"Welcome home . . ." the telegram from the Secretary of Defence said. Then Lieut Shane Osborn, mission commander, an American flag folded crisply under his arm, stepped up to the microphone.
"We're definitely glad to be back," he said with glorious understatement as the crowd of several hundred at Hawaii's Hickam Airforce Base cheered.
Thanking all for their support "on behalf of Combat Reconnaissance Crew One . . . God bless America", he said, leading his 23 crew members off to debriefing before they are flown home to Washington state tomorrow. The band struck up martial airs.
As the crew flew back from Hawaii - an operation named by the US "Valiant Return" - the dialogue between the US and China was transformed into two dialogues between two sets of national leaders and their respective constituencies, each reassuring its people that it, in fact, had been the moral victor.
In the US, that meant an insistence that the deal done was that expressed in the letter and no more, that there was no secret appeasement of China.
There was absolutely no secret side deal on other issues, the President's National Security Adviser, Dr Condoleezza Rice, said.
"There was nothing discussed with the Chinese but the contents of that letter," she told CNN in an attempt to head off President Bush's critics on the right wing of his party.
For the White House the emphasis was on the return of the crew. The President's spokesman, Mr Ari Fleischer, said Mr Bush was "very pleased for the families, he's very pleased for the crew. He's pleased that this accident did not turn into a crisis".
He said he believed there was still a framework for the country's dealings with China that was substantially intact.
But the Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, said US relations with China were not likely to suffer long-term damage. "I don't see anything that isn't recoverable," Mr Powell told a news conference in Paris. "I think we've stopped this process that was unfolding before it became more serious."
But he was more circumspect when asked about the prospects of getting the US EP-3 aircraft back. "We'll see," he said.
The issue will be discussed on April 18th with the Chinese when the two sides are also expected to try and find new ground rules to cover close encounters of this kind in the future.
The Senate Democratic leader, Mr Tom Daschle, urged caution. "We have many important issues facing us, including challenges involving non-proliferation, human rights, Taiwan and Chinese accession into the WTO (World Trade Organisation)," he said.
"Progress on this agenda depends on rebuilding the trust that was damaged over the last 11 days," he said. Mr Bush's handling of the crisis received broad editorial support, even from papers with Democratic sympathies.
The Washington Post said the deal was a vindication for "the sober and steady diplomacy practised by the Administration in the past few days", and warned that talk of retribution in terms of trade or arms supplies to Taiwan would only "grant the hawks on both sides the confrontation they were seeking".
The New York Times said that both governments had acted sensibly to ease a dangerous situation and also urged the administration not to sell radar to the Taiwanese.
The right-wing Washington Times said "the White House avoided - but came uncomfortably close to - assuming responsibility for the collision." The freed crew cheered loudly as they left China's airspace yesterday and then watched Hollywood blockbusters Men of Honor and Remember the Titans, the crew on the charter aircraft that flew them out said.
"The best feeling out of the trip was when we made it 12 miles off the coast of Hainan and reached international airspace," Capt Tom Pinardo, who flew the chartered Continental Micronesia Boeing 737, said.
"We made an announcement on the PA system which brought loud applause from the back of the plane . . . all of us were happy to be back in the free world," he said.
So happy that one of the freed crew even successfully proposed to his girlfriend as soon as he got a phone in Guam.