Claire Lee Chennault (September 6, 1893 – July 27, 1958)Birthdate: Encyclopedia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite 2010 and www.af.mil/About-Us/Biographies/Display/Article/107526/major-general-claire-lee-chennault/ give 1890 as birth year was an American military aviator best known for his leadership of the "Flying Tigers" and the Chinese Nationalist Air Force in World War II.
Chennault was a fierce advocate of "pursuit" or fighter-interceptor aircraft during the 1930s when the United States Army Air Corps was focused primarily on high-altitude bombardment. Chennault retired from the United States Army in 1937, and went to work as an aviation adviser and trainer in China.
Starting in early 1941, Chennault commanded the 1st American Volunteer Group (nicknamed Flying Tigers). He headed both the volunteer group and the uniformed U.S. Army Air Forces units that replaced it in 1942. He feuded constantly with General Joseph Stilwell, the U.S. Army commander in China, and helped China's Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek to convince President Roosevelt to remove Stilwell in 1944. The China-Burma-India theater was strategically invaluable as a means of pinning down many vital elements of the Imperial Japanese Army on the Chinese mainland, limiting their deployment against Allied forces advancing toward Japan via two Pacific campaigns.
Early life
Chennault is generally said to have been born in Commerce, Texas, on September 6, 1893, although there is no documentary proof of his birthdate or place of birth. For most of his life, he gave 1890 as his birth year, but his widow corrected that to 1893 after his death. His parents were John Stonewall Jackson Chennault and Jessie (née Lee) Chennault. His surname is of French origin; the French pronunciation is "", but his family, being Americanized, pronounced it "".
Chennault grew up in the Louisiana towns of Gilbert and Waterproof. He began misrepresenting his year of birth as either 1889"United States Census, 1940: Claire Chennault." familysearch.org. Retrieved: July 19, 2015. or 1890, possibly because he was too young to attend college after he graduated from high school and so his father added three years to his age.Hessen 1983, p. ix.Byrd 1987, Chapter 1. His mother died of tuberculosis in 1901 and he was raised by his aunt, Louise Chase, along with his brother and her sons.
Early military career Chennault attended Louisiana State University between 1909 and 1910, having given his birth month as June in order to meet their requirement that enrolling students be aged 16 "at nearest birthday", and underwent Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) training. He and his wife, Nell, moved to West Carroll Parish where he served as principal of Kilbourne School from 1913 to 1915.Allen, p. 64 At the onset of World War I, he graduated from Officers' School at Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indiana, and was transferred to the Aviation Division of the Army Signal Corps"Claire Lee Chennault and the Flying Tigers", vac.gov.tw; retrieved November 28, 2009. on November 27, 1917. He learned to fly in the Army Air Service during World War I. Following the war he graduated from pursuit pilot training at Ellington Field, Texas, on April 23, 1922, and remained in the service after it became the Air Corps in 1926. After graduating from the Air Corps Tactical School in 1931, Chennault became Chief of the Pursuit Section at the Tactical School.Byrd 1987, Chapter 3.
Leadership
Into the mid-1930s Chennault led and represented the 1st Pursuit Group of the Montgomery, Alabama-based Army Air Corps aerobatic team the "Three Musketeers".Owen 1985 The group performed at the 1928 National Air Races. In 1932, as a pursuit aviation instructor at Maxwell Field, Chennault re-organized the team as "Three Men on the Flying Trapeze".
Resignation Poor health (deafness and chronic bronchitis), disputes with superiors, and the fact that he was passed over as unqualified for promotion led Chennault to resign from the military on April 30, 1937; he separated from the service at the rank of major. As a civilian, he was recruited to go to China and join a small group of American civilians training Chinese airmen.Byrd 1987, Chapter 6.
In China Chennault arrived in China in June 1937. He had a three-month contract at a salary of $1,000 per month, charged with making a survey of the Chinese Air Force. Chiang's English-speaking wife, Soong Mei-ling, known to Americans as "Madame Chiang", was in charge of the Aeronautical Commission and thus became Chennault's immediate supervisor. Upon the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in August, Chennault became Chiang Kai-shek's chief air adviser, assisted in the training of new Chinese Air Force pilots, and sometimes flew scouting missions in an export Curtiss H-75 fighter. His duties also included organizing the "International Squadron" of mercenary pilots.Byrd 1987, Chapter 7. In late 1937, the Chinese Air Force considered attacking the Japanese home islands with bombers launched from the mainland of China with Chennault in an advisory role. Various pilots of the International Squadron, specifically the 14th International Bomber Squadron, from Britain, France, Netherlands, and the United States, proposed raiding Kagoshima with incendiary bombs but were all declined because of the "exorbitant remuneration" demanded by the foreign "volunteers". The mission was ultimately tasked to Capt. Xu Huansheng and Lt. Tong Yen-bo of the 8th Bomber Group.
Under the Sino-Soviet Treaty of 1937, Soviet-made bomber and fighter aircraft increasingly replenished China's battered air force units previously equipped with US-made aircraft, such as the Hawk IIIs and Boeing 281 Peashooters, and were also augmented by Soviet volunteer combat aviators; while the Chinese Air Force Academy in Jianqiao Airbase was pushed hinterland with the Fall of Shanghai and Nanjing, Claire Lee Chennault went along to Kunming's Wujiaba Airbase, in the capital of Yunnan Province in southwestern China, to reorganize and train new Chinese Air Force cadets at the academy along the American army air corps training model.Xu, Guangqiu. War Wings: The United States and Chinese Military Aviation, 1929–1949. Santa Barbara, California: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001. ."The Flying Tigers American Volunteer Group – Chinese Air Force." flyingtigersavg.22web.net. Retrieved: May 20, 2011.
On October 21, 1939, as the Imperial Japanese schnellbombing (fast bombers flying without fighter escorts) campaign raged terror on the cities of Chengdu and Chongqing,Cheung, 2015, p. 74. The Soviet-made fighters burning low-grade fuel simply did not have the performance necessary to engage the high-tech Japanese raiders with superchargers and burning high-octane... Chinese fighters could make only one slow firing-pass at the Japanese bombers... Chennault, accompanied by four Chinese officials, boarded the Pan American Airways Boeing B-314 California Clipper in Hong Kong, arriving at San Francisco on October 26, on a special mission for Chiang Kai-shek. By 1940, seeing that the Chinese Air Force in dire need because of obsolescent aircraft, ill-trained pilots and shortage of equipment, Chiang again sent Chennault, accompanied by Chinese Air Force General Mao Bangchu, to the United States to meet with banker Dr. T. V. Soong in Washington, D.C., with the following goal: "to get as many fighter planes, bombers, and transports as possible, plus all the supplies needed to maintain them and the pilots to fly the aircraft." Together, they departed on October 15, 1940, from Chongqing, China, transited at Hong Kong where they boarded Pan Am Boeing B-314 American Clipper on November 1, arriving at San Francisco on November 14. They reported to the Chinese Ambassador to the United States, Hu Shih.Byrd 1987, Chapter 8.
Creation of the American Volunteer Group, the "Flying Tigers" Chennault's mission to Washington generated the concept of creating an American Volunteer Group of pilots and mechanics to serve in China. By then Dr. Soong had already begun negotiations for an increase in financial aid with U.S. Secretary of Commerce and Federal Loan Administrator Jesse H. Jones on October 17.Byrd 1987, Chapters 7–8.
Washington provided the money. How to obtain the shopping list of aircraft, aviation supplies, volunteers, and funds for the Bank of China was further discussed in a meeting held at the home of Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. with Chennault, Dr. Soong, and General Mao on December 21.Dr. T.V. Soong: President of the Bank of China. On April 25, 1941, the United States and China formally signed a $50 million stabilization agreement to support the Chinese currency. By December 23, 1940, upon approval by the War Department, State Department, and the President of the United States, an agreement was reached to provide China the 100 P-40B Tomahawk aircraft which had originally been built for Britain, but which the British were persuaded to give up in preference for newer models rapidly being built. With an agreement reached, General Mao returned to China aboard the SS Lurline, departing from Los Angeles, California, on January 24, 1941. Chennault followed shortly after with a promise from the War Department and President Roosevelt to be delivered to Chiang Kai-shek that several shipments of P-40C fighters were forthcoming along with pilots, mechanics, and aviation supplies.
The 100 planes were crated and sent to Burma on third-country freighters during spring 1941. At Rangoon, they were unloaded, assembled and test flown by personnel of Central Aircraft Manufacturing Company (CAMCO) before they were delivered to the AVG training unit at Toungoo. Their first battle occurred on December 20, 1941, with aircraft flying out of Kunming.Schultz 1987
CAMCO delivered 99 Tomahawks before war broke out. (Many of those were later destroyed in training accidents.) The 100th fuselage was trucked to a CAMCO plant in Loiwing, China, and later made whole with parts from damaged aircraft. Shortages in equipment with spare parts almost impossible to obtain in Burma along with the slow introduction of replacement fighter aircraft were continual impediments although the AVG received 50 replacement P-40E fighters from USAAF stocks that had been originally scheduled for shipment to Britain but cancelled by the Tomahawk's inferior flight performance to German fighters.
Chennault recruited some 300 American pilots and ground crew, posing as tourists, who were adventurers or mercenaries, not necessarily idealists out to save China. But under Chennault they developed into a crack fighting unit, always going against superior Japanese forces. They became the symbol of America's military might in Asia.Sehnert, Walt. "McCook's Glen Beneda and the Flying Tigers." mccookgazette.com, January 5, 2009. Retrieved: May 22, 2009. They became the Flying Tigers.
Plan to bomb Japan A year before the U.S. officially entered the war, Chennault developed an ambitious plan for a sneak attack on Japanese bases. His Flying Tigers would use U.S. bombers and U.S. pilots, all with Chinese markings. He made the fantastic claim that a handful of fliers and planes could win the war single-handedly. The U.S. Army was opposed to that scheme and raised obstacles by noting that being able to reach Japan depended on Chiang's troops being able to build and protect airfields and bases close enough to Japan, which they doubted that he could do. It also had little confidence in Chennault.Michael Schaller, "American Air Strategy in China, 1939–1941: The Origins of Clandestine Air Warfare." American Quarterly 28.1 (1976): 3–19 online.