War Stories II: Heroism in the Pacific

by Oliver North

  General Chiang Kai-shek

  By the summer of 1937, Chiang and Mao had negotiated an uneasy truce between the Nationalists and the Communists. The military government in Tokyo, believing that a “united China” posed a threat to their plans for a “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,” decided it was time to act. On 7 July, they ordered a full-scale invasion, claiming that Japanese nationals in Peking were at risk in the continuing civil disorder.

  Just days before the assault, Madam Chiang and the Generalissimo had met with Claire Chennault, a recently retired American airman. The forty-five-year-old Chennault had been medically retired for chronic bronchitis and deafness from flying in open-cockpit fighters. Arriving in May, via a stop in Japan, he had come to China at the suggestion of a friend who wanted advice on how to help the Chinese build a decent air force.

  Chennault was appalled by what he found. Though the Chinese showed more than 500 fighters, transports, and bombers on their rolls, in reality they had only ninety-one aging, second-rate aircraft. With characteristic bluntness, he told the Nationalist leader and his wife that they needed his help—and that of the United States. They hired him on the spot to provide that assistance. But before he could even begin, the Japanese invaded.

  Madame Chiang Kai-shek

  The next five months were a fury of activity for Chennault as he tried to build an air force worthy of taking on the Japanese invaders. As Chinese troops gave ground grudgingly, the new American advisor to the Nationalist government tried to mold the chaotic Chinese air arm into a real fighting force. Lacking everything from repair facilities to spare parts to decent flight instructors, Chennault reached out to colleagues he had known for years in the Army Air Corps. Some were already in China. Others, responding to the call of an old friend, came from the States––even though FDR had signed the Neutrality Act into law in May, just about the time Chennault arrived in China.

  By 23 August, when the Japanese began large-scale bombing raids on Nanking, Chennault had two partially trained Chinese fighter squadrons and an air group made up of Russian expatriates. Flying outmoded Curtiss Hawks and old Boeing P-26s, they scored well against the unescorted land-based bombers that the Japanese launched from Formosa. But when the Japanese responded by sending fighter escorts with the bombers, the scales again tipped against the young Chinese pilots.

  Despite Chennault’s best efforts—and those of his expatriate pilots, mechanics, and technicians—there was a limited amount that could be done without modern aircraft. In a letter handwritten by Madame Chiang and signed by the Generalissimo, they made an emotional appeal directly to President Roosevelt, begging for aid.

  On 7 October, without reference to the letter, Roosevelt announced that he would not invoke the new Neutrality Act against China. But he didn’t promise aid either. Instead he “condemned” the Japanese invasion and called for an international conference in Geneva to discuss “the deteriorating situation in China.”

  The Generalissimo, Madame Chiang, and Chennault now realized that whatever help the Chinese air force might get from the United States wasn’t going to come soon. And they were right. When the Japanese finally broke through Chinese lines and invaded Nanking, the Nationalist capital, in mid-December, the Chinese air force had fewer than fifty planes left. As the invaders commenced an orgy of rape, murder, and plunder in Nanking, Chennault was trying to reconstitute a fighting force in Hankow, 300 miles farther up the Yangtze.

  Claire Chennault

  Photographs and films of the “Rape of Nanking” stunned the civilized world. Now Madame Chiang’s correspondence to her friends in the States—and countless other letters from missionaries to congregations across America—contained graphic images showing and describing stacks of dead Chinese women and children; Chinese men being shot, bayoneted, disemboweled, and beheaded; and countless other Japanese atrocities. It was genocide on an enormous, very visible scale, and yet the rest of the world looked on and officially did nothing to intervene.

  But “unofficially,” Roosevelt did intervene. In January 1938, the White House very quietly authorized American companies to start selling used or outdated aircraft, arms, and military equipment to the Nationalist government by transacting the sales through entities like the Universal Trading Corporation, the Central Aircraft Manufacturing Company (known as CAMCO) and the China National Aviation Corporation. But the trickle of planes, parts, and aviation support equipment that started to arrive in China during the spring of 1938 wasn’t enough to slow the Japanese advance. By August, the capital had to be moved again—this time well into the Chinese interior, to Chungking. Chennault packed up and moved the Chinese Air Force Training Command to Kunming, in western Yunnan Province, practically in the foothills of the Himalayas.

