The two crews on board the Boeing 737 did not have to say it to know it, to feel it, to hate it. Yet there was no avoiding it. Sometimes military service posed risks to the flesh, and sometimes the dangers were no less real for being less tangible.
There was no question to any of the men which was worse.
At one in the afternoon, the 737 had left the People’s Liberation Army Air Force landing strip in Zhanjiang on the South China Sea, accompanied by a Russian-made Il-76 jet. Less than an hour later, crossing one time zone to the west, the two planes were on the ground nearly one thousand miles away, at Ha Tay Field, which the People’s Army of Vietnam, Air Defense Force, maintained outside Ho Chi Minh City. There, both jets were quickly refueled so they could continue their journey. The Il-76 had a range of 2,160 miles. The 737 had a range of 2,600 miles. The 76 would stay with the 737 for another thousand miles, refuel it in midair, then turn back to Vietnam before heading home. The 737 would continue to the southwest. It would make subsequent refueling stops at Jakarta, Java, and then at the French island of Kerguelen. That would give it enough fuel to reach its destination, conduct a brief search, and then return along the same route.
Sold by Boeing to China United Airlines in 2000 and soon thereafter shifted to the PLAAF, the 737 had been equipped as a reconnaissance aircraft. Like the Chinese navy, the Chinese air force—though the largest in the world—was operated primarily with aging craft. Reconnaissance that was not conducted by satellite was done mostly the old-fashioned way: with binoculars, thermal imaging, and cameras—albeit digital, with an assist from onboard computer enhancement.
Two full flight crews were on board for the twenty-two-hour flight, each consisting of a pilot, copilot, navigator, and radio operator. In addition to staying in contact with the air base, the radio operator was listening for any additional signals that might be relayed by satellite from the stricken submarine. He would be monitoring Chinese and Russian satellites, as well as contacting all of the scientific research stations in the region. They might see or hear something that could help tell them exactly where the submarine was or what may have happened, perhaps radio signals or seismic activity. Shortly before takeoff, a report from the Ukrainian Antarctic Center at the Ministry of Education and Sciences noted that an “earthquakelike signature” was recorded by their Vernadsky Station on the Argentine Islands, just off the Antarctic Peninsula. The reading was taken minutes after the distress signal was received from the Destiny. The zhong jiang in charge of naval recovery operations suggested that the explosion of the submarine engine might have produced a reading like the one recorded at Vernadsky. The vice admiral’s office had instructed both radio operators to take careful readings for radiation levels, in the event that the submarine’s nuclear reactor had suffered a breach. The navy would want that information before they arrived. If the reactor casing had been compromised, the defense minister himself would have to decide whether to inform the research stations in the region, as well as commercial vessels that sailed these waters.
Only one reconnaissance team was on board the 737, since they wouldn’t be needed until the jet reached the south pole. They would spend most of their time in the quarters that were located just rear of the electronics section. There were cots arranged bunk-style along the wall of the fuselage, a washroom, and a small galley. The passengers also included two naval submarine engineers and a three-man supply master’s crew, who were in charge of cold-weather survival gear, supplies, and their parachute deployment. The jet was not equipped to land or effect a rescue. That would come later, in four days, when the naval vessels arrived from the Beihai naval base on the Gulf of Tonkin. They would attempt to recover the submarine. However, if crewmen from the Destiny had managed to escape and deploy lifeboats or reach shore, an airdrop would help keep them alive until then.
The crew of the 737 and the air force command were disconcerted that in an age of instantaneous communication, when data and video images could race about the globe in instants—going first to outer space to be returned, intact—an effort to save lives had to be done one kilometer at a time.
But that wasn’t the worst part. The submarine crew were warriors. They understood the dangers that came with the privilege of sailing this vessel and defending the nation. They were also faceless. The airmen had a manifest in the event that communication was established. But Senior Captain Chien and Captain Biao and all the rest were still names, not people. What made this more viscerally disturbing to the Chinese fliers were two unrelated factors.
First, the accident had occurred aboard the flagship of the first generation of homegrown Chinese submarines. The airmen understood that kind of loss. The PLAAF had recently inaugurated flights of its Shenyang J-8, the first Chinese-made fighter jet. Though the J-8 was not as fast or maneuverable as the most advanced Western jets, it was a proud beginning—just as the first Song-class submarine was considered the strong firstborn prince of a twenty-first-century Chinese navy. To lose the fleet flagship was not just a tactical setback, but a stain on national pride. Therein lay the roots of the second factor that quickly took hold of the crew: an awareness of the personal impact this would have on the men, their careers, and their lives. Even if the airmen were able to locate survivors, this mission would always be remembered for the news it brought, not the men it might save. By association, the two crews on board the 737 would always be shrouded in the submarine’s failure.
Like the seamen, they had known there were dangers when they joined the military. But they had never bothered to think of the ones that harmed the man but not the body. The ones that could never be repaired, that were never talked about in training. The ones that caused people to fall silent when you passed.
The taint of failure.