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.