Shanghai 1937: Stalingrad on the Yangtze

by Harmsen, Peter

  It was already dark when Lieutenant Gong Yeti took off in his Curtis Hawk III from the airfield near Nanjing at 7:40 p.m. on September 18. The target: Shanghai. Daylight raids had long been out of the question because of enemy’s air superiority, and even night sorties were becoming riskier as the Japanese built up their anti-aircraft assets on the ground in and around the city. Despite the dangers, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that this night’s raid was needed. It was to mark the anniversary of the incident in 1931 that had triggered Japan’s invasion of Manchuria. The Chinese pilots wanted to pay back just a little for all the suffering that had been brought on their people during the six long intervening years.46

  The planes were to attack in four waves of six aircraft each, spaced out with one hour between them. Gong Yeti was in the first wave. Along the entire route they could see scattered fires lighting up the dark countryside 5,000 feet beneath them, and when they approached Shanghai they could clearly distinguish the objective, Hongkou district, hemmed in between the Huangpu River, Suzhou Creek and the massive waterworks building. The tracer rounds fired from the anti-aircraft guns cut thin white lines through the sky, while shells exploded around them, opening up like fiery flowers. The lead airplanes went into a dive, and Gong Yeti followed shortly afterwards. He aimed for the area where the first aircraft had already dropped their loads. As he saw the explosions from the bombs he had released, he felt intense satisfaction.

  The moment he ascended from his dive, the Japanese on the ground switched on a dozen searchlights, momentarily causing him to lose his bearings. While the other planes turned east towards Pudong, he veered west and suddenly found himself alone over pitch-black countryside. On his right, he saw a village ablaze, probably Luodian, and he smiled to himself when a Japanese warship anchored in the Yangtze tried to fire at him from an impossible distance. However, just few minutes later, the lights disappeared behind him, and he suddenly had no idea if he was flying over water or land. He looked up and saw tiny lights. Those must be the other planes heading back to the base in Nanjing, he thought to himself. Seconds later, his heart sank. He had been looking at the stars, which had seemed to be moving against the canopy of clouds. He looked down and was almost certain that he had spotted the lights of the other planes. However, once more he was disappointed. Again, it was the stars, or rather, their reflection in the rice paddies below. He felt a small pang of panic.

  Finally, he noticed real light below. He flashed his own signal light three times, as arranged beforehand. Someone below replied, flashing a light three times. He really was on the way home. Minutes later he landed on his airfield, the first to return from the raid. One after the other, the rest of the pilots touched down, assembling in the mess hall and eagerly sharing their stories from the mission that had just ended. But one pilot, Li Yougan, was missing. After a long wait, the telephone rang. The call was from Shanghai. One of the Chinese aircraft had been shot down. Li Yougan had been killed. Of course, the other pilots felt sad. On the other hand, losing comrades was becoming routine, just as U.S. ace Eddie Ricken-backer had explained in his book. Anyway, they told each other, he had been given the rare honor of dying for China on this special day, exactly six years after the Japanese aggression had begun.

  According to the North China Daily News, the series of attacks Gong Yeti participated in were “the worst air raids in [the city’s] history.” The incendiary bombs sent flames and sparks high up into the night sky in the style of “Roman candles,” the paper’s journalists reported, and shrapnel from the Japanese anti-aircraft guns caused numerous casualties in the International Settlement and the French Concession. Several businesses, ranging from the Shanghai Cotton Mill to the China Soap Co., were damaged.47 A firefighter told the paper about his experiences after he entered the blazing area in a fire engine. “We were about to turn tail for the station when an incendiary bomb burst about 60 yards away. In a flash our men were cringing against walls or diving under the engine. It was a most terrifying sight, as though the earth had opened up and squirted fire far and wide. It landed in the rear of some Chinese buildings; had it struck the road none of us could possibly have survived.”48

