Michael Klein became an important link in the investigation into the crash of an Air Force jet in Hsinchu last week. He has a fascinating account of the visit of the Air Force officers to his house today during their investigation. Note these words from his previous post:To me, their value is in the hope that they will clear the pilots of error.I also want to give my personal take on the incident. I saw the jet in its final moments. The pilots had time to eject. They chose not to. Instead, they flew their aircraft into the ground on the base, thus sparing countless hundreds of lives in the crowded Hukou area that would have been lost in the crash and subsequent explosion.
When I look at the photos of 5371, I see 2 heroes in the cockpit....
These were men. All honor to them.
UPDATE: Michael's blog now has received thousands of hits on this issue. More power to him! To understand how the media speculation has run wild, flip to the posts on this thread at the Taiwan Military Forum. Then when the pictures and story are finally released, you can have a hearty laugh, and receive yet another education in how the media, when they have nothing, go ahead and make stuff up anyway.
[Taiwan]
Excellent post Michael. You are 100% right. The first thing lawmakers started doing was pointing fingers and looking for blood in the MND. No one was ever concerned with what could have been if it wasn't for the pilots who took the ultimate sacrifice to save others lives.
ReplyDeleteHis site is getting swamped. I noticed he has in the neighborhood of 10K hits today alone. Did the wires pick him up?
ReplyDeleteHe's been contacted by some of the local newspapers. But the Chinese language blogs know about him, and they get massive hit numbers. There are blogs that routinely get 15,000 hits a day. Our English blog numbers are nothing.
ReplyDeleteMichael
Just out of curiosity, what kind of traffic do you see on your blog, michael?
ReplyDeleteDunno Ed. I try not to look, it gives me the cold sweats. But you can check my sitemeter stats down on the bottom of the sidebar.
ReplyDeleteMichael
Alas, i would have needed your login info to see that :D
ReplyDeleteI actually find it interesting to see what page/photo will attract people, and from how many different places they can come from.
As for the cold sweat, I'm already quite happy with the traffic i get, and did get a surprise the first time i checked my stats, so it's all like free money.