The so-called zero film is a nickname derived from a film about the Daqing oil field that was shot by the Harbin Film Studio in early winter 1959. The film was named "Zero Film" and could only be viewed by senior central leaders. Its content involved early exploration, positioning, development, and the Oil Battle of the Daqing oil field. Since then, we have habitually referred to confidential films made for senior central leaders as "zero films". No one knows where the real zero film ended up. Some people in our industry have said that because the film involved Huang Jiqing and Li Siguang, it was deliberately destroyed. The truth of the matter is one of the countless things that remained unclear during the Cultural Revolution.
The video that we watched briefly but clearly explained the purpose of our exchange this time. I can only briefly describe the content of the video here. It needs to be mentioned in advance that in the environment at that time, we could not doubt the credibility of this short video. However, now it seems that some segments are really hard to believe.
"This is how things are roughly:"
In the winter of 1959, while extinguishing a fire at the southern foot of the Daxing'an Mountains, firefighters discovered the wreckage of a Japanese transport plane in a mud pool. It was said that the fire had dried up all the water in the pool, causing the mud to sink and revealing a broken wing.
Local lumber workers at the time did not recognize that it was an airplane. They climbed into the wreckage and took out many parts, which later ended up in the hands of the lumber factory's management. Afterwards, the parts were transferred to the county and a retired military officer saw them. It was only then that the incident was reported through the chain of command.
At that time, the high-level leadership attached great importance to this type of military legacy equipment. On one hand, it may have significant military research value, and on the other hand, it may contain residual lethal ammunition. Therefore, the central government immediately dispatched personnel to handle the matter.
During the inspection of the aircraft's cabin after it was dug out of the mud, it was surprising to discover that all of the documents being transported on board the plane were related to geological exploration conducted by the Kwantung Army in the Eastern Three Provinces and Mongolia.
We all know that after Japan occupied Kanto, it put a lot of effort into searching for minerals in Manchuria, mainly oil. However, for some unknown reason, the depth of their drilling was generally low, and they could not find any clues. Their exploration teams even walked over the ore layer of Daqing Oilfield several times without discovering the treasure below. Japan always thought that China was a poor oil country until Huang Jiqing discovered the Daqing Oilfield, which reversed this concept. In fact, before Japan occupied the three eastern provinces, Americans also searched but found nothing, which is really strange to us now.
However, Japan's basic exploration work was not sloppy at all. When the Soviet Red Army attacked the Kwantung Army, our underground workers tried to find these documents but failed. Later, these things were lost without a trace. The Chinese believed that they were confiscated by the Soviets, the Soviets believed that Japan destroyed them, and the Japanese believed that the Chinese and Japanese surrendering army secretly reached an agreement to take them away. What none of them thought of was that these materials were actually buried in the muddy swamps of the Greater Khingan Mountains in China for a full 20 years.
"These data are valuable and later played an important reference role, especially in the exploration of several large shallow mineral deposits in Inner Mongolia."
From these data, we can see the rigor of the Japanese approach to work. All the exploration data were classified and stored in leather boxes. Different information had different colored covers. Later, these materials were strictly classified by the Confidential Work Group of the Beijing Archives.
"This was originally a very ordinary thing, but the occurrence of an event made this accident very unusual."
Because all of these documents are written in Japanese and contain a large amount of geological exploration data, it is necessary for translators and geological exploration personnel to work together. The organization process is very slow. During this period, something happened: one of the file clerks found a strange black coded iron box under a suitcase numbered 0-34.
"That is a very strange box, pressed under the bottom of the box, very inconspicuous, but the password lock on the box is very sophisticated, obviously military-related."
What is inside this? When the box was reported to the higher-ups, it aroused strong interest. They brought in experts and used chemical reagents to destroy the box, and finally extracted geological exploration data written in password-protected keywords from this mysterious box, at great effort.
At that time, they were puzzled as to why this data had to be specially saved. Was the area explored by this geological exploration data different from other places?
The central government suspects that there might be clues about Japanese people searching for oil in this information. However, all critical information in this document is encoded, and the Japanese encryption methods were impressive, making it impossible to decipher at that time. The Americans held the key to the Japanese codebook, but it was impossible to negotiate with the American devils who had just finished the Korean War. Therefore, we have no idea about the specific content and can only see the location and scope of exploration.
According to the information, a special project team had been established under the existing 723 Project, and one of the three exploration teams secretly entered the jungle with the data to search for the clues mentioned above. Later, they did find the temporary Japanese military base where we are now located.
However, the place was already deserted and everything had been burned down. Not even a piece of paper was left. Only by examining some nearby traces could it be determined that the Japanese did indeed have an exploration team conducting a carpet-style exploration in the vicinity, including 80% of the mountainous jungle in this area.
However, our own exploration team conducted a survey-style exploration in the vicinity, but found no results. Nothing could be seen on the surface and shallow digging also yielded no results. This place does not have any geological features that are worth exploring.
The extreme emphasis placed by the Japanese contrasts sharply with our team's complete lack of findings. The head of the 723 team intuited the uniqueness of the situation and, trusting the Japanese exploration data and the depth of the oil storage formation, made the decision to use seismic exploration equipment introduced from the Soviet Union to conduct seismic exploration in this area.
This is an advanced technology at that time. Here is a brief explanation to illustrate how this equipment works:
By artificially generating seismic waves on the surface, seismic waves are propagated underground. When encountering different rock layers with different medium properties, the seismic waves will be reflected and refracted. These waves can be detected by a seismometer on the surface or in a well. The received signals are related to the characteristics of the earthquake source, the location of the measuring point, and the properties and structure of the underground rock layers through which the seismic waves pass. By processing and interpreting seismic wave records, the properties and shapes of underground rock layers can be inferred. Seismic exploration is superior to other geophysical exploration methods in terms of the detailed level of stratification and accuracy of exploration. The depth of seismic exploration generally ranges from tens of meters to tens of kilometers.
China began importing this equipment in 1951 and has accumulated some practical experience by now. This equipment is generally used for exploration of super-deep ore deposits. At present, the exploration feedback data is three-dimensional, which is very impressive. Of course, these data are still a bunch of extremely messy curves for ordinary people.
Later, through "geological data imaging" calculation, these curves can be restored into roughly readable black and white films. Nowadays, our exploration has software for generating in real-time, but at that time, people needed to use a hand-cranked calculator to calculate. Of course, these were all things done by scientists. For us basic technical soldiers, it was undoubtedly incomprehensible, and we could only understand the black and white films after geological imaging.
The earthquake exploration lasted for about five months. After collecting the data, a discovery was indeed made, but it was so shocking that it left people speechless.
According to exploration data, an abnormal reflection of seismic waves appeared at a depth of 1,200 meters underground in this area. The film shows a very prominent and irregularly shaped white shadow, resembling a cross, with frighteningly precise accuracy. It is 49 meters long and 34 meters wide, as if it were a metallic block embedded in the rock layer 1,200 meters underground.
When we saw this scene, we all had different discussions and felt very unbelievable. However, when the technicians in the video enlarged that little cross point, suddenly everything became quiet around us.
"After enlarging the white cross-shaped shadow by two hundred times, its geometric shape became apparent, and everyone recognized that it was an airplane!"
It took me a long time to understand that in the location where the Japanese were exploring, we found a bomber embedded in the geological crust 1,200 meters below ground level.