  It was the largest Chinese air raid of the entire campaign, and it was the last one. The Second Combined Air Group of the Imperial Navy had been based at Gongda Airfield in Shanghai since it had become operational on September 10, and it was preparing to strike back. Initially, the facilities at the airfield had been poor, and the weather had turned the runway into a quagmire. Even though ground crew had worked day and night, 11 fighters had been damaged while taking off or landing during the first nine days. This had been a crucial period, and a more determined Chinese effort to prevent the airfield from becoming of any use could have had a major impact on the battle, Japanese officers said after the war. However, Chinese aircraft had attacked only at dusk or during the night, and no damage was done to the airfield. Artillery attacks also had been used to only limited effect.49

  The result was that once the airfield was ready for use, the Japanese were free to prepare for a decisive blow against the Chinese fighters sta-tioned at Nanjing. The plan was simple. Carrier bombers and sea reconnaissance planes were to approach the Chinese capital at a height of 10,000 feet, in full view of the enemy. The bombers were to release their load over Nanjing, but should not worry about accuracy. It didn’t matter what they hit, since their main role was as bait. A large number of fighters were to accompany them, but remain unseen, at 13,000 feet, ready to move into action once the Chinese fighters had been lured out by the ruse. The aim was to annihilate the Chinese fighter arm once and for all. “I wish that every member of the fighter plane units will go forth to battle, convinced of victory, and will destroy every enemy plane in sight, and display the glory of our navy to the rest of the world,” said the commander of the Second Combined Air Group when he explained the plan to his officers on September 17.50

  The carefully prepared raid commenced on the morning of September 19, just hours after the Chinese air attack on Shanghai. The first Japanese wave, numbering 45 aircraft, approached Jurong Airfield near Nanjing at 9:50 a.m. As predicted, Chinese fighters were scrambled. The aircraft, 12 Curtiss Hawk IIIs and six Boeing 281s, went straight for the slow-flying bombers, and only discovered the nimble Japanese Type 96 fighters hovering above when it was too late. In the furious dogfight that followed, several of the Chinese planes were shot down. Ten minutes later, the Japanese planes were over the center of Nanjing, where more than 20 other Chinese planes were waiting for them. The Japanese fighters, joined by the reconnaissance planes, engaged them individually. Only a handful of the Chinese pilots survived the encounter and disappeared from the attackers’ view. The bombers took advantage of the absence of any enemy planes to drop their load on a military airfield nearby, destroying even more fighters. The raid was a complete success, a success that was repeated the same afternoon with another raid on Nanjing.51

  Gong Yeti had watched the entire battle from the ground, as he did not get a chance to join in the fight himself. By the time he had finished his duty the previous night, he had been in a state of continuous activity for 24 hours. He had gone back to his quarters and fallen into a deep sleep. He had woken up to the sound of planes, which was not unusual, but when he stepped out of his building, he noticed the flaming red sun on the wings of the aircraft overhead and immediately realized what was going on. He watched in dazed disbelief as the more maneuverable Japanese fighters shot down one Chinese aircraft after the other. With deep dismay, he noticed that not a single Japanese plane was downed.52

  The young lieutenant would not fly again during the battle for Shanghai. That day he was grounded, and the same happened the next day, when yet another major Japanese raid took place. There was no point in taking off to be shot down immediately by a much stronger foe. The Japanese air superiority in the entire Yangtze Delta region had become unassailable. There was nothing more for Gong to do. He was evacuated west along with other survivi
ng pilots. On the morning of September 21, they boarded a steamboat heading up the Yangtze. They stood on the deck, watching the Nanjing docks disappear in the mist. “We felt dejected, thinking about the calamity awaiting the capital,” Gong wrote in his diary.53

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  “You’re from Hunan. You don’t fear death!” Chiang Kai-shek’s spy master Dai Li had used simple logic when ordering Shen Zui, one of his young field agents, to enter into the lion’s den in Hongkou. Dai Li had uttered the words around the time of the outbreak of hostilities in Shanghai while on a visit to the French Concession, hoping to set up an intelligence network behind Japanese lines. Shen Zui was not sure he agreed with the stereotype that every single person from his home province of Hunan in southern China, man, woman and child, was fearless and death-defying, but he wasn’t exactly in a position to contradict his superior. Dai Li was one of China’s most feared men, and for a good reason.54 He had allies in the Green Gang and did not shy away from kidnapping and torture in the interest of obtaining useful intelligence. Later in the war, foreigners would even refer to him as “China’s Himmler.”55