  Ensconced on the sprawling base at Kunming, Chennault spent the balance of 1938 and nearly the whole of 1939 and 1940 doing what he did best: teaching others how to fly and fight. When the lack of planes, parts, or pilots grounded his students, he used the time to construct outlying airfields. He also built an early warning network to warn of Japanese air raids and a primitive but effective radio and telegraph communications system linking the Chinese air bases. Chennault also devised plans for recovering downed aviators and returning them to safety. During this period he wrote home frequently, commenting to friends and family about the courage of the Chinese soldiers, the bravery of the Chinese people, and the daring of his Chinese pilots—and reminded them of the one thing that was most needed: decent planes to take on the Japanese.

  By the summer of 1940, the Chinese had given up more than half a million square miles of territory and nearly 200 million people to Japanese domination. Americans reading about the plight of the Chinese in their church bulletins didn’t hesitate to remind their congressmen that this was an election year. In September 1940, Congress approved a loan of $25 million to the Chinese government for “economic support.” But it was too little, too late. It was clear to the Generalissimo, Madame Chiang, and Chennault that courage was no longer enough. Unless the Chinese got some modern arms and aircraft—and quickly—the Japanese were going to succeed in conquering all of China. Chiang decided that Chennault should return to the United States and make a personal effort to get planes and—if possible—pilots.

  Chennault arrived in Washington on 1 November, on the eve of the presidential election. There, Chennault drew up a wish list of all that the Chinese air force needed in order to fight the Japanese. At the top of the long list of planes, parts, ammunition, and the machinery of war, he wrote: “Time.”

  The only way to buy time for the Chinese pilots, aircrews, mechanics, and repair personnel would be to have someone else do the fighting for them. So Chennault prepared a separate list: “350 pursuit aircraft; 150 bombers; Americans to fly them.”

  The November election made it clear that the American people wanted to avoid war if possible, but that they also wanted to support the Chinese. In December, FDR got another $100 million loan for Chiang. Chennault promptly arranged for the purchase of a hundred Curtiss-Wright P-40C fighters.

  Once he had decided that the P-40 was what they needed, Chennault wanted to make sure that the Chinese supported his decision. A group of visiting Chinese officials gave him that opportunity. Chennault took them to nearby Bolling Field, just across the Anacostia River from the Capitol, to demonstrate the Curtiss P-40. When the flight demonstration was over, the Chinese were considerably excited. One of them told Channault, “We need a hundred of those airplanes!”

  Chennault shook his head. “No,” he said, tapping the chest of one of his pilots, “you need a hundred of these.”

  The aviator who piloted the P-40 for Chennault and the Chinese officials that day was a young Army Air Corps first lieutenant named John Alison.

  FIRST LIEUTENANT JOHN ALISON, USAAF

  Bolling Air Force Base

  Washington, D.C.

  December 1940

  I reported to the commander’s office, where Claire Chennault, s
everal Chinese, and two representatives from the Curtiss-Wright Company had already arrived. The commander said, “We want you to demonstrate the airplane for the Chinese.”

  The Curtiss salesman had one of their test pilots there. He said, “Can our pilot fly the airplane?” Well, the commander at Bolling didn’t want to do that. And finally, the salesman just threw up his hands and says, “Well, go on out and use your judgment to demonstrate the airplane.”

  I knew the airplane very well by this time; I lined the airplane up right into the wind. The Chinese all went out to the middle of the field. And I put the throttle up to 980 horsepower and ran down the runway. Just as soon as I got it off the ground, I started the wheels up, pushed it up to full throttle, and let it go.

  Now, this airplane wasn’t one that was ready for combat. It had no bulletproof fuel tanks, guns, or armor plate. And it didn’t have tactical radios, so it was a very light aircraft, and it just soared skyward. I did a loop right off the runway. And then I came down at low altitude, below a hundred feet, and put the tip of the wing right over the group, made a number of circles at max power, did a chandelle, and landed.

  When I got into the hangar, I could tell by the smile on the face of the Curtiss salesman that he liked the demonstration. And the Chinese were excited.

  After that, Chennault went back to China. Little did I know that I’d be flying for him later in the war.

  KUNMING AIR BASE

  1 ST AIR COMMANDOS

  SOUTHWESTERN CHINA

  11 MAY 1942

  Now that he had the planes the Chinese needed, Chennault set to work making arrangements to have them packed and shipped. He was about to gain an unlikely ally in his quest for American pilots to fly them.

  Navy Commander Edward O. McDonnell was a member of a military assessment team dispatched to China by the White House. Shortly after the new year began, McDonnell returned with the recommendation that an American Volunteer Group (AVG) of aviators be immediately formed and dispatched to help the Chinese. McDonnell urged that the AVG be formed from officers and enlisted aviators “recently retired’ or “loaned” from the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps—and that they be allowed to “return to their service” in the event of war. To head the AVG, McDonnell suggested “an experienced American aviation officer accountable only to Chiang Kai-shek… Chennault is the best available officer.”

  Roosevelt agreed, and the AVG officially came into existence on 15 April 1941. Chennault plunged into his new assignment, dispatching recruiters to Army, Navy, and Marine air bases to find volunteers. He charged around Washington and New York with characteristic bravado, calling on friends and contacts, trying to find a ship to carry his newly acquired aircraft and personnel to China via Burma.

  In total, 112 American military pilots “resigned” from their U.S. military units with the understanding from their president that they could return to their respective branches of service when their job was done.

  In July 1941, the first of the AVG planes and personnel finally arrived in Rangoon. But to Chennault’s frustration, it would take nearly five more months to unpack the planes, assemble and test them, and whip his volunteer pilots into effective fighter pilots who could fly and fight as a team.

  The first AVG planes and pilots didn’t get over “the hump” to China until 18 December—ten days after Pearl Harbor was attacked. Two of the three AVG squadrons saw their first action two days later, when the early warning network Chennault had installed two years earlier alerted them to an incoming raid by ten Japanese aircraft. For months, while Chennault was away in the United States, the Japanese had been sending their twin-engine Mitsubishi bombers over Kunming virtually unopposed.

  Today would be different. Chennault sent up one squadron over the airfield as bait and told the other to swing west—anticipating that when the Japanese pilots saw the “bait” P-40s they would drop their bombs in the jungle and run for home. He was planning an aerial ambush—and that’s what he got. In the wild melee that followed, the Americans destroyed six of the bombers and sent the other four back to their base in Hanoi smoking and full of holes. Only one P-40 was damaged—when the pilot ran out of gas and had to put his fighter down in a rice paddy.

  Chennault had left his third squadron in Rangoon, anticipating that the Japanese would be attacking there, too, since every other part of the Far East appeared to be under Japanese assault. The 3rd Squadron didn’t have long to wait. On 21 December, fifteen AVG P-40s, accompanied by eleven RAF Brewsters, ambushed a flight of fifty-four Japanese bombers, escorted by a dozen Nakajima I-97 fighters. Though the AVG lost two aircraft and a pilot, the RAF reported thirty-two confirmed wrecks of Japanese planes in the jungles and rice paddies around Rangoon. Chennault tallied the battles more conservatively and claimed Japanese losses as fourteen bombers and thirteen fighters against two AVG pilots lost, four planes destroyed, and seven damaged.

  Over the course of the next month, the AVG continued to run up scores like this and better. By the end of January 1942, Chennault and his pilots were front-page news. And by February, stories about the Americans who flew planes with menacing sharks’ teeth painted on their noses were describing the AVG as the Flying Tigers. Asked where the name came from, Chennault told a reporter, “It wasn’t me—it was one of you guys.”

  By March 1942, the AVG had racked up an extraordinary record. Chennault and his colorful aviators were destroying Japanese formations in every engagement. Though plagued with the familiar problems of insufficient spare parts and too few mechanics, Chennault had a better “up” record than any aviation unit in China, Burma, or India. And in a way, he became a victim of his own success. The Doolittle Raid was a case in point.

  Flying Tiger P-40 fighter

  When planning the raid, Doolittle assumed, incorrectly, that Washington would use Chennault’s early warning network and his AVG resources to help recover any of his B-25 crews that went down in China. But because Chennault was not “officially” an American officer, in an excess of secrecy, Washington decided not to inform him of the raid. He was therefore unable to put any AVG people in position to help.

  In spring 1942, the U.S.-British Joint Staff decided that China, Burma, and India (CBI) deserved to have their own “theater of war.” And in the new CBI theater, there was no need for a group of cocky, mercenary pilots fighting their own war against the Japanese.

  On 25 April 1942, Chennault was informed that effective 4 July, the AVG would be dissolved and reconstituted as the 23rd Pursuit Group, U.S. Army Air Corps, reporting to the 14th Air Force in India. Any Navy or Marine pilots who wished to return to their services could do so and all others would be accepted into the U.S. Army Air Corps—or returned to the United States as civilians.

  Neither the Japanese nor the weather cared what the men of the AVG called themselves. As the pilots and mechanics were deciding what they wanted to do, the Japanese ground offensive continued unabated. In May, the monsoon began, turning the ground into a quagmire and filling the air with dense clouds that made the hazardous flying even more dangerous.

  By the time Lieutenant General Joseph (“Vinegar Joe”) Stilwell arrived to assume responsibilities as the senior American officer in the CBI theater, seventy of Chennault’s men had decided to stay with him and fight on against the Japanese as members of the U.S. Army Air Corps.

  Chennault’s pilots liked to say, “We lived like dogs and flew like fiends.” It wasn’t a boast—it was true. They shot down more than 200 enemy planes while losing only six of their own aircraft.

  But it wasn’t enough. Tojo’s infantry in Burma was far more effective than anything the Allies could cobble together on the ground. Three months after invading Burma, the Japanese captured Rangoon and drove General Stilwell’s Anglo-American troops back into India. It was a terrible defeat. Stilwell summed it up: “We got a hell of a beating. We got run out of Burma and it is as humiliating as hell. I think we ought to find out what caused it, go back, and retake the place.”

 
After Burma fell on 11 May 1942, every bean and bullet needed to fight the Japanese in China had to be flown over the most inhospitable terrain in the world, the Himalayas. Chennault’s pilots called it “flying over the hump,” and crammed C-46 transports and B-25 Mitchell bombers with up to four tons of supplies for the 525-mile trip across the roof of the world. Flying in terrible weather at very high altitudes, without rescue beacons, communications, or decent charts, they were at the mercy of treacherous updrafts and downdrafts, blinding blizzards and intense monsoon storms. A sign on the hangar at the Kunming air base said it all when the pilots got back: “You made it again.”

  The flight was so perilous that they nicknamed it the “aluminum trail,” because the ground below was littered with the remains of 1,000 men and some 600 planes—many more were lost to the unforgiving weather than to the Japanese. One of those who made it over the hump to fly with Chennault was John Alison—the pilot who had demonstrated the P-40 at Bolling Field for the Chinese officials in late 1940.

  FIRST LIEUTENANT JOHN ALISON, USAAF

  23rd Pursuit Group

  Kunming, China

  July 1942

  After Pearl Harbor and America’s entrance into World War II, I sat down and wrote a letter to General Arnold that simply said, “Dear Chief, Please send me to a combat assignment.”

  And I got this wire, just one line: “Report to China.” We flew across India and landed at Dinjan, which was the Indian terminus, for the flight over the “hump” to China. Our airplanes were so old and decrepit I couldn’t get enough altitude to clear the clouds and the first mountain range. So I called the squadron commander and said, “Look, I can’t keep up. I’ll find a way and meet you in Kunming, China.” I flew south until I found a break between two big thunderheads, and I got over the first mountain range and headed for China.