Journal, 3 September 1955
  17. ↑ http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2004-07-20/07153133667s.shtml
  18. ↑ Minnick, Wendell L. "Target: Zhou Enlai", Far Eastern Economic Review, 1995-07-13, pages 54–55.
  19. ↑ Arthur M. Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978), 517.
  20. ↑ Memorandum of conversation (Henry Kissinger, Zhou Enlai, and staff), Foreign, Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume E-13, Documents on China, 1969–1972, United States Department of State, 21 October 1971
  21. ↑ http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-04/11/content_2815170.htm
Retrieved from "https://wikispooks.com/w/index.php?title=Kashmir_Princess&oldid=237675"