Keep Flying without Limitation

In 1937 the superiority of Japanese aircraft in both quantity and quality, swept the Chinese Air Force from the skies in the early phase of Sino-Japanese War.  The defenders then shifted to a focus of saving the remnants, in hope that the surviving aircraft served as trainers for a future fleet.  While continuing to intermittently interdict the enemy bombers, the few pursuers avoided engagement with their invading counterparts per CAF tactical doctrine.  One of the crewmen who got through the incessant assault is my friend Guan (關世華).  He was a young aeromechanic by then, and I would be his future colleague with the Far Eastern Air Transportation at Taipei in 1983-85.  Unlikely his complex autobiographical false memory, here is his first-hand story I learned in our engine parts inspection shop, about what he witnessed under the murderous hail of enemy fire decades ago.

One day in 1938-39, a badly hit pursuer returned to Guam's airfield.  Guan was one of the anxious ground crewmen who watched the sputtering war bird as it descended, literally, on the edge of a crash landing.  Eventually, it touched down and taxied to a stop.  When the rescuers rushed to the bullet riddled aircraft, they were astonished to see a dead pilot with a gaping head wound in the cockpit.  His head was shot through by an enemy machine gun bullet, but body remained lukewarm.  Keeping all these contradictions in mind, the undeniable fact was an irreplaceable pursuer nursed home in an extraordinary way.  Surely few witnesses could interpret it subject to the critical mechanism of adrenalin or pituitary gland, but many of them believed this quasi-miracle was a wonder work caused by ultimate will power.

In the 14 years grinding struggle with the enemy styling itself as a Bushido superpower, Chinese casualties counted over 20 millions.  In 1942-45, air cadets started receiving their wings on the U.S. trainer types, including 150 PT-17 Kaydet, 127 PT-19 Cornell, 70 PT-20/22 Recruit, 30 Vultee BT-13 Valiant, 20 AT-6 Texan, 8 AT-7 Navigator, and 15 AT-17 Bobcat, eventually the air superiority over China was resumed after Japanese had initially seized it.  Overall, Japan lost the war, but China didn't win the war.  After the Communists victory over Nationalists, in 1949 chief mechanic Sgt. Guan retreated with CAF to Taiwan, where I was born.  He is one of my CAF predecessors, who passed some CAF anecdotes to me.

Commemoration of 918

Before the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, a Kwantung Army (KA, spear head of the Imperial Japanese Army) agent in Beijing reported that if China united, its potent Northeastern Army (NA) in Manchuria could have withstood the KA of only 11,000 men, and jeopardized the Japanese aggressive intentions farther south from Manchuria.  The NA of nearly a quarter million was the best-trained and equipped troop of China, including 25 infantry brigades, 6 cavalry brigades and 10 artillery regiments.  Being exposed to accumulated Japanese havoc with their homeland, NA’s fur-hatted soldiers demanded putting up a fight with their modern arsenal of 200 warplanes, 20 tanks and 4,000 machine guns.

But the Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek showed no intention of resisting invasions; he manipulated it.  Under his “nonresistance policy” to the Japanese, Chiang turned on his political rivals and blocked the NA from gaining any opposition or voice within Manchuria.  To remain in line with Chiang’s controversial stance, the NA commander Zhang Xue-Liang (張學良, son of NA’s founder) urged his men not to defy and to store away any weapons for self-defense.  On September 18, 1931, 600 KA men proceeded to crush 8,000 disarmed garrisons in the North Barrack near Mukden, with minimal difficulty.  In five months the KA had overrun all major northeastern Chinese cities.

To all Chinese 918 (09/18/1931) became the final goad to their wounded pride.  Expanding from Manchuria, the Japanese easily captured extensive Chinese resources to obliterate China; the NA's 42 grand prize aircraft re-painted with Hinomaru was the lead.  Chinese public opinion was highly critical of Zhang for his cowardice in his handling of the Japanese assault, while Chiang still focused his effort on eradicating the Chinese Communist guerrilla.  Though China became a shameful mess, there had been no shortage of ruler's VIP transports, which used the line of the Ford Tri-motor, Boeing Model-247, Sikorsky S-43, Douglas BT-32 Condor, C-54 Skymaster, and C-118 Liftmaster.  Amid the civil war, the Commies forced Chiang fled Mainland in a C-54 (BuNo 42-72424) to Taiwan, December 10, 1949, where he reinstated and reformed an autocratic rule.

The Forgotten Pioneers

Uncontrollable regional then outside hostilities, and political dilemma that followed them, were casting doubt on Chinese aircraft acquisition in the 1930s.  So together, they came up with a pack of orphan warbirds facing the Japanese invasion.  In the early stage of the Sino-Japanese War, the international miscellaneous types of Italian Brenda, French Dewoitine, and U.S. Hawk, etc. were no longer supported tactical demands in air combat escalation.  Considered inadequate against modern enemy types, Curtis Hawk fleet was replaced by the Russian Polikarpov in 1938.  Again, it was proved to be another marginal successor.

Before Pearl Harbor which started the Lend Lease for China, the CAF launched several indigenous fighter projects.  After the massive air bombings against civilians of Shanghai and Chongqing, it would be astonishing if there were not more massacre; modernized interceptors were badly needed.  Besides the pre-war types, there were licensed assembled Polikarpov I-15, I-16, Bellanca 28-90B, Curtiss CW-21, Vultee V-12, and local designed Chu-X-Po , but all the efforts failed due to lack of logistic supports.  In May 1939, a U.S. deal was signed, with China receiving three Curtiss-built prototypes, plus 27 knock-down kits.  The Central Aircraft Manufacturing Company (CAMCO) at Loiwing, near the China-Burma border, would undertake the assembly.

Though an orphan design , three initial production Demons were shipped to China in May 1940 and eventually passed onto the Flying Tiger, i.e. 1st American Volunteer Group; the trio were planned to tackle high-flying Japanese recon.  On their ferry flight from Rangoon to Kunming, 23 December 1941, all three crashed due to poor visibility.  Facing the advancing Japanese forces, none of the 27 CKD kits were completed before CAMCO was forced to evacuate to India in 1942.  It’s important to us to keep the origin story of forgotten pioneers alive.  Our identity comes from our knowing our story, and being able to tell it so well.