The Hsinchu City Bureau of Culture Affairs is soliciting artifacts for a museum scheduled to open at the end of November that will honor the Black Bats Squadron, a group that flew surveillance missions over China decades ago. To enrich its collection, the bureau called a news conference Tuesday to appeal to former Black Bats crew members around the country to donate memorabilia to the museum. Nine former Black Bats were present at the news conference, with some promising to donate their collection of records on the squadron to the museum. Former pilot Lu Wei-heng, 81, who had just returned to Taiwan from Canada, recalls that at that time, every one in the squadron shared common ideals. 'It is a great honor to die for the country, ' and 'I will be either a martyr if I die, or a hero if I survive, ' were typical sentiments reflecting their outlooks, Lu recalled. The Black Bats Squadron, or the 34th Squadron of the ROC Air Force, refers to a corps of CIA reconnaissance plane pilots based in Taiwan's northern city of Hsinchu during the Cold War in the 1950s. The squadron was established in 1953 for the purpose of assisting the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in gathering military intelligence about China's secretive military plans. The operation was made possible through the collaboration between the then Chiang Kai-shek government and Western Enterprises Inc. in Taipei, which was set up by the CIA. Under the cooperation program, the CIA provided aircraft and necessary equipment, while Taiwan was responsible to provide the pilots. The squadron became known as the Black Bats Squadron because it always entered Chinese air space at night to conduct reconnaissance and surveillance missions. Until the squadron's missions came to an end in December 1967, it had conducted 838 reconnaissance flights over China, losing 15 aircraft and 148 crew members, or two-thirds of the total, in the process. Only 14 dead bodies were recovered. 