World War II Day by Day

Chungking, China • October 31, 1944

The war against the Japanese in China was desultory at best, and ser­vice in that thea­ter was viewed as a grave­yard by U.S. mili­tary and diplo­matic offi­cials. On this date, October 31, 1944, Maj. Gen. Albert Wede­meyer arrived to replace dis­missed Gen. Joseph (“Vinegar Joe”) Stil­well as com­mander of the China Theater and to serve as Chief-of-Staff to Nation­al­ist Chi­nese leader Generalis­simo Chiang Kai-shek. Wede­meyer’s instruc­tions were to advise Chiang on issues of training, equip­ping, and sup­porting Chi­nese forces in the war against the Japa­nese, which had been going full-throttle since 1937. Chiang, how­ever, was dis­tracted by rival Com­munist Chi­nese forces operating in North­ern China and tended to hold his best units back in this domestic contest. To his credit, Wede­meyer did his best to moti­vate Chiang to take a more aggressive role against the Japanese in the war.

Wedemeyer had more success in arranging logis­tical support for Amer­i­can air forces in China. These in­cluded support for the P‑51 Mus­tangs and the newly arrived B‑24 Libera­tors of the Four­teenth Air Force under Gen. Claire Chen­nault. Chen­nault was a long-time China hand, having created the Amer­i­can Volun­teer Group (AVG) of “Flying Tigers” fame for Chiang Kai-shek prior to the entry of the U.S. into World War II. On Decem­ber 20, 1941, 12 days after the sur­prise Japa­nese attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet anchored at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Chen­nault’s pilots engaged a fleet of 10 Japa­nese Kawa­saki bombers, shooting down 3 or 4 of them at the cost of 1 U.S. plane. It was the first Allied victory of the Pacific War.

Wedemeyer also moved to support basing long-range B‑29 Super­fort­resses of the XX Bomber Com­mand in China under its newly appointed com­mander, 36-year-old Maj. Gen. Curtis LeMay. LeMay had gained a repu­ta­tion developing highly effec­tive tech­niques and tactics (e.g., the 12‑plane combat box formation of B‑17 Flying Fortresses) for use by the U.S. Eighth Air Force in its stra­tegic bombing cam­paign over Nazi-occupied Europe. Placing B‑29 “Super­forts” on Chi­nese soil had been pushed by Presi­dent Franklin D. Roose­velt, who wished to bol­ster the Chi­nese war effort and was impa­tient to bomb main­land Japan. How­ever, basing B‑29s in China was a tempo­rary mea­sure until forward bases became avail­able in the Pacific Mari­ana Islands, much closer to the Japa­nese Home Islands. Once bases became oper­a­tional in the Mari­anas for LeMay’s newest command, the XXI Bomber Com­mand (late Novem­ber 1944), the brutal aerial cam­paign that incin­er­ated 67 Japa­nese cities (most famously Tokyo on the night of March 9/10, 1945, the single most destruc­tive bombing raid in history), coupled with a no-holds-barred cam­paign to starve the islands’ popu­la­tion by aerial mining Japan’s coastal waters (Operation Starvation), began in earnest.

Gen. Claire Lee Chennault and His Flying Tigers, 1941–1945

Left: The American Volunteer Group initially trained at an RAF base in Burma with the mis­sion of defending belea­guered China against in­vading Japa­nese forces. AVG pilots like these shown in this photo were recruited under presi­dential autho­rity from the U.S. armed ser­vices. Ground crew and head­quarters staff were like­wise mostly recruited from the U.S. military, along with some civilians.

Right: A ground crew services a P‑40 Warhawk of the 23rd Fighter Group at an air­field in China, 1942. P‑40 War­hawks came off a Curtiss-Wright assem­bly line in Buffalo, New York, which pro­duced P‑40 Toma­hawk IIB models for British Common­wealth squad­rons in North Africa and the Middle East. A squad­ron of the RAF was the first Allied mili­tary avia­tion unit to fea­ture the “shark mouth” logo, copying simi­lar markings on some Luftwaffe Messerschmitt Bf 110 twin-engine fighters.

Left: In this 1942 photo Claire Chennault converses with pilots of the 23rd Fighter Group. In the back­ground is a P‑40 War­hawk bearing the dis­tinc­tive shark-mouth nose art from AVG days. The shark-mouth fighters remain among the most recog­niz­able of any indivi­dual com­bat air­craft and com­bat unit of World War II. Inci­den­tally, one of Chen­nault’s ace air­men, James H. Howard (6 Japa­nese kills), was the only fighter pilot over Europe to be awarded the Medal of Honor, the U.S. military’s highest decoration.

Right: Chennault (1893–1958) was a 44-year-old retired U.S. Army Air Corps officer when he arrived in China in 1937. He even­tually became direc­tor of a Chi­nese Air Force flight school cen­tered in Kun­ming, South­west China, before being appointed com­mander of China Air Task Force. In this May 1942 photo, he wears a U.S. Army briga­dier gene­ral’s star on his left shoulder but Chinese insignia otherwise.

Left: Flying Tigers’ Third Pursuit Squadron, called “Hell’s Angels,” photo­graphed near the Sal­ween River Gorge on the Chinese-Burmese border, May 28, 1942. Ace squadron Flight Leader Robert “R.T.” Smith com­mented on the chal­lenge of taking this photo while flying in for­ma­tion and “scanning the sur­rounding sky every few sec­onds to make sure no Jap fighters were about to ambush us.”

Right: Squadron Flight Leader Robert “R.T.” Smith standing next to his P‑40 War­hawk fighter, Kun­ming, China, May 23, 1942. Note Smith’s Nation­alist Chi­nese emblem on his cap and the “Flying Tigers” insig­nia on his air­craft. The insig­nia was created by the Walt Disney Com­pany, while the Chinese came up with the nick­name for the pilots, who were said to be fighting like “flying tigers.” Smith was credited with downing 8.9 Japa­nese air­craft while fighting with the Flying Tigers. He was twice deco­rated by the Chinese govern­ment. After a brief State-side stint, Smith returned to the China Burma India Theater, flying 55 com­bat missions over Burma and earning 3 more service decorations.

Contemporary Documentary of the Flying Tigers, a Unit of the U.S. Fourteenth Air Force