  Shen Zui’s task was to set up a functioning espionage operation inside Hongkou at a time when hostilities were already getting underway. He was to monitor Japanese troop movements and report back by wireless. He had to recruit people he could trust, and find credible cover identities for them. He had to scout for locations from where he and his agents could observe the enemy while being reasonably sure that they would not be detected themselves. He had to find safe apartments to spend the night, and other locations where he could store his radio. It was the kind of activity that took months to set up, and it would have been complicated even in peacetime. In the middle of a war, and under orders to deliver actionable intelligence instantly, it was a nearly impossible task.

  Simply finding people to spy for him was hard. Few who had heard of the Japanese secret police, the Kempeitai, and its methods were tempted to embark on this type of adventure. Shen Zui had been forced to truly scrape the bottom of the barrel. He eventually managed to come up with the eight group members that Dai Li had requested, but only after hiring complete novices, including a peripheral acquaintance who happened to be in Shanghai to visit Shen Zui’s brother.

  Shen Zui was paying for Chiang Kai-shek’s year-long obsession with the Communist threat—an obsession that had led to intelligence work against the Japanese menace being all but ignored. In fact, even after the battle of Shanghai had broken out, while the Japanese Army was moving in to conquer the city, Dai Li’s agents continued to arrest suspected Com-munists in the downtown districts, although they were slightly more discreet about it than previously, as a concession to the official propaganda declaring a united front against the Japanese aggressor.

  After about a month in Hongkou, Shen Zui’s network was compromised, and Japanese counterintelligence moved in to arrest everyone. It was time to leave. Shen Zui salvaged his radio, while one of his agents supplied a pram and a one-year-old child. Hiding the radio under the baby, they managed to roll it out under the noses of the Japanese guards. He was greeted in the International Settlement by one of his superiors, who thanked him for a job well done and asked him when he would be ready to go back in again. Not now and not for a long time, Shen Zui answered. He had had enough excitement to last him for quite a while.56

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  Chiang Kai-shek had decided as early as September 15 that change was needed at the top of the command of the Third War Zone.57 What that meant became clear six days later when Chiang sent two separate cables to the zone’s senior officers. In the first cable he himself took over command of the Third War Zone from Feng Yuxiang, the Christian General, and dispatched him to the Sixth War Zone further north.58 It was a sideways move rather than a direct demotion, but it undeniably removed Feng Yux-iang from the single most important theater at the time. Even so, the decision seemed logical to most senior officers in Suzhou. Feng Yuxiang had never managed to do much while in overall command of the Third War Zone. None of his direct subordinates had ever really considered him to be in charge, and instead they had continued to treat Chiang as their actual commander.59

  Feng Yuxiang’s hands-off style certainly did not help him get a firmer grasp of his role as commander, but the main reason for his lack of efficiency was that he had been put in a position at Shanghai where he had to deal mostly with officers closely connected to Nanjing. These were people with whom he had none of the intimate personal ties that were vital in order to achieve anything in the Chinese Army. Equally important, Chiang Kai-shek never completely gained confidence in Feng Yuxiang and consistently undermined his old rival’s authority by interfering directly in the campaign in Shanghai. Feng Yuxiang later described how at one point he had been contacted by Zhang Fakui, the commander of the Pudong troops. Zhang had tried to locate an artillery unit which he believed was under his command, but it was nowhere to be found. Feng looked into the matter and discovered that Chiang Kai-shek had withdrawn the unit single-handedly, ignoring the chain of command and telling no one.60

