When the People’s Republic took over in 1949 there was a lot of optimism. China was badly underdeveloped, but that could soon be rectified by a new generation of people untainted by the corruption of the past. China first jet was designed by a small group whose average age was 22. The design from a clean sheet of paper took 100 days. Gosh if things were that easy, why can’t everybody do it? So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
You have to admire the optimism of this stamp. Our life has been hard, but our children will live the life we dream of. Where China does for itself and it’s output is world class. We will be reaching for the sky in airplanes from here. Not foreign stuff we have to pay so much for. Our future will be our own.
Todays stamp is issue A103, a four Fen stamp issued by the Peoples Republic of China on December 30th, 1958. It was a four stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 50 cents used.
In 1949 there were only 36 airports in all of China, most of which could not handle large airliners. China had yet to manufacture an airplane. The two airlines were joint ventures, one with American Pan Am, another with German Lufthansa. If China was going to build an aviation industry, it was starting from the absolute bottom. A then secret airplane factory was established in Shenyang and the first aircraft would be a two seat piston engine pilot training plane. This was done with Soviet help and was a reverse engineered Yak 18. The establishment of a Chinese aviation industry was a high priority of Chairman Mao and he outlined a strategy that went from the ability to repair existing imported planes to copying those planes for domestic production, and then to design and manufacturing. That last step is something that still confounds China 70 years later.
The Shenyang factory attempted to leapfrog all this. They saw that jet fighter aircraft were getting a lot faster and harder for pilots to handle. As in the West, team leader Chen Ming Sheng saw that jet pilots would need a small maneuverable jet on which to train. Unlike plane designers in the west. Chen was young, untrained, and a carpenter by trade. A team of 92 people with an average age of 22 built a prototype of a two seat jet trainer in 100 days. The design drawings were sent to Russia for advice. The jet engine was a copy of the Soviet copy of the Rolls Royce Derwent jet engine that the British Atlee government had some thought foolishly passed on to the Soviet Union post war. In Britain, the Derwent jet powered the Gloster Meteor fighter.
Mao was very happy to hear of the Chinese design. The name Annihilation Instruction 1 was given. He arranged for there to be an airshow for him of the two flying prototypes. The airshow went off but on the return to Shenyang one of the jets had trouble with the engine and barely made it back. Progress then ground to a halt as nobody at the factory had any idea how to fix the jet engine they had copied. The government realized that the Annihilation 1 was probably not ready for mass production.
The failure was papered over by claiming that Chinese pilots did not actually need jet trainers as they were having no problem going from the Yak 18 to the Chinese copies of Soviet Migs. Oddly this proved true. The Soviets withdrew their support of Chinese aviation in 1960 and China was left without the modern designs and just continued manufacturing copies of 1950s Soviet designs. It was the 1990s before China built a jet trainer, and it still relies on mostly imported parts.
Well my drink is empty and unlike most today and I feel sorry for the Chinese. The West development of aviation took the work of many over a long period. It was not just given to us. Having to take and copy where there is no natural ability must be humiliating and a far cry from the youthful if foolish optimism of the stamp. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.