The Ragged, Rugged Warriors

by Martin Caidin

  Curtiss Hawk biplane fighters, effective against earlier-type Japanese planes, were slashed to ribbons and shot out of the air by Type 96 Claude fighters.

  The needs of the country notwithstanding, the political guile and backbiting in attempts to scramble up the power ladder seemed to go on unabated. Opportunities to seize political-military control received priority over combating the enemy, and those Chinese in high authority went to gruesome lengths to sustain their power—including shooting front-line fighter pilots who had deliberately, casually, or even inadvertently disobeyed orders. Because no Chinese pilot wished to be regarded as less than highly skilled and of unquestionable courage, these men often carried to the extreme attempts to save aircraft that were badly crippled or even on fire. More than one fighter or bomber lurched back to its home field, the crew grimly determined to save their plane, when common sense (to say nothing of the flames) dictated bailing out. The loss of an aircraft was nowhere as important as saving the crew so that the men could return to the combat zone in the sky. But there were dozens of crews who came home, successful in saving face, only to lose their lives in explosions and holocausts as they crashed their shattered planes.

  In a desperate numerical position in July and August of 1937, the Chinese Air Force had received a steady inflow of replacement fighters and bombers; these the Japanese pilots just as steadily reduced in numbers. But while there were new planes to be purchased for dollars, only time in training could produce combat-worthy aircrews. Neither the aggressive Japanese nor the exasperating Chinese were ready, from their divergent positions, to provide that time.

  Shanghai was to live with a ceaseless screen of Japanese airpower either overhead or always at the gates to the city; one or more Japanese aircraft carriers maintained its station for this purpose by cruising with impunity off the mouth of the Yangtze River just beyond the city. With a fighter squadron always on alert, around the clock, the Japanese were never more than a few minutes' time from throwing a powerful fighter force into the air to meet any tactical situation.

  Japanese troops and naval units occupied the offshore islands, Chusan, Woosung, and Point. Engineers turned the air into clouds of dust as they pounded out runways. Never a people to be concerned with the creature comforts, Japanese mechanics and aircrews lived a spartan existence on the islands—and carried out a devastating assault against the Chinese on the mainland. The islands were some 15 minutes’ flying time from major Chinese centers, and the short distances to and from targets meant that full bomb loads could be carried, and several missions flown in a single day.

  Under the driving whip of Chennault-—a whip cracked sporadically within the morass of Chinese temperament and inscrutable politics—the Chinese Air Force made desperate attempts to strike back at their enemy. Chennault controlled a small but powerful force of Northrop light bombers which he assigned to airfields in the Canton area. The American-built planes .staged out of Canton to attack Japanese merchantmen and warships that steamed close off the coast in complete disdain of the Chinese. That the latter could fly and fight hard when their training was adequate and their leadership up to the