EP-3 crew bids
aloha after stay
in Hawaii

The 24 crew members were
debriefed here about their
harrowing experience
in China

---

By Gregg K. Kakesako
Star-Bulletin

THE CREW of the Navy E P-3 surveillance plane was to leave the islands this morning after spending just more than 48 hours here, most of it in a closed military compound.

Three of the 24 crew members of Squadron VQ-1 were to meet briefly with reporters before boarding a C-9, the military's version of a DC-9, for the nearly four-hour flight to Whidbey Naval Air Station in Washington and a hero's homecoming.

Expected to address the media for the first time will be Lt. Shane Osborn, the plane's pilot and mission commander. This morning's send-off from Hickam Air Force Base will be short, with perhaps only brief remarks by a senior Navy official.

During the crew's brief Hawaii stay, the emphasis has been to save the gala homecoming celebrations for Whidbey, located near Seattle and the home station for the crew.

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Stephen Haynes, right, and Paul Summers helped to erect
a platform yesterday in preparation for today's homecoming
ceremony at Whidbey Island Naval Air Station, home base
of the EP-3 crew, near Oak Harbor, Wash.

The crew's families were discouraged from coming to Hawaii, though the Navy was willing to foot the bill for their flights to Whidbey. However, to help the crew stay in contact with their families, each crew member was given a cellular phone.

Throughout the briefings, which ran from 10 a.m. to nearly 10 p.m. for the last two days, the crew was said to use the breaks between the 90-minute session to phone home.

"By now they are anxious to get home," said a Navy official.

The 21 men and three women were shuttled two miles each day between the Pearl Harbor Naval Station, where they were quartered in officer's housing, to Adm. Thomas Fargo's Pacific Fleet headquarters at Makalapa.

At one point yesterday some of the crew members asked for a fast-food meal.

The Navy could not provide details on exactly what was discussed during the lengthy debriefings, some of which involved classified and sensitive subjects and equipment.

The debriefers were local Navy personnel, intelligence experts and specialists from Washington and elsewhere, including psychologists.

Some were experts on particular equipment that either was destroyed or may have fallen into Chinese hands, one officer said.

Nor was there any information on how the crew was treated by the Chinese on Hainan island, where it was forced to land April 1 after colliding with a Chinese F-8 jet fighter.

Navy officials said, however, that the crew members were given physical examinations at a Pearl Harbor clinic and were declared to be fit.

The crew members will be granted 30 days' leave after returning to Whidbey. It is unclear whether they will be sent to complete their deployment, which was supposed to run through June.