Office of the Historian

941.523/7–2654

No. 241
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Director of the Office of Chinese Affairs (McConaughy)

secret
[Washington,] July 26, 1954.

Subject:

  • Chinese Communist Attack on British Airliner near Hainan Island

Participants:

  • Sir Roger Makins, British Ambassador
  • Mr. R.H. Scott, British Minister
  • The Secretary
  • The Under Secretary
  • Mr. McConaughy, Director, Office of Chinese Affairs

During the call on the Secretary by Ambassador Makins, the following was discussed: the Chinese Communist attack on the British airliner near Hainan Island.

Ambassador Makins referred to the shooting down of a Cathay Pacific commercial airliner near Hainan Island on July 23 and indicated the tenor of the British note of protest to the Chinese Communist [Page 509] regime. He said that he had received word from the Foreign Office that a fairly satisfactory note expressing regrets has been received from the Chinese Communist Foreign Office. He promised to send the Department copies of both notes.1 He said that in view of the prompt Chinese Communist assumption of responsibility, the British Foreign Office believed it might be preferable for the British Government to handle all indemnity claims. The Ambassador thought that we would get a “dusty answer” if we filed a U.S. Government protest. His Government might be able to get compensation for all the cases, including the American ones, if the matter were handled entirely by the British.

The Secretary said that it seemed necessary for a U.S. note to be forwarded to Peiping through British good offices, and that the Legal Adviser was working on a draft.

The Secretary informed the Ambassador of a second incident on July 26 in which two U.S. carrier-based search planes were attacked by two Chinese Communist fighter planes while looking for possible additional survivors, resulting in the shooting down of the two Chinese Communist planes. The Secretary gave the Ambassador a copy of his statement for the press, No. 406 of July 26, on this subject.2

The Ambassador read this statement and commented that it was excellent. He remarked that this incident was quite distinct from the first one, and inquired if the British Chargé in Peiping would be expected to deliver a separate protest on this occurrence. The Secretary said he anticipated that this would be requested.

The Secretary said that his press statement of July 243 on the attack on the plane afforded an opportunity to “blow off steam” and enabled us to map our course of action more deliberately. He hoped that the statement on the second incident would serve as an effective warning to the Chinese Communists and would prevent further reckless attempts at air interception by them.

  1. Copies are filed with a July 27 memorandum from McConaughy to Murphy. (941.523/7–2754) The text of the Chinese note is printed in Jerome Alan Cohen and Hungdah Chiu, People’s China and International Law: A Documentary Study (Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1974), p. 740.↩
  2. See footnote 4, supra.↩
  3. See footnote 4, Document 238.↩