U.S. Spy Plane vs. Chinese Jets: A Tale of a Tortoise and Some Hares

Pentagon and Navy officials and pilots uniformly deride the Chinese claim that the lumbering turboprop airplane, which can travel only half as fast as the pair of Chinese F-8s that were shadowing it, was to blame for the accident. "That claim makes as much sense as a guy in a powerboat complaining when he hits a sailboat," one senior Navy officer said. "It's the powerboat guy's responsibility — just like it's the jet pilot's responsibility — to avoid the slow mover."

Because the U.S. plane was being tracked by a pair of F-8s — a homegrown version of the Russians' venerable MiG-21 — there was talk that an effort by the crew of the EP-3 to avoid one of the F-8s might have inadvertently led to a collision with the second. But Navy officials both in Washington and at Pacific Command headquarters in Hawaii said there was no evidence yet that such a "pinching" movement took place.

The Navy's EP-3E Aries II aircraft is a four-engine, low-wing, electronic warfare and reconnaissance aircraft crammed with state-of-the-art electronic surveillance equipment for its primary eavesdropping mission. Its four Allison T56-A-14 turboprop engines give it the ability to fly 12-hour missions and more than 3,000 miles. It has 24 numbered seating positions — the maximum number of personnel was on board during Saturday's flight.

The world has seen military flare-ups in these parts before. In 1983, to the north, a Soviet fighter downed a Korean airliner that strayed into Soviet airspace, killing all 269 aboard. And Saturday's mid-air collision occurred just outside the Gulf of Tonkin, where in 1964 President Johnson used a skirmish involving the USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy as a pretext for launching air strikes against North Vietnam, beginning what came to be known as the Vietnam War.