Military Region I established a steering committee to search for MiG-21U after 47 years
Military Region I has established a Steering Committee (SC) to search for the MiG-21U training aircraft that went missing in 1971 in the Tam Dao area.
Major General Phan Van Tuong, Deputy Commander of Military Region I, said that the military region has set up a steering committee to search for the MiG-21U training aircraft that went missing in 1971 in the Tam Dao area.
"To carry out the task assigned by the head of the Ministry of National Defense, we have established a search steering committee and deployed the work to the Military Command of the province, district and related communes," General Tuong informed.
A source from the Thai Nguyen Provincial Military Command also confirmed this issue and said that the Dai Tu District Military Command and the My Yen and Hoang Nong communes near the foot of Tam Dao mountain will be the key forces to coordinate the search.
Previously, on April 30, 1971, the plane went missing along with the former Soviet flight instructor Poyarkov Yuri Nikolaevich - then 38 years old and the Vietnamese student - pilot Cong Phuong Thao, 22 years old, who had just graduated from a pilot training class in the Soviet Union.
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| Residents of My Yen and Hoang Nong communes (Dai Tu district, Thai Nguyen) were the first to discover important clues about the missing MiG-21U. In the photo: The size of the wreckage before it was handed over to the Air Defense - Air Force on February 28, 2018. |
In the context of the US Air Force intensifying its war of destruction in the North, the Air Defense - Air Force at that time organized many helicopter searches in the Tam Dao mountain area belonging to the Dai Tu district, old Bac Thai, now Thai Nguyen, but found no clues, including the plane wreckage as well as the pilot's whereabouts. Therefore, this incident was classified as missing. The families of Cong Phuong Thao and Poyarkov were informed of this.
The clue to this mysterious disappearance was found by the search team of Mr. Le Anh, a PhD in mathematics who studied at the prestigious Lomonosov University in the former Soviet Union, and then briefly worked as a lecturer at the Military Technical Academy.
With enthusiasm, information gathered through Facebook and luck, in February this year, Mr. Le Anh and the people of My Yen commune, Dai Tu district climbed to an area in the Tam Dao range and found a special piece of aircraft wreckage. That piece has now been confirmed by the specialized department of the Air Defense - Air Force to be from the missing MiG-21U.
From this clue, in mid-March, the Air Defense - Air Force organized a short search at the coordinates provided by Le Anh's group. "At that time, we coordinated but because of the short time and complex terrain, we could not conclude much" - Major General Tuong said.
According to the information obtained, it is expected that when the weather turns to autumn, the Tam Dao area towards Dai Tu, Thai Nguyen will be dry, then Military Region I will organize a field search. Currently, through the local military agency system, the Thai Nguyen Provincial Military Command has assigned the task to the Dai Tu District Military Command and deployed it to the militia and self-defense forces of related communes, focusing on My Duc and Hoang Nong communes.
These are two communes where many people after 1975 went up the mountain and discovered several locations with plane wrecks. They “cut up” and brought down the mountain most of this war scrap to sell aluminum, scrap steel or cast pots, brass… Therefore, Dai Tu district and the militia and self-defense forces of the communes are mobilizing people to return the collected debris (if any) and provide information for the Steering Committee of Military Region I to analyze and evaluate.
Coincidentally, on this year's War Invalids and Martyrs Day, on July 26, on Nhat-nam.ru - a Russian forum gathering many Soviet veterans who worked in Vietnam during the war, a letter appeared from the grandson of the missing flight instructor Poyarkov.
Accordingly, Mr. Poyarkov’s wife and daughter are still alive and are very interested in information and search results related to their relatives. Along with the wishes of the relatives of pilot Cong Phuong Thao (currently living in Tay Ho, Hanoi), the possibility of the field search will be strongly promoted to have a final conclusion./.
