From Tigers to Dixie: American and Chinese Military Relations From 1940-1947

Render Symanski

While a relatively small theatre of World War II, the China Burma India Theatre, also known as (CBI), provided an important link between China and the British colonies of India and Burma all of whom were fighting against the Japanese. Japan attacked China at a vulnerable time as China was embroiled in a civil war. Both sides in the civil war, however, came together in order to f end off the Japanese. This conf lict in between Japan and China is known as the Second Sino-Japanese war and it began in 1937. The United States’ attention was drawn to this conf lict because of the concern over the increasing presence of Japan in the Pacif ic Ocean. While not a military superpower at the time the United States had colonial possessions in the Pacif ic and Japan’s aggressive expansion, most significantly when af ter World War I Japan was permitted to annex Germany’s Pacific Islands, signaled a possible adversary to the United States. Emerging f rom over a decade of civil war China moved f rom an af terthought of the United States military to an important ally whose cooperation helped shorten the Pacific War. While equipment and resources, such as airplanes and runways, in China were lacking, its distance f rom mainland Japan and other United States allies such as India made it an important ally f or the United States. During the Chinese Civil War, starting in the 1920s, many of ficials in the Nationalist army turned to the United States. Other than protecting their own interests the American government did not intervene. In f act, the United States military was deployed against Nationalist f orces in an attempt to protect American citizens. This lef t Communist and Nationalist f orces embattled in a civil war until the Japanese invasion in 1937. Af ter the Japanese invasion the Communist and Nationalist f orces declared a ceasefire in order to allow them to shif t their f ocus to repealing the Japanese. However, while the Nationalist Army attempted to def end China, the Communist government, af ter the deaths of thousands of men at the hands of Japanese f orces in 1940, remained in the mountains away f rom the f ighting. This led to most of the interactions between the United States and “China” really with the Kuomintang or Nationalist side. The United States Armed Forces understood the strategic importance of China even bef ore the start of United States involvement in WWII. As the Empire or Japan began to become too aggressive in the eyes of the United States government plans were developed to make a military strike. In 1940 under the authority of President Roosevelt a group of volunteer pilots f rom the United States Army Air Corps, Navy and Marine Corps were sent to the Republic of China Air Force. Their leader was f ormer army aviator

Claire Lee Chennault who visited Washington D.C. in order to purchase one hundred Curtiss P-40 Warhawk f ighters on behalf of the Chinese Nationalist Government. Prior to returning to Washington D.C. Chennault had been in China f or three years working with the Chinese Nationalist Air Force after retiring f rom the United States Army. At the behest of Chaing Kai-Shek he became pivotal in the air f orce’s development including cadet training and organization in the af termath of successive def eats by the Japanese Imperial Air Force. As the Chinese cities of Chengdu and Chongqing were being bombed by Japanese, in the f all of 1939, Chennault and other Chinese of ficials lef t were in the United States imploring the United States government f or money or military supplies. However, the response from the United States echoed much of their previous decade of non-interventionist rhetoric. In 1940 Chennault put f orth a proposal to senior American national officials. In it he details a plan to cripple the Japanese military using a f ew American pilots and planes, f lying out of China with markings Chinese. While the proposal received much interest with President Franklin Roosevelt and some members of his cabinet, many senior military officials expressed hesitancy in carrying it out. This led to Roosevelt's authorization, a sort of in between solution, of the First American Volunteer Group or (FAVG) to f ight in China. The group arrived in Kunming in April of 1941 several months before the start of the United States involvement in the Pacif ic War. While they were officially called the First American Volunteer Group (FAVG) they all received a salary between two-hundred-andf if ty to seven-hundred-and-fifty dollars a month. This massive pay increase attracted skilled young pilots ground crew and instructors. A total of three hundred servicemen including one hundred pilots and ten pilot instructors to teach Chinese cadets, were enlisted with the FAVG.

