Fallen Tigers: The Fate of America's Missing Airmen in China During World War II

311 Pages·2021·7.941 MB·English

by  Daniel Jackson

Fallen Tigers
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Fallen Tigers
The Fate of America’s Missing Airmen
in China during World War II
Daniel Jackson
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Copyright © 2021 by The University Press of Kentucky
Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth,
serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre
College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University,
The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College,
Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University,
Morehead State University, Murray State University,
Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University,
University of Kentucky, University of Louisville,
and Western Kentucky University.
All rights reserved.
Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky
663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008
www.kentuckypress.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Jackson, Daniel, 1987- author.
Title: Fallen tigers : the fate of America’s missing airmen in China during
World War II / Daniel Jackson.
Other titles: Fate of America’s missing airmen in China during World War II
Description: Lexington, Kentucky : The University Press of Kentucky, [2021] |
Series: Aviation & air power | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020053361 | ISBN 9780813180809 (hardcover) |
ISBN 9780813180823 (pdf) | ISBN 9780813180816 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: United States. Army Air Forces. Air Force, 14th—History. |
China. Kong jun. American Volunteer Group—History. | United States. Army
Air Forces. China Air Task Force—History. | World War, 1939–1945—Search and
rescue operations—China. | World War, 1939–1945—Missing in action. |
Sino-Japanese War, 1937–1945—Aerial operations, American. | World War,
1939–1945—Campaigns—China. | Sino-Japanese War, 1937–1945—Participation,
American. | Military assistance, American—China—History—20th century. |
United States. Army Air Forces—Biography.
Classification: LCC D790.22 14th .J33 2021 | DDC 940.54/8—dc23
This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting
the requirements of the American National Standard
for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Member of the Association
of University Presses
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Contents
Author’s Note vii
Prologue: Missing in Action xi
1. Aerial Oppression 1
2. Hope for China 12
3. Doolittle’s Raid 23
4. Enemy Occupation 36
5. China Air Task Force 52
6. Hong Kong 62
7. Aerial Offensive 77
8. Shipping is the Key 89
9. Thanksgiving Day 99
10. Ambush at Jiujiang 109
11. Operation Ichi-Go 120
12. Collateral Damage 132
13. With the Communists 145
14. The Secret Airfield 155
15. Thai Fighters 172
16. The Final Offensive 187
Epilogue: Memory 202
Acknowledgments 207
Appendix A: Timeline 209
Appendix B: Chinese Transliteration 221
Notes 223
Bibliography 249
Index 257
Photographs follow page 144
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Author’s Note
The story of America’s missing airmen in China during World War II lies
buried in thousands of government reports; it involves a cast of thousands
and spans the length and breadth of East Asia. The purpose of this book is to
determine the true military and social dimensions of the war through the
experiences of these airmen. For this, I relied predominantly on archived
primary sources, scouring official records and every available missing air-
crew report (MACR) and evasion report filed by the American Volunteer
Group (AVG), China Air Task Force (CATF), and the Fourteenth and Twen-
tieth Army Air Forces. The result is a database of 680 aircraft and 1,832 air-
men reported missing on missions over China, Indochina, and Thailand. The
database is available online at forgottensquadron.com.
For the many colorful narratives and anecdotes that enliven the text, I
depended on extensive interviews and correspondence with veterans and
their relatives, their memoirs, and on contemporaneous diaries, reports, and
letters home. The events I have reconstructed are thus based on rigorous re-
search, rather than creative license.
This book does not encompass the entirety of the US Army’s China-
Burma-India (CBI) Theater. While the Tenth Army Air Force fought in India
and Burma, airmen who bailed out or crash-landed there faced very different
circumstances and completely different social and political dynamics than ex-
isted in China. Their stories, though fascinating and no less dramatic, are not
featured here. Additionally, the roughly six hundred transports lost flying the
airlift between India and China encountered a different set of challenges than
combat air forces in China and have previously been the subject of serious
historical research. Their incredible experiences are also not recounted here.
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viii Author’s Note
Major General Claire Lee Chennault, commander of the AVG, CATF,
and Fourteenth Army Air Force, had a reputation as a poor administrator,
leaving much to be desired from his reports and paperwork. Fortunately,
most MACRs and evasion reports originated at the squadron level. The Air-
Ground Aid Section, a unit dedicated solely to the safe return of missing
airmen, collected, processed, and preserved these reports. Where MACRs
did not exist, squadron or group mission reports provided the relevant infor-
mation. Far from a mere representative sample, the resulting dataset is a
near-complete record of every airman who crashed or bailed out more than
a day’s journey from a friendly airbase.
Aggregating and analyzing these reports provides a view of China’s war
across its geographic breadth free from political, ideological, or mythologiz-
ing lenses. The Army Air Forces used MACRs as a repository for all informa-
tion pertaining to those crews who failed to return from missions. This
information served to account for, find, and aid missing airmen. Air-Ground
Aid Section representatives or squadron intelligence officers debriefed air-
men who returned and compiled their experiences into evasion reports.
These reports, meant to help subsequent evaders and kept secret for decades
after the war, remained free of self-glorification and Cold War politics. They
are a rare honest and unfiltered witness to China at war.
They are also more typical of the American experience than existing
popular literature. Memoirs of fighter aces, even when historically accurate,
are hardly representative.1 Only seventy-six American pilots received credit
for shooting down five or more enemy airplanes in the CBI Theater. By con-
trast, in May 1944 alone, the Army Air Forces counted 1,643 aircrews on
hand in CBI, including fighter pilots, reconnaissance pilots, and bomber and
transport crews of anywhere from two to fifteen men each. Most of these
men (officers and enlisted)—including pilots, navigators, bombardiers, gun-
ners, crew chiefs, and radio operators—did not routinely tangle with Japa-
nese fighters in swirling dogfights. In fact, one of the interesting statistics that
emerged from aggregating these reports is that Japan’s ground forces, rather
than its air force, presented the greatest threat to American aircraft in the
theater.2
A further utility of these reports is the ability to map political influ-
ence throughout wartime China. The experiences of fallen airmen scattered
across the entire country provide a sampling of the influence, predominance,
and effectiveness of the Imperial Japanese Army and various Nationalist,
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Author’s Note ix
Communist, warlord, and collaborationist groups. Among American and
Chinese leaders, Gen Joseph W. Stilwell, the American theater commander,
claimed the Nationalists did not or would not fight; General Chennault
claimed they did and would effectively with the support of his planes; Mao
Zedong claimed the Communists fought ferociously against the Japanese
while the Nationalists focused on wiping out the Communists; and Genera-
lissimo Chiang Kai-shek claimed his Nationalist troops held the Japanese at
bay even as the Communists resisted him and undermined his leadership.3
These competing and contradictory claims make for choppy historical waters
to navigate. The reports filed by airmen and intelligence officers provide a
ground-truth perspective divorced from these partisan narratives.
Ultimately, the story that emerges is one of cooperation and fraternity
between ordinary Americans and Chinese. In the modern era of escalating
rivalry and confrontation between the United States and the People’s Repub-
lic of China, this story of wartime friendship can serve as a touchstone for
cooperation instead of conflict in the twenty-first century. Furthermore,
America’s efforts in China depended on local forces enabled by American
advisors, equipment, and air support. This dynamic—much different from
the United States’ efforts in other theaters of the war—more closely mirrors
its present military conflicts. Understanding the successes and failures of US
policy in China during World War II can inform efforts today. Most impor-
tantly, the brave Chinese and Americans who joined together to fight a com-
mon enemy deserve to be remembered—especially the more than four
hundred airmen still listed as missing in action.
Most American sources on this topic use the Wade-Giles romanization
of people and place names. I used a large number of Chinese sources, how-
ever, and in an effort to continue fusing Chinese and American research, I
decided to use the modern Pinyin romanization for people and place names
in mainland China, and Wade-Giles for place names on the island of Taiwan.
This should make it easier for researchers to find these locations on modern
maps. Wade-Giles spellings often vary anyhow—Pinyin provides an easy
method of standardization. For the reader’s benefit, I provide the characters
and Wade-Giles transliterations for some of the Chinese words used through-
out the text in Appendix B.
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