Lin Biao incident (1971)
린뱌오 사건 (1971)
The crash on 13 September 1971 of an air force Trident near Öndörkhaan in Mongolia, killing all nine aboard, including Lin Biao, CCP vice-chairman and Mao’s designated successor, his wife Ye Qun and his son Lin Liguo; in China it is called the September 13 incident. The party announced that Lin had fled towards the Soviet Union after a failed plot, Project 571, to assassinate Mao, but questions about his involvement and the flight remain.
In depth
At the Lushan plenum of 1970 Mao and Lin Biao’s camp clashed over restoring the office of state chairman, and Mao brought down Chen Boda and put pressure on Lin’s generals. According to the official account, in March 1971 Lin Liguo, deputy director of the Office of the Air Force Command, drew up the “Outline of Project 571” in Shanghai and planned to attack Mao’s train during his southern tour of August–September, but Mao changed his schedule and returned to Beijing on the evening of the 12th. The Lin family at Beidaihe took off from Shanhaiguan airfield at about 0:30 on the 13th; Lin’s daughter Lin Liheng had warned the guard unit that her father might be taken away. Asked whether to shoot the aircraft down, Mao is said to have replied, “Let him go.”
According to Mongolian witnesses the aircraft flew close to the Soviet border, turned back south and crashed at about 2:30 a.m. A Soviet team identified Lin and Ye Qun from their skulls in 1972 and judged that the aircraft had enough fuel to reach Irkutsk or Chita. Many of the related records were destroyed under Hua Guofeng. After the incident the military chiefs and over a thousand senior officers were purged, and the public was told in June 1972. The betrayal of the “closest comrade-in-arms” broke the myth of Mao’s infallibility, and Mao entrusted Zhou Enlai with rehabilitating veterans and with rapprochement with the United States. In 1981 the special tribunal named Lin, together with Jiang Qing, as head of one of two “counter-revolutionary cliques”.