Stilwell, Chennault lead Americans in Asia conflict
By A. T. Steele
Almost a year before Pearl Harbor, Arch Steele, of the Chicago Daily News foreign staff, took a trip into Japan and dug up startling facts about Tokyo’s plans against the United States. Then, to avoid censorship, he slipped back into China, and filed his now-famous series on “Japan Takes Aim.”
Since then, Mr. Steele’s accurate and uninterrupted war coverage has carried him into many battle zones – including Russia’s. And now – back in the United States for the first time in four years – he has written a fact-filled series on the task that faces us before we can come to final grips with Japan. The following is the second article in the series.
A Yank and a Southerner are America’s two outstanding military men in continental Asia, and both are as tough as salty as they come. Each in his own way, Lt. Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell and Brig. Gen. Claire L. Chennault are making ready for the still-far-off big push. Given the tools, it would be hard to find two men better fitted for delousing Burma and China of the noxious Japanese invaders.
China, under Chiang Kai-shek, and India, under Sir Archibald P. Wavell, have the armies. The Americans have the Air Force. But the U.S. Army’s role in China, Burma and India is more than just knocking Zeros out of the air and bombing Japanese bases.
Our Army is doing a tremendous job of supply. It is also helping to equip and train a model Chinese military force in India which is expected to demonstrate that the Chinese, when properly armed, can hit as hard and as effectively as any other fighting force.
The day may possibly come when it will be necessary for the United States to send big armies to India and China to help the British and the Chinese to complete their job of expelling the Japanese from continental Asia. How much American military assistance will be needed depends to a very large extent on how effectively China is able to utilize her enormous manpower. Six years of war have sapped China’s military strength. But Gen. Stilwell, for one, is convinced that once China’s lifelines are restored that strength can be refreshed, revived and directed in such a way that China’s vast armies will become a very powerful offensive factor.
Proud of camp
“Uncle Joe” Stilwell’s pride and joy is a camp, “somewhere in India,” where a unit of Chinese troops is being groomed, with American equipment and under American and Chinese instructors, to show what the Chinese can do when given half a chance. This detachment, consisting partly of Chinese soldiers who retreated from Burma with Stilwell, has been outfitted and armed almost entirely with American materials. You’d never recognize them for the same men who staggered out of the jungle a year ago.
They have made astonishing gains in weight and general physical well-being. They are as delighted as children with their new weapons and keep them in immaculate order. What’s most important, they have responded remarkably to instruction and have made a record on the target range and on the maneuvering grounds which compares favorably with that of any modern army after a similar period of training.
Gen. Chiang Kai-shek has promised that when the reconquest of Burma begins, the Chinese will take an active military role. They will attack not only from China, but also from China. It is then that this experimental Chinese force in India will have an opportunity to show what Chinese soldiers can do when, for once, they can face the enemy with decent odds. It has been possible to divert to this Chinese Expeditionary Force some part of the Lend-Lease materials which have been piled up in the India bottleneck awaiting shipment to China.
India a base
Generally speaking, India has been a bigger base of American military activity than China. This is natural, for not only is India much more easily supplied, but it is also the logical base for the main push against Burma – most important Allied chore in continental Asia. For our air offensive, however, which is steadily growing in power and which must be pushed regardless of delays in the Burma campaign, China offers the only suitable bases from which we can strike deep into the vitals of the Japanese Empire.
Until recently, our Air Force in China, Burma and India was under a combined command, with Brig. Gen. Clayton Bissell as its head. Now our small China airwing has been made a separate air force – the 14th – under Chennault. This is good news for it means greater harmony in a place where it was badly needed. The outspoken differences of view between the Chennault and Bissell camps had long been a cause of anxiety to detached observers who recognized the special abilities of both these officers, but felt the need of better understanding between their adherents. Both Chennault and Bissell remain, of course, under the general command of Lt. Gen. Stilwell.
Proof of talent
Chennault, a rugged, weather-beaten oak of a man, has long been and still is one of the outstanding air theorists in the U.S. Armed Forces. Some of his tactical theories are so revolutionary that they do not set well with more orthodox minds. But among his own subordinates Chennault is idolized almost to the point of worship. His record as commander of the old “Flying Tigers,” and more recently, of the China Air Task Force, provides convincing proof of his talents.
During his early years in the Army Air Corps, when flying was still in its infancy, Chennault delighted in tearing up out-of-date theories and devising new ones. His specialty was pursuit flying. He had the annoying habit (to the older heads) of thinking years ahead. He was an admirer of Billy Mitchell. He wrote a manual on pursuit flying. He devised a new system of gunnery. He was a most vocal advocate of teamwork in pursuit flying long before it had been developed to its present technique. While he was stationed with the Army Air Corps in Hawaii, he began thinking out his theories on air-raid warning networks which were later applied with great success in China.
Watched Japanese
After he was invalided out of the Army, Chennault came to China as an aeronautical adviser to the Chinese government. For years he remained there, helping to train Chinese pilots and studying Japanese tactics. He spent hundreds of hours, during Japanese air raids, watching Japanese aerial maneuvers through his binoculars. He rarely bothered to go into a dugout. The result was that when Chennault took over command of the American Volunteer Corps (the “Flying Tigers”) he was able to tell his men exactly how the Japanese would behave and to instruct his pilots in a revolutionary method of dealing with them.
Chennault came back into the U.S. Army as a brigadier general when the Flying Tigers gave way to the China Air Task Force. He has been handicapped by insufficient planes, but has done wonders with the small force at his command. Chennault’s theory is that the Japanese are using China as a training ground for pilots destined for the South Pacific. He believes that given enough fighter planes he could cripple Japanese air operations in the South and that given still more planes he could knock the Japanese Air Force into a cocked hat.
If Chennault has any weakness, it is his softheartedness. He is lenient to a fault.
It would be unfair to Uncle Joe Stilwell’s boys in China and India to pass up the great job they are doing in ferrying strategic supplies to China over the Himalayan “hump.” A share of this traffic between India and China is handled by the Chinese National Aviation Corporation, a Sino-American concern; but the bulk of it is carried in Army transports, with Army pilots.
Deserve praise
These young transport fliers, who are increasing in numbers as more and more transport planes go into service, have not had half the recognition they deserve. They’re performing a task less glamorous but no less dangerous than that of the men who drop bombs on Japanese bases – and it has to be done almost every day of the year, regardless of conditions. Their hazards are not only Japanese Zeros – for they often skirt the Japanese lines in northern Burma – but also foul weather, mountains higher than Mt. McKinley, fierce winds that toss you scores of miles off course, and frequent icy conditions that push down transport to dangerously low altitudes at the very peak of their climb.
The roll of Americans who have died fighting the elements over the humps a lengthening one. Bad weather and blind crashes into mountainsides are usually responsible. Several fliers had had narrow squeaks from the Japanese.
There is the pilot, for instance, who lost his way and was forced to land in a river bed behind the Japanese lines. He finally got his bearings and took off, just in time to get a bird’s-eye view of a Japanese patrol beating its way toward the spot where his plane had been.
