The plane never reaches Irkutsk and crashes near Undurkan after leaving with too little fuel.
1. The China History Podcast episode on The Lin Biao Incident Part 2 follows Mao Zedong, Lin Biao, and the fallout from the Lushan meeting of August 23 to September 6, 1970.
2. Laszlo Montgomery hosts the episode and uses Lin Biao, Ye Qun, Zhou Enlai, and Wu Faxian to explain why the crisis mattered inside the PLA and the CCP.
3. The episode asks what happened after Mao lost trust in Lin Biao and how the September 1971 flight from Beidaihe unfolded.
4. Mao begins taking back the army by removing Lin Biao loyalists from the PLA and changing the Beijing military command.
5. In March 1971 Mao demands self-criticism from Lin Biao and Ye Qun, and Lin refuses the ritual before selected party cadres.
6. On April 29, 1971 Zhou Enlai starts attacking Lin Biao by implication, and on May Day Lin appears for only five minutes before leaving the rostrum.
7. After June 3, 1971 the host says Lin Biao is no longer seen in public, and Mao is already trash-talking him by mid-August.
8. Lin Liguo enters the story as a 25-year-old Air Force insider with the titles deputy chief of the Department of Operations and deputy director of the general office of the Party Committee of the Air Force.
9. Mao secretly meets 14 times with 25 regional military leaders in Wuhan to peel away PLA support from the Lin side.
10. The alleged private notebook is called An Outline of Project 571, and the host says the number 571 is a homonym for armed uprising.
11. The notebook is treated as the key source for claims that Lin Liguo and allies planned to assassinate Mao with a train bombing, a shooting in Shanghai, a fuel-depot explosion near Hongqiao Airport, or a bridge blast.
12. The host repeatedly warns that these details are speculative and says historians often distort events in official accounts, citing Ban Gu and Ban Zhao’s tradition of court history.
13. Another account comes from Wu Fengyu’s The Culture of Power, The Lin Biao Incident and the Cultural Revolution, which draws on Wu Faxian’s unpublished memoirs.
14. Lin Biao and Ye Qun are said to be staying at Beidaihe while his Beijing residence at Maojiawan is being renovated.
15. Lin Liguo tells his sister Lin Liheng, also called Doudou, that Mao is coming back to Beijing and that the family’s privilege is in danger.
16. Lin Doudou reports to Unit 8341, Wang Dongxing’s leadership guard unit, and the alert reaches Zhou Enlai and Mao in the Great Hall of the People.
17. The episode describes a late-night scramble on September 12, 1971 as Lin Biao, Ye Qun, and Lin Liguo board a limousine and head for Shanhaiguan Airport.
18. The aircraft takes off with incomplete fueling and crashes around 2:30 a.m. on September 13 near Undurkan with no survivors on board.
19. The tone is documentary and argumentative, with Laszlo Montgomery mixing timeline narration, quotation, and repeated reminders that many details remain uncertain.
20. The episode will suit listeners who want Cultural Revolution politics and succession intrigue, and it will skip best for listeners who want a short, simple biography.
