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. 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. 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, 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.
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. "Joy" at the USS
Kidd Louisiana Veterans Memorial & Museum in
Baton Rouge 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. 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. 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. They became the Flying Tigers. Despite the military advice, U.S. civilian leaders were captivated by the idea of China winning the war with Japan swiftly with only a few U.S. airmen and planes. It was adopted by top civilian officials including Treasury Secretary Morgenthau and President Roosevelt himself. However, the American attack never took place: The Nationalist Chinese had not built and secured any runways or bases close enough to reach Japan, just as the military had warned. The bombers and crews arrived after the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, and were used for the war in Burma, as they lacked the range to reach Japan from secure bases in China.
Flying Tigers Chennault's 1st American Volunteer Group (AVG) – better known as the "
Flying Tigers" – began training in August 1941 and was primarily based out of
Rangoon, Burma, and Kunming, Yunnan. Just weeks after the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor, senior Chinese officials in Chongqing released details of the first aerial attack made by the group, when the American flyers encountered 10 Japanese aircraft heading to raid
Kunming and successfully shot down four of the raiders. Thus, Claire Chennault became America's "first military leader" to be publicly recognized for striking a blow against the Japanese military forces – despite not being a member of the American military, but a civilian mercenary who was paid and promoted to colonel by Chiang Kai-Shek. The Flying Tigers fought the Japanese for seven months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Chennault's three squadrons used P-40s, and his tactics of "defensive pursuit", formulated in the years when bombers were actually faster than intercepting fighter aircraft, to guard the
Burma Road, Rangoon, and other strategic locations in
Southeast Asia and western China against Japanese forces. As the commander of the
Chinese Air Force flight training school at , west of
Kunming, Chennault also made a great contribution by training a new generation of Chinese fighter pilots. The Flying Tigers were formally incorporated into the
United States Army Air Forces in 1942. Prior to that, Chennault had rejoined the Army with the rank of
major on April 7, 1942. Three days later he was made
colonel. Twelve days later he was promoted to
brigadier general, and then within a year to
major general, commanding the
Fourteenth Air Force. Chennault had 900 aircraft at his disposal, which was more than Japan had in China. The first magazine photo coverage of Chennault took place within
Life magazine in the Monday, August 10, 1942, issue. The first
Time magazine photo coverage of Chennault took place in its Monday, December 6, 1943, issue. Shortly before the
Time issue appeared, Chennault encountered British
Prime Minister Winston Churchill at the
Cairo Conference. According to historian
Carlo D'Este, Chennault "had been nicknamed 'The Hawk' by
Time Magazine and described by
Antony Head, a member of the Joint Planning Staff, as 'resembling a Red Indian Chief who had just taken somebody's scalp.' Turning to [Gen. Hastings Lionel]
Ismay, Churchill asked the name of the American officer in a loud voice that was overheard by the U.S. delegation and produced an embarrassed silence, finally broken when [Churchill] announced: 'I'm glad he's on our side.'"
China-Burma-India theater Throughout the war Chennault was engaged in a bitter dispute with the American ground commander, General
Joseph Stilwell. Chennault believed that the Fourteenth Air Force, operating out of bases in China, could attack Japanese forces in concert with Nationalist troops. For his part, Stilwell wanted air assets diverted to his command to support the opening of a ground supply route through northern Burma to China. The route would provide supplies and new equipment for a greatly expanded Nationalist force of twenty to thirty modernized divisions. Chiang Kai-shek favored Chennault's plans, since he was suspicious of British colonial interests in Burma. He was also concerned about alliances with semi-independent generals supporting the Nationalist government, and was concerned that a major loss of military forces would enable his Communist Chinese adversaries to gain the upper hand. The sharply differing assessments held by Stilwell and Chennault came out in a meeting in 1943 with President Roosevelt, who asked both commanders for their opinion of Chiang. Stilwell stated: "He's a vacillating, tricky, undependable old scoundrel who never keeps his word." and, unlike her husband, fluent in English. For example, Chennault opened up a brothel in
Guilin for his pilots and recruited English-speaking prostitutes from Hong Kong who fled to the inland of China to escape the Japanese. He argued that his men needed sex and it was better to have his "boys" visit a brothel that was regularly inspected to reduce venereal diseases. The 14th Air Force was involved in strafing and bombing attacks against the Japanese advancing on the city of Changsha, which Japanese had tried and failed to take three previous times since 1938, making the city into a symbol of Chinese defiance. Relations between Stilwell and Chennault reached their low point in 1944. As the Japanese took Changsha in June 1944, Chennault criticized Stilwell for trying to command the Chinese armies from Burma, sending a message to Washington saying no-one had seen Stilwell in southern China recently. Following their victory in the Fourth Battle of Changsha, the Japanese began to advance on the city of
Hengyang held by the 10th Chinese Army commanded by General
Xue Yue. However, the Chinese soldiers holding Hengyang were ill-equipped, with the American journalist Teddy White reporting that only a third of the Chinese infantrymen had rifles, their artillery consisted of just two French artillery guns from World War I, and the majority lived on starvation rations of one bowl of rice per day. Chennault did have the pilots of the 14th Air Force brave Japanese anti-aircraft fire to fly in as low as 300 feet to drop supplies of food, ammunition and medical supplies, but Xue stated he needed far more. One of Chennault's last acts of the war was to support the beleaguered French forces in retreat following the
Japanese Coup in Indochina in March 1945. Going against orders not to intervene, he sent units of the Fourteenth air force to drop supplies and launch ground attack sorties, but this had little effect stemming the Japanese operation there. With the reorganization of air forces in China, Chennault resigned in July 1945, and was replaced as commander of the U.S. 14th Air Force by Lt. Gen.
George E. Stratemeyer. Following the surrender of Japan in August 1945, Chennault retired from the Army Air Forces on October 31, 1945. ==Postwar==