Supposedly after the discovery of the planned coup, Lin and his family (his wife
Ye Qun and his son) and several personal aides
attempted to flee to the Soviet Union. It is said they were chased to the
airport by armed PLA officers and guards. According to the PRC
account of Lin's death, their prearranged Hawker Siddeley
Trident plane did not take aboard enough fuel before taking
off, and as a result, the plane crashed near Öndörkhaan in Mongolia on September 13, 1971 after running out of fuel, and all on board were
killed. Interestingly, the official Mongolian report on the crash
investigation points out that the plane had plenty of fuel at the
time of the crash. The investigators concluded that the plane
crashed because of pilot error. The corpses were buried in a grave
not far from the site of the crash. However, the Soviets reportedly
sent a KGB investigative team, which recovered some of the remains
for subsequent identification.
It has been reported that when Zhou Enlai asked Mao Zedong whether air force fighters should be
sent to chase Lin's plane, Mao replied with an ancient Chinese
proverb: “天要下雨，娘要嫁人，由他去吧” （"Some things cannot be changed, just as
it has to rain and young girls have to marry. And so, let it be;
let him go."） Li Zhisui writes that there was a
feeling of relief in the Chinese government when word came from
Mongolia that there were no survivors.
Zhou Enlai reportedly said, "死得好, 死得好" ("It
is better that he's dead")[citation
needed]. On the other hand, a biography of
Zhou by Han Suyin claims that, on hearing that Lin was on board an
aircraft leaving China, Zhou in fact ordered the grounding of all
Chinese aircraft.