  In the second cable of the day, Chiang Kai-shek went one step further and relieved Zhang Zhizhong of his duties as commander of the 9th Army Group. He replaced him with a general much more to his liking, Zhu Shaoliang, a staunch ally who was, if possible, an even bigger enemy of communism than he himself. For Zhang Zhizhong, the decision came as no major surprise. He had faced Chiang Kai-shek’s constant reproaches right from the early days of the battle. Chiang may initially have picked Zhang because of his close connections to the divisional commanders that he led. However, he grew increasingly disenchanted with Zhang’s style of command—much talk and little action—and vented his irritation both in front of his staff and in private. The day Wusong fell, Chiang again blamed Zhang. “This is because of his lacking ability,” he wrote in his diary.61

  It was an awkward time for a major shake-up. The Chinese forces were under growing pressure along the entire front, and they needed firm command more than ever. It was, therefore, unfortunate that when the generals retired they took their entire staffs with them, leaving a hiatus of one to two weeks before their successors and their staffs were up to speed.62 Still, Chiang Kai-shek was convinced that the change had to be made. There may have been an additional reason for this. Disagreements in the top echelons of the Third War Zone had threatened to bring about paralysis. Zhang Zhizhong had not got along well with Chen Cheng, the commander of the neighboring 15th Army Group. “Chen Cheng isn’t capable enough,” Zhang Zhizhong had told those who would listen. Chen Cheng had retorted: “Zhang Zhizhong loves to show off.” It had been a management nightmare for Chiang Kai-shek, and Feng Yuxiang, whose formal position as Third War Zone commander should have made it his responsibility to mediate, simply did not have the personal clout to make any dif-ference.63

  It had been in order to solve this complicated situation that Chiang Kai-shek had sent Gu Zhutong, a person better qualified to mediate among the explosive tempers, to act as second-in-command in the Third War Zone. Nevertheless, it was a cumbersome arrangement, and Chiang Kai-shek probably hoped to bring about a simplified command structure by weeding out senior officers who weren’t performing and placing himself in the central position. That made sense. What made less sense, to some of Chiang’s officers at least, was a decision on the same day to divide the Shanghai front into a left, a central and a right wing. The rationale was to partition the ever growing number of troops in the Shanghai area into groups of manageable size. While that had some logic to it, the move also inserted a new level of command in between the war zone and the army groups and further increased the potential for confusion and dissent, just at the time when the Chinese needed to act in unison against an enemy attack that was quickly picking up momentum.64

  Zhang Zhizhong was not surprised to be let go. He had seen it coming for some time. Nevertheless, he was depressed, and perhaps even a broken man, after his dismissal. He had b
een working day and night, and eating on the run, while trying to keep Shanghai’s defenses intact. However, it was not enough. In the last weeks before he was officially fired, Zhang Zhizhong felt increasingly sidelined.65 It did nothing to improve his fragile health. More than a month of intense mental pressure had taken an immense toll. Always of slim build, he now came across as downright emaciated. When in late September he returned to his ancestral home in the eastern province of Anhui, his family barely recognized him. He would stay awake long after his family had gone to bed, preferring to sit in his study reading his favorite Chinese classics. He never spoke to his family abut the war. He hardly ever spoke at all, and when he did speak, he had the air of someone who had lost all his strength.66

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  The foreign residents of Shanghai pretended that there was no war on. Shanghai Football Association held its annual meeting in September to the distant rumble of artillery fire, and reelected the same president it had had since 1925.67 Mailmen brought post past Japanese barbed wire near Sichuan North Road.68 British wharf managers on the Pudong side of the Huangpu River spent their afternoons drinking tea and playing tennis, while Chinese positions were being bombed a mere 500 yards away.69

  Shooting and shelling did not change the fact that business was the business of Shanghai. The city was eager to return to its beloved pastime of making money, second in popularity only to the pastime of spending it. The Cathay and Palace Hotels, shut down after the tragedy of “Black Saturday,” opened again in mid-September following extensive repairs. Two movie theaters, the Grand and the Cathay, also showed the latest blockbusters, and nightclubs welcomed customers, although they closed at 11:00 p.m. to allow the patrons 30 minutes to return home before curfew. Shops opened with signs saying “Business (behind sandbags) as usual.”70 The stiff upper lip was being put to the test.