The FAVG, better known as the Flying Tigers, f lew out of two bases in order to protect the “Burma Road,” an important transportation route between British held India and China, as well as other towns and cities in southern China. Two of the three squadrons were based in China at Kunming Airport while the other one was based out of Rangoon in Burma. In order to successfully f ight off Japanese planes, which were both more maneuverable, and in more abundance, Chennault used guerilla style ambushing tactics along with more unconventional maneuvers to surprise and def eat them. Other challenges to pilots include maps in Chinese, a lack of reliable weather f orecasting and very f ew navigation aids only exacerbated these problems. Even supplies such as gasoline, ammunition and medicine were in short supply and of ten soldiers used primitive supplies such as hand pumps f or pumping gasoline and ox carts to move soldiers and equipment. While these problems were skillf ully overcome by Chennault and his men, conditions such as this existing around the country made China a more unattractive place to launch large scale operations f rom. Despite the odds being stacked against them the Flying Tigers were tremendously successful. Af ter being deployed in April of 1941 the Flying Tigers occupied a strategically important part of Southeast Asia. Because of this they were in prime

position to attack Japan in response to the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941. Due to their readiness, they entered combat on the 20 of December 1941 twelve days af ter the attack on Pearl Harbor. While Chinese and British f orces were successful in def ending Burma from the Japanese, Flying Tigers pilots were still credited with 297 downed Japanese planes before their disbanding in April of 1942. Af ter the Flying Tigers were dissolved pilots returned to their previous positions within the United States Military all across the world. The Doolittle Raid was a pivotal air raid conducted in partnership between the United States and the Chinese. On the 18th of April 1942 sixteen B-25 bombers with a total of eighty servicemen took off from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet bound f or targets in Japan. While each of the planes took of f f rom a United States aircraft carrier their destination, however, was China. Devised in response to the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor this raid was more of a moral raiser f or the United States rather than a strategic attack on Japanese positions. Af ter the pilots bombed their targets located primarily in Tokyo but also in Yokohama, Yokosuka, Nagoya, and Kobe, they landed in China. In China they were helped to saf ety by locals at the threat of Japanese retribution. Out of the eighty United States airmen only f our were captured by the Japanese in China, with f our more detained by the Soviet Union but later escaping. While not killing many people or destroying much property this raid required the Japanese military government to rethink its ability to def end the home islands. Public opinion of the war in Japan changed and growing resentment had started to develop toward the government who were seen as unable to protect the civilian population. In turn, the Imperial Japanese Navy commanded by Isoroku Yamamoto sought to destroy the United States Naval Fleet in the Pacif ic which they attempted to do at the Battle of Midway. However, the hurried response f rom the Japanese Navy at the Battle of Midway resulted in a United States victory and was the turning point f or an eventual United States victory in the Pacif ic War. One of the most important areas of the China Burma India Theatre was an area called “The Hump.” Located in the Eastern Himalayas, the borders of Burma, India and China are very mountainous and due to the lack of inf rastructure transportation between the nations was dif f icult. While a road called the “Burma Road” existed there it had f allen into disrepair due to Japanese attacks despite the best efforts of the Flying Tigers to def end this part of China. Therefore, other ways of getting material into China was needed. Realizing this posed a massive strategic liability allies Britain and the United States sought a solution. The solution was one of the largest airlif ts of all time. Lasting f rom April of 1942, af ter the dissolution of the Flying Tigers, until 1945 the airlif t over The Hump supplied Kuomintang and United States Army Airforce soldiers f ighting the Japanese. With the help of Indian and Chinese f orces, American and British pilots delivered 650,000 tons of f ood, ammunition, gasoline, and other military essentials to China. On the Chinese side, the city of Kunming, which was booming due to the immigrants f leeing the Japanese

invasion as well as its proximity to India and Burma, was the main base of operations f or these airlif ts. While a viable solution in terms of the amount of cargo transported into China, the airlif ts over The Hump came at a tremendous cost of airplanes and human lif e. With the loss of 594 planes as well as the 1,659 airmen on those planes, the danger of the terrain becomes apparent. While not ideal in terms of human lif e lost, these operations were essential in def eating the Japanese invasion of China because most of the supplies came through here. If these airlif ts in China did not take place China would have remained occupied f or much longer and the United States’ advance across the Pacif ic would have slowed or halted entirely. This is because Japan would have remained largely unchallenged in China which would allow it to f ocus its military elsewhere in the Pacif ic.

Not all United States relations with China were f ocused on the Nationalist Party. Beginning on the 22 of July 1944 the Dixie Mission sought to establish f ormal relations between the United States government and the Communist government of Mao Zhedong. They were received warmly by the Communist government upon their arrival in Yan’an. The delegation had two main strategies for understanding the Communists, one was through a military perspective, headed by General David D. Barrett and the other was through a political and diplomatic perspective, overseen by John H. Service f rom the State Department. Both men were seen as “China hands” due to their knowledge of and af finity f or Chinese culture and language. In f act, due to his time in China, where he was the Assistant Military Attaché f or Language Study, in Beijing beginning in 1924, Barrett was f luent in Mandarin and knowledgeable in Chinese culture as well. He also remained in China f rom 1931-1943 as a United States Army officer where he was an observer on behalf of the United States. There he had observed the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, the precursor to even f urther Japanese invasion of China in 1937. Barrett also witnessed much of the f ighting between the Kuomintang and Communists as well as the Chinese f orces and Japanese during the Sino-Japanese War. His experience made Barrett a particularly knowledgeable choice to lead the expedition. Despite being communist Mao and his allies were, in f act, painted in a f avorable light by those f rom the Dixie Mission. In reports to superiors in Washington D.C. Service refers to the Communists as superior then the Nationalists because of the lack of corruption he witnessed. He also was impressed by the cleanliness of the society including it in his reports as well. Barrett was also impressed by the military potential of the Communists. Af ter visiting war schools set up by the Communists to train their soldiers Barrett believed that with American help the Communists could create excellent soldiers in the f uture. Upon the ending of the Dixie Mission in 1947 many of the members were accused of being communists leading to the end of several careers. Because of this “red scare” there was no long-term impact of this mission on American f oreign policy as a direct result. However, this mission was used as inspiration when United States China relations were reestablished in the Nixon administration.

While China may have been an af terthought in United States f oreign policy in the years leading up to World War II the importance of China became very much apparent. The

lack of resources such as runways, ammunition, and medicine due to the Japanese invasion made China a less than ideal place to f ight in. Despite this the partnership between the United States and the Nationalist Army, in the beginning, helped slow Japan’s advance through Burma. Later, this partnership turned the tide of the war in f avor of the United States and China. 

References

Army Air Force Historical Office, Army Air Force Reference History Number 17 § (1943). Belden, Jack. “Chennault Fights to Hold the China Front.” Time, August 10, 1942. Carter, Carolle J.Mission to Yenan: American Liaison with the Chinese Communists 19441947. Lexington, KY: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1997. Craven, Wesley Frank, and James Lea Cate. The Army Air Forces in World War II. 1. Vol. 1. University of Chicago Press, 1975. Hanson, David S. When You Get a Job to Do, Do It: The Airpower Leadership of Lt Gen William h. Tunner. Place of publication not identif ied: Biblioscholar, 2012. Jansen, Marius B, Samuel C Chu, Shinpei Okamoto, and Bonnie B Oh. “The Historiography of the Sino-Japanese Warv.” The International History Review 1, no. 2 (April 1978): 191–228. Klinkowitz, Jerome. With the Tigers over China: 1941-1942. Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1999. Pomf ret, John. The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present. New York, NY: Picador, 2017. Schaller, Michael. “American Air Strategy in China, 1939-1941: The Origins of Clandestine Air Warf are.” American Quarterly 28, no. 1 (1976).