EP-3E crewmembers return to
duty;
will join Armed Forces Day celebration
By Sandra Jontz and Mark Oliva, Stars and Stripes
The
crewmembers who were detained for 12 days after their Navy surveillance plane made an
emergency landing on a Chinese island last month are back at work.
A Navy
spokesman said all 24 members of the crew — eight of them assigned to the Naval
Security Group Activity at Misawa and one from Kadena Air Base on Okinawa — reported
Monday to the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station, Wash., home of the Navy EP-3E Aries II
reconnaissance plane.
The plane
was damaged April 1 when it collided with a Chinese jet fighter while on a surveillance
mission off the southeastern coast of China. The Chinese jet crashed into the South China
Sea and its pilot is presumed dead.
The spy
plane, packed with sensitive electronic eavesdropping gear, remains on China’s Hainan
island while negotiations for its return continue. Most of the equipment and information
gathered during the surveillance mission were destroyed by the crew prior to landing,
Pentagon officials have said.
The
crewmembers were to be debriefed before traveling to Andrews Air Force Base, Md., for a
special appearance at an Armed Forces Day celebration this weekend. They are to be special
guests of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Crewmembers
were given a 30-day vacation when they were returned to the United States. The recall was
three days earlier than planned.
"The
primary reason for the recall was to make sure they could all get back in time," Kim
Martin, public affairs officer for NAS Whidbey Island, said in a phone interview. "We
were able to get them all back."
Before
flying to Washington, the crew will continue a debriefing process that began on their
flight from China to the U.S. on April 14, Martin said. The debriefing was interrupted
when the crew returned to Whidbey Island and was given leave.
The crew is
scheduled to leave Whidbey Island on Thursday and arrive the same day at Andrews AFB.
Armed
Forces Day 2001, which kicks off Friday, is an annual Pentagon-sponsored event featuring
an air show and a display of military equipment. The air show could be the last joint
public appearance of all 24 crewmembers, Martin said.
"After
that, they’ll probably go back on duty at the bases where they’re
assigned," Martin said.
The fate of
the surveillance plane, however, is unknown.
Pentagon
officials are negotiating with China to make repairs to the plane and fly it off the
island, but Chinese officials so far have refused. An alternative is to disassemble the
plane for shipment back to the United States.
The $36
million, four-prop plane was built by Lockheed Martin Aeronautical Systems Co. It is one
of 11 aircraft in the Navy based on an Orion P-3 airframe and equipped with sensitive
receivers and high-gain antennas used for tactical intelligence gathering.
A Lockheed
Martin team inspected the plane earlier this month, but the Pentagon has not released its
findings on the plane’s operability.
David
Allen contributed to this story.
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