The bodies of two Republic of China Air Force pilots who were killed in a crash last week were received by grieving family members at the Air Force Academy yesterday.
The bodies of 32-year-old Major Wang Ching-chun (王勁鈞) and 23-year-old First Lieutenant Huang Chun-jung (黃俊榮) were flown from the crash site in Hualien to the academy in Kaohsiung.
The pilots were killed after their AT-3 training aircraft crashed in mountainous terrain during a routine training flight.
Photo: Su Fu-nan, Taipei Times
The tearful fathers of the pilots waited on the tarmac at the academy and murmured to their fallen loved ones after they were unloaded, while air force personnel stood at attention.
The bodies were sent by ambulance to a funeral parlor.
Family members who waited next to the ambulance were seen weeping and one person was heard saying: “I do not want this.”
Wang is survived by his wife, who is a teacher, a daughter and a nine-month-old son.
Wang, who had clocked 1,489 flight hours, was a flight instructor at the academy, while Huang had 116 hours of flying experience.
Sources said Wang was in the front seat of the plane and Huang was in the back when the plane crashed.
The bodies and aircraft debris were found in a forested area of Hualien County early on Saturday afternoon after days of search and rescue efforts, the military said.
A committee has been set up to investigate the incident, it said.
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
UPDATED TEST: The new rules aim to assess drivers’ awareness of risky behaviors and how they respond under certain circumstances, the Highway Bureau said Driver’s license applicants who fail to yield to pedestrians at intersections or to check blind spots, or omit pointing-and-calling procedures would fail the driving test, the Highway Bureau said yesterday. The change is set to be implemented at the end of the month, and is part of the bureau’s reform of the driving portion of the test, which has been criticized for failing to assess whether drivers can operate vehicles safely. Sedan drivers would be tested regarding yielding to pedestrians and turning their heads to check blind spots, while drivers of large vehicles would be tested on their familiarity with pointing-and-calling
RSS