Chang Liyi (; 7 November 1929 – 12 June 2019), also known as Jack Chang, was a pilot in the Republic of China Air Force with the rank of major. A member of the CIA-trained Black Cat Squadron, he flew the American U-2 reconnaissance aircraft to spy on China's nuclear program. He was shot down on 10 January 1965 over Baotou, Inner Mongolia, and held in mainland China for 17 years. Chang was released from custody in 1969 and sent back to his hometown, in 1982 he was able to leave the mainland but was not granted permission to return to Taiwan until 1990, living the interim years in the United States. Early life Chang was born in Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China, on 7 November 1929. After the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese army attacked Nanjing in December 1937. Chang's mother fled the city with the children and trekked across China for more than a year, eventually arriving in the wartime capital Chongqing in 1939. His father, who stayed behind to look after his shop, died in the Nanjing Massacre. In 1943, the Republic of China Air Force established a youth training school in Dujiangyan, Sichuan. Chang, determined to join the military, took the entrance examination and was admitted the next year. Before his graduation, however, the Kuomintang government was losing the Chinese Civil War to the Communists and the school evacuated to Taiwan in 1948. His family was left behind in mainland China, where the Communist Party established the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. U-2 pilot and capture In the late 1950s, the United States and the Republic of China government in Taiwan initiated a top-secret reconnaissance program to spy on Communist China's nuclear bomb project. To reach the project sites located deep inland in Northwest China, ROC pilots were trained by the Central Intelligence Agency in the United States to fly the Lockheed U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft. Chang was selected to receive U-2 training and joined the Black Cat Squadron in July 1964 with the rank of major. After Communist China exploded its first nuclear bomb in October 1964, the Black Cat Squadron intensified its reconnaissance flights. On 10 January 1965, Chang flew a U-2C aircraft (No. 358) from Taiwan, on a mission to take infrared photographs of atomic bomb production facilities in Northwest China. When he flew over