The day after a two-seater fighter jet disappeared last week during a routine military training mission over the Taiwan Strait, debris and body parts were found, but authorities are at a loss to explain what happened.
The crash on Oct. 20 revived decades-old rumors: Are the Penghu islands the Bermuda Triangle of Asia?
“The Bermuda terror,” a headline in the Chinese-language United Evening News read. “Three hundred dead or missing in 40 years.”
PHOTO: JEROME FAVRE, AP
Cable news stations aired grisly images of earlier plane crashes in the area, sparking debate in Internet chat rooms. The reports prompted Penghu officials to issue a statement disputing the Bermuda Triangle comparison, which they fear might scare away investors in a casino resort and other projects.
Experts dismiss the idea, as well as speculation that an irregular magnetic field affects navigation instruments.
Scientists have found nothing abnormal in the area, said Chen Wen-shan (陳文山), a geologist at National Taiwan University.
The pristine waters around the Penghu islands have seen their fair share of crashes.
Government records show at least three commercial planes, one civilian helicopter and five fighter jets have crashed in the area in the past two decades.
Several spy planes reportedly went down or were reported missing while flying missions to China during the Cold War in the 1960s and 1970s. The military refuses to confirm the reports, saying most of the documents remain classified.
The deadliest accident came in May 2002, when a China Airlines flight to Hong Kong broke up over waters north of Penghu, killing all 225 on board.
Seven months later, a cargo plane crashed in the same area.
The back-to-back crashes bolstered the Bermuda Triangle speculation so much that tourists all but shunned Penghu in the following months.
So far, the latest fighter jet crash has not rekindled as many jitters among the public, much to the relief of local officials.
Penghu County Commissioner Wang Chien-fa (王乾發) blames the accidents on the high volume of air traffic, saying most of the mishaps have been shown to be the result of human or mechanical failure.
“With so many aircraft flying over our airspace everyday, the chances of crashes are proportionally higher, and that's all,” he said in a telephone interview.
Yuan Hsiao-feng (袁曉峰), an aviation expert at National Cheng Kung University, pointed to the high risks of undertaking military training flights.
Ending a summer season that drew thousands of swimmers to its beaches, the island chain of 90,000 people is now getting ready to welcome windsurfers.
Tourism officials also hope that Penghu will benefit from a recent relaxing of travel restrictions for Chinese who want to visit Taiwan.
The islands, first settled by shipwrecked Chinese sailors 700 years ago, have an undersea ancient wall and other ruins. They are also an attraction because they were once at the forefront of the bitter Taiwan-China military standoff, tourism official Hung Tung-lin (洪棟霖) said.
The islands have long been seen as mysterious because of their inaccessibility and a past history of shipwrecks, he said.
South of Penghu, an area called the “Ditch of Black Waters” is a graveyard for numerous boats, said to have capsized in swirling seas during the height of Chinese immigration to Taiwan two to three centuries ago.
Japanese pilots and sailors are said to have avoided rough seas off Penghu, which was known to them as the “Devil's Sea,” when Japan ruled Taiwan.
Today, trawlers and cargo ships sail through the region safely.
“The mystic perception is fine but we hope people will not associate this area with danger,” Hung said.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS