Actually this suggests to me an unconscious or already dead pilot flying on auto until the gas runs out. Take media reports with a pinch of salt this time of year. Its not called the silly season for nothing.
North Korean plane crashes in China
- Thread starter danielchin
- Start date
Actually this suggests to me an unconscious or already dead pilot flying on auto until the gas runs out. Take media reports with a pinch of salt this time of year. Its not called the silly season for nothing.
Pointblank
Senior Member
I would argue that trying to fly to Vladovostok would expose him to intercept attempts by the North Koreans as the shortest possible route would mean multiple intercept opportunities to bring him down.
My argument is that if this was an defection attempt, it was the former, not the latter. It was a rash, relatively unplanned gambit by the pilot. He would not have thought the plan through beforehand, and was making major assumptions as to what was possible based upon his existing knowledge. If this is the case, then perhaps something sudden happened back in North Korea that forced the pilot's hand into making a decision to try to defect.
I would disagree. If it was an uncontrolled landing, his aircraft would be in lots of little bits right now. The aircraft is amazingly intact and unless some stroke of luck occurred, I'd say the pilot did have control for the crash landing, but since he plowed straight into a brick house, he's dead.
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If you choose to defect by flying from South West DPRK to the Russian border on North East DPRK, then the easiest way would be to weave along the North Korean and Chinese border, regularly bobbing from one side to the other.
This plane just flew in a straight line into the heart of Manchuria until the fuel ran out. If the plane landed relatively intact, I would say its because it was a small, light (no fuel weight) and very aerodynamic craft, possibly assisted by autopilot that managed to glide down.
Its even possible that a local runway transponder was trying to land the plane before the fuel ran out. It was after all not far from a regional airport, which I am sure is fitted with such devices.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
A general rule of thumb is that that more extreme/obscure/ridiculous assumptions you need to make explain a theory, the more likely that that theory is wrong.
So far, we have had:
- Does not know much about things outside North Korea, yet seem to know enough to try and plan his flight path to fly over urban population centers?
- Pilot has no idea how much fuel he has or how far that will get him. Ever drive a car? Did anyone explain to you the fuel consumption rate? Ever run out of gas trying to get somewhere? Even if you were not given the exact fuel consumption rates, even a teenager can figure out a rough estimate of how far a given level of fuel will get you even with only a few hours behind the wheel.
-The pilot did not plan the 'defection'. Really? Are you serious? This was not an impulse purchase. This is literally a life and death decision, and it will take a lot to convince people someone would make this kind of a decision without at least doing a logic check to see if it was possible with the most basic research.
All that makes me doubt the theory very much. Just far too many extreme assumptions are needed to make this work.
There are some interesting facts that so far no one has picked up on or considered.
For example, he was flying alone, where was his wingman? May understanding is that it is common practice patrols to go out in pairs as a minimum, partly to dissuade attempted defections. Perhaps, his wingman/lead suffered technical problems and had to head home during a patrol, that might have suddenly presented him with a golden opportunity to make his move.
Why the pilot didn't eject when his plane ran out of fuel. To assume the ejection seats don't work or that North Korea pilots are not trained to use them are completely baseless and pretty silly tbh. Now, it could have been that the pilot didn't want his plane nosediving into a school or something and then be facing homicide charges, or it could be that he was too low to eject when he did run out of fuel.
The mechanical failure cover story, and that was a cover story as it came out only a few days after the crash. There's no chance that they were able to do the tests needed to establish the cause of the crash that quickly. Was this just to spare the North Koreans embarrassment, or was there something else at play?
As for the failure to intercept, well the homebase of this Mig was very close to the boarder. That means its very common for North Korean fighters to be operating extremely close to the boarder and Chinese air traffic control would not have known anything was different until the Mig crossed the boarder.
He got 250km into China. Sounds like a lot, but at cruising speed, that would have only taken 17 minutes, and maybe was little as 6 minutes if he was pushing the plane to its max speed.
This is better friendly neighbours, who do not typically see each other as a threat. If they wanted to, I'm pretty sure a Canadian fighter pilot can penetrate at least a similar distance into US airspace before he was intercepted. Same for any country in mainland Europe in the EU.
For island countries, you have open water all around so there is no where for planes to hide from ground based radar, and anything flying towards you from the sea looks suspicious, so you have a lot more warning about possible intruders. For land-locked neighbours, especially those on good terms with each other, you have no early warning as your neighbour can fly anything he likes anywhere in his airspace. And because you are on good terms, you won't have standby fighters near the boarder on quick launch alert. Even during the height of the cold war, alert fighters' response time would have been considered excellent if they got into the air within 5 minutes of an alert going up.
As my simple calculations showed, even by that benchmark, the PLAAF fighters would have only been in the air maybe as little as a minute before the Mig crashed. No time at all to intercept.
If the Mig had been flying low to try and avoid ground radar, that alert time would have been cut shorter still.
So far, we have had:
- Does not know much about things outside North Korea, yet seem to know enough to try and plan his flight path to fly over urban population centers?
- Pilot has no idea how much fuel he has or how far that will get him. Ever drive a car? Did anyone explain to you the fuel consumption rate? Ever run out of gas trying to get somewhere? Even if you were not given the exact fuel consumption rates, even a teenager can figure out a rough estimate of how far a given level of fuel will get you even with only a few hours behind the wheel.
-The pilot did not plan the 'defection'. Really? Are you serious? This was not an impulse purchase. This is literally a life and death decision, and it will take a lot to convince people someone would make this kind of a decision without at least doing a logic check to see if it was possible with the most basic research.
All that makes me doubt the theory very much. Just far too many extreme assumptions are needed to make this work.
There are some interesting facts that so far no one has picked up on or considered.
For example, he was flying alone, where was his wingman? May understanding is that it is common practice patrols to go out in pairs as a minimum, partly to dissuade attempted defections. Perhaps, his wingman/lead suffered technical problems and had to head home during a patrol, that might have suddenly presented him with a golden opportunity to make his move.
Why the pilot didn't eject when his plane ran out of fuel. To assume the ejection seats don't work or that North Korea pilots are not trained to use them are completely baseless and pretty silly tbh. Now, it could have been that the pilot didn't want his plane nosediving into a school or something and then be facing homicide charges, or it could be that he was too low to eject when he did run out of fuel.
The mechanical failure cover story, and that was a cover story as it came out only a few days after the crash. There's no chance that they were able to do the tests needed to establish the cause of the crash that quickly. Was this just to spare the North Koreans embarrassment, or was there something else at play?
As for the failure to intercept, well the homebase of this Mig was very close to the boarder. That means its very common for North Korean fighters to be operating extremely close to the boarder and Chinese air traffic control would not have known anything was different until the Mig crossed the boarder.
He got 250km into China. Sounds like a lot, but at cruising speed, that would have only taken 17 minutes, and maybe was little as 6 minutes if he was pushing the plane to its max speed.
This is better friendly neighbours, who do not typically see each other as a threat. If they wanted to, I'm pretty sure a Canadian fighter pilot can penetrate at least a similar distance into US airspace before he was intercepted. Same for any country in mainland Europe in the EU.
For island countries, you have open water all around so there is no where for planes to hide from ground based radar, and anything flying towards you from the sea looks suspicious, so you have a lot more warning about possible intruders. For land-locked neighbours, especially those on good terms with each other, you have no early warning as your neighbour can fly anything he likes anywhere in his airspace. And because you are on good terms, you won't have standby fighters near the boarder on quick launch alert. Even during the height of the cold war, alert fighters' response time would have been considered excellent if they got into the air within 5 minutes of an alert going up.
As my simple calculations showed, even by that benchmark, the PLAAF fighters would have only been in the air maybe as little as a minute before the Mig crashed. No time at all to intercept.
If the Mig had been flying low to try and avoid ground radar, that alert time would have been cut shorter still.
lcloo
Captain
An alternate suggestion is that the MIG-21 was sent to Shanyang Aircraft Factory for repair or upgrade, since Chinese was awared of the flight, thus no intercept.
The mechanical problem could be true for the age of the aircraft, but was reported as lost in direction to cover up the actual mission and that China is helping to upgrade/repair the MIG.
The circumstancial evidence is (1) the jet was flying towards Shenyang and was crashed at 27 Km away from Shenyang airport and (2) the pilot did not bail out, may be trying attemp to crash land away from populated area and houses, since he had the responsibility to do so.
Anyway, we really don't know the truth. Just another speculation.
The mechanical problem could be true for the age of the aircraft, but was reported as lost in direction to cover up the actual mission and that China is helping to upgrade/repair the MIG.
The circumstancial evidence is (1) the jet was flying towards Shenyang and was crashed at 27 Km away from Shenyang airport and (2) the pilot did not bail out, may be trying attemp to crash land away from populated area and houses, since he had the responsibility to do so.
Anyway, we really don't know the truth. Just another speculation.
This one makes some sense. However couldn't the North Koreans just ferry the planes over by trains for an upgrade (well Kim Jong Il loves trains...). Could it be that they are not only looking for a plane upgrade but also pilot training?
lcloo
Captain
Flying in is less suspicious, since it looks like Chinese J-7. They may have flown quite a few jets already, who knows.
Reason for the upgrades? (1) the recent tension with South Korea and the joint US-Korea exercises, they want the old MIGs in prime fighting conditions that require new replacement parts from China, (2) Possible to re-wire for new Chinese AAM/ AGM and change some avionics for such purpose.
Just another speculation from me.
Reason for the upgrades? (1) the recent tension with South Korea and the joint US-Korea exercises, they want the old MIGs in prime fighting conditions that require new replacement parts from China, (2) Possible to re-wire for new Chinese AAM/ AGM and change some avionics for such purpose.
Just another speculation from me.
I think this "speculation" of yours makes a lot more sense than the defector speculation. However given how bad the conditions of the North Korean MIG-21s are in I think they'd need a major rehaul. I'm also sure that Chinese aviation experts from Shenyang could make a quick buck by hopping across the border as well.
200 km may seem like a lot, but you have to realize this is only about 8-10 minutes into Chinese air space, you'd need to have military fighters stationed directly in the way to intercept it in time.
If say a CF-188 was flying into the United States, I would wager it will make more than 200 km.
If say a CF-188 was flying into the United States, I would wager it will make more than 200 km.
Pointblank
Senior Member
If the aircraft was in a really bad shape, I would not want to fly the aircraft. I would either disassemble and I would either fly the aircraft in a cargo plane, or truck it, or even transport it on a train. To cover up, I would either use drapes over the aircraft or build a quick box over the aircraft. And with North Korea's fuel situation, it would make sense to not to have a pilot ferry the MiG and instead transport it via ground or via cargo plane (the North Koreans have 3 Il-76's that can be used to ferry multiple birds at once).
I would disagree, the autopilot has control limits that if exceeded, would turn the autopilot off. Running out of fuel while steadily declining would force the autopilot to try compensate for loosing altitude, which would disengage the autopilot after a while. The autopilot's primary job is to keep the aircraft on a certain heading and altitude, and it accomplishes that through the use the ailerons and horizontal stabilizers. More advanced autopilots adjust the engine output as well. What will happen is that the autopilot will try to counteract the slow decline in altitude by adjusting the pitch of the aircraft, and with no thrust, the aircraft will eventually stall. The MiG-21 has a tendency to have its nose wander accompanied by more noticeable wing rocking just before a stall. Autopilots will try to counteract that by the use of the ailerons, but ailerons are ineffective in countering roll oscillations and any use of the rudder would push aircraft into a spin. As a result, the aircraft then goes out of control with the autopilot kicking out and will either tumble from the sky, or go nose down into the ground. Either scenario will result in aircraft in little bits.