Question on ditching an Orion

In 2001 a US reconisance plane fell into Chinese
hands for full examination
(for fuller background, read the below).

If pilot Osburn had tried to fly as far as he could
toward an 'authorized' airport and had to 'ditch'
in the open ocean, what were the chances of
the 24 crew surviving?

http://readersupportednews.org/off-s...-online-threat
Annals of National Security
The Online Threat
Should we be worried about a cyber war?
by Seymour M. Hersh
November 1, 2010
On April 1, 2001, an American EP-3E Aries II reconnaissance plane on an
eavesdropping mission collided with a Chinese interceptor jet over the South
China Sea, triggering the first international crisis of George W. Bush's
Administration. The Chinese jet crashed, and its pilot was killed, but the
pilot of the American aircraft, Navy Lieutenant Shane Osborn, managed to
make an emergency landing at a Chinese F-8 fighter base on Hainan Island,
fifteen miles from the mainland. Osborn later published a memoir, in which
he described the "incessant jackhammer vibration" as the plane fell eight
thousand feet in thirty seconds, before he regained control.

The plane carried twenty-four officers and enlisted men and women attached
to the Naval Security Group Command, a field component of the National
Security Agency. They were repatriated after eleven days; the plane stayed
behind ----