BATTLE OF CHINA: Proof by Chennault

The U.S. Air Force in China was still pitifully small—a few fighters, fewer bombers. Most of the fields painfully prepared by the patient Chinese were still idle; some had been taken by the Jap. But the Air Force was at work. What it had accomplished under the command of seam-faced Brigadier General Claire Lee Chennault made the Chinese feel warm all over.

With what he had, Chennault accomplished wonders comparable to his work with the A.V.G., a few of whose members stayed on to show youngsters of the U.S. Army the know-how of China flying.

Good Shows, Good Showman. It was no surprise to the Chinese that the fighter commander, lanky Colonel Robert L. Scott Jr., rode up front in the forays. Colonel Scott, only 34, had worked subordinately as a wingman with the A.V.G.s to learn the tricks of Jap fighting. Older than most of the Flying Tiger men, he was still of their breed and generation, had the right amount of calculating recklessness.

The surprise was burly, Carolina-mountain-born Colonel Caleb V. Haynes, boss of the bomber command. Colonel Haynes is 47, and a famous flyer.

He has girdled the globe, run off a great flight in the Army’s biggest plane (Boeing B15) with a gargantuan load of medical supplies for quake-stricken Chile. Yet Caleb Haynes is no chair polisher. He, too, rode out in front in every show he could make.

In two weeks the China task force ran off a dozen or more destructive raids, gave the spirit of China a big lift. From secret bases behind the gorges of the Yangtze, bombers thundered down the river and, above Hankow’s two big airfields, released their bombs in symbolic, as well as practical, destruction. It was principally from Hankow that Jap planes drove Chungking underground for two bitter years.

The China flyers ranged farther. On another raid they swept down river to Kiu-kiang (see p. 25), broke up a Jap concentration. They punched at Nanchang and, it was reported, at Hong Kong. Greatest wonder of all: they ranged southeast all the way to Canton, caught the Jap’s planes on the ground, blasted 50 to 60 of them to bits. This week, over Szechwan, they broke up a 50-plane Jap bombing party headed for Chungking.

Antidote to Weariness. Lieut. General Joseph W. Stilwell, commander of all U.S. forces in China, did not release all the details of their raids. But the Chinese at last had something to beam about. The Jap air force was staying on the ground—whether from fright or because its planes were busy elsewhere, no one knew. Therefore living habits in thousands of towns in southwest China could be, and were, changed. Stores and shops reopened.

People dared to do business by daylight. Claire Chennault began to receive embarrassing presents, banners, trophies.

The Chinese Army on the ground was galvanized too. In the complicated mazes of China’s fluid tactical plan it had never stopped fighting, but now it fought with new heart. It slashed into the Jap in the north (see p. 21) and in the east, particularly in Kiangsi Province, where by a series of explosive sallies it made the Jap’s life miserable. It shook his hold from the eastern railroad net, sliced a big piece out of the vital Chekiang-Kiangsi railway he had spent so much blood to win. From Shensi Province in the inland north to Kwangtung on the southeast coast it snatched villages from the invaders. It lost others, but always it fought.

Yet few Chinese civilians, and no soldiers, were foolish enough to think that in two weeks of operation Chennault had broken the aerial back of the Jap. The force was too small, the pace too heavy, and the Jap was busy about many things. The China Air Force had given the world only a token of what air power could do in China. Newcomer Haynes told newspapermen what many an oldtime China pilot already knew: with more bombers, more fighters, the Jap could be pushed back into the sea.