THE FLYING TIGERS A Heritage of Chinese & American Cooperation - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

THE FLYING TIGERS A Heritage of Chinese & American Cooperation during World War II Daniel Jackson

2

“The Japanese had full advantage in the air. They were extremely arrogant. They occupied the entire sky. The sky was entirely their territory. After the Flying Tigers came, the sky was our territory.” -Lu Caiwen, Nationalist Intelligence Officer The distinctive shark mouth on a P-40 fighter is the most recognizable symbol of Chinese- American friendship and cooperation. World War II was a seminal event in China’s history. Yet while most Americans know something about the mercenary airmen that volunteered to help defend it from an aggressive Japanese conquest They do not understand the true depth or breadth of that two-way relationship

• The Sino-Japanese War • Challenges to Cooperation • A Two-Way Partnership • The Salween Campaign

The Sino-Japanese War

The Japanese invasion and occupation of China can be summed up in one word: devastation. The out-of-control destruction of Nanjing was just one example among many of the brutality of conquest and occupation. Japan saw its effort as a colonial project, a rejection of increasing global contact following the Great Depression by creating their own exclusive political-economic sphere in East Asia.

Between July 7, 1937 and December 7, 1941, Japan came to control China’s skies, along with 95% of its industry, ¼ its area, and half its population. The Nationalist government traded space for time, retreating deep into the interior, establishing their new capital at Chongqing, in Sichuan Province. In the north, the Chinese stopped the invaders by blowing the Yellow River dams. In the south, Nationalist general Xue Yue stopped them at Changsha. The front settled into a prolonged stalemate.

Unable to break the stalemate on the ground, in May 1939 the Japanese Army and Navy began massive bombing raids on the new capital, making it the most bombed city in the world until London took that dubious distinction during the Battle of Britain. In August 1940, they unleashed the new A6M Type “Zero” fighter and swept the Chinese Air Force from the skies.

“The Japanese fighters and bombers never stopped attacking us. I remember a Japanese fighter that flew low enough for me to see the pilot’s face. If I threw a rock at the airplane, I think it would have likely hit it… the Japanese were unopposed wherever they flew.” - Luo Chih-tsai, Nationalist soldier Luo Chi-tsai, a Nationalist soldier interviewed for the book, fled his home during the Japanese invasion. The enemy armies and air forces terrorized the people all across the country.

Completely blockaded along the coast, the Chinese built a road from Kunming, capital of Yunnan Province, to Lashio in British-occupied Burma. After Pearl Harbor, the Japanese closed this last remaining supply route by invading Burma from Thailand. They drove up toward Yunnan, sending the British and Chinese troops retreating in disarray. In May 1942, troops of the Japanese 56th Division continued into China, pursuing Chiang’s retreating troops to the banks of the Salween River.

By this time, the Chinese were no longer alone in their fight. Prior to Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt authorized a clandestine group of 100 planes and pilots to support China in its war against Japan. These were the famed Flying Tigers of the American Volunteer Group commanded by Claire Lee Chennault. With the Japanese poised on the banks of the Salween, Flying Tiger ace “Tex” Hill, led the group’s P-40s in attacks on the gorge. They bombed the road, making it impassable, and strafed the Japanese.

Meanwhile, the Chinese fell back to prepared defensive positions on the east bank of the river. Together with the American planes, they managed to stop the Japanese. Though kept from advancing deeper into China, the Japanese managed to complete their blockade.

Challenges to Cooperation

The Japanese offensive left Nationalist China in possession of the country’s least-developed provinces; areas that still depended on subsistence agriculture. The population was largely illiterate. Rampant inflation and the surge of refugees following the Japanese invasion reduced most of the population to absolute poverty.

After the Japanese captured Burma in 1942, all that remained was a tenuous air link from airfields in the Assam Province of British India, to Kunming.

That air route crossed over some of the most rugged and difficult terrain in the world; the “Hump,” an epic spur of the Himalayas that cuts south, dividing India from China.

Aircrews called it “the Aluminum Trail” for the over 600 airplanes that crashed in attempting to cross it.

18 Because it was the entry port for all supplies arriving in China, Yunnan Province and Kunming specifically, soon became the center of American operations. This was the headquarters of General Chennault’s China Air Task Force and 14th Army Air Force.

Chennault, for all his brilliance, was not the lead American in China. He answered to Lieutenant General Joseph W. Stilwell.

Chennault and Stilwell had very different ideas on how to carry out the war. Chennault wanted to prosecute the war from the air. He thought the Chinese were good defensive soldiers, but that a small, efficient air effort could do disproportionate damage to the Japanese.

“I claim we got a hell of a beating. We got run out of Burma and it’s humiliating as hell. I think we ought to find out what caused it, go back and retake it.” - Lieutenant General Joseph W. Stilwell General Stilwell disagreed. He arrived just in time to preside over the disastrous defeat in Burma. He did not think an airlift could provide enough to keep China in the war and believed very strongly that recapturing Burma was the key. He advocated flying Chinese troops to India, where he trained and equipped them for the reconquest of Burma.

Stilwell was the top American general in the China-Burma-India Theater and therefore Chennault’s boss. His boss, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General George Marshall, supported him in his focus on Burma. Marshall’s boss though, President Franklin Roosevelt, supported Chennault. He thought the air effort would do more to show American support to China than what he called “a tedious ground buildup.” American leadership was divided and hopelessly confused.

American policy focussed on supporting Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the Nationalist Chinese government in Chongqing.

Another complication was Stilwell’s relationship with Chiang. He had no respect for the leader of Nationalist China and publicly denigrated him, calling him “the Peanut” and even plotting an assassination in late 1943. Chiang, for his part, backed Chennault’s air plan.

“All of us must remember that the Generalissimo came up the hard way to become the undisputed leader of four hundred million people – an enormously difficult job.” - President Franklin D. Roosevelt But most Americans fundamentally did not understand the political situation in China. Chiang was anything but its undisputed leader. Since 1937, the Japanese had battered and bruised his government and pushed it back into the interior. Mao Zedong’s communists, puppet governments collaborating with the Japanese, and warlord armies all vied with the Nationalists for power

26 Chiang Kai-shek succeeded Sun Yat-sen as leader of the Nationalist movement and through the Northern Expedition greatly expanded its reach up into the Yangzi Valley and beyond. Mao Zedong, who by 1941 was the undisputed leader of the communist movement. Throughout the war the CCP expanded to six times its prewar territory. Wang Jingwei, a former Nationalist politician who formed a collaborationist government in cooperation with the Japanese. His “puppet” government was one of many the Japanese established throughout their Chinese empire. Long Yun, a minority Yi warlord from Yunnan Province who rose to power through the opium trade. Though technically allied to Chiang, he constantly undermined him to preserve his own

This meant that of the over 300 divisions of the Chinese Army, Chiang had actual control of maybe 30.

There were also geographic and cultural differences dividing China. Some isolated minority groups deep in the interior paid little heed to the Nationalists and had no idea of the goings on in the war. When AVG pilot Erik Shilling crashed near a remote mountain village in Yunnan, for example, the Yi people there thought he was Japanese! They had never seen a Japanese or a Caucasian; they only knew the devastation unleashed by Japanese airplanes. The Nationalist government ended up issuing American pilots a “blood chit,” which carried Chiang Kai-shek’s official chop and alerted the reader to the fact that the aviator was there to help in China’s resistance against Japan and to help him return to friendly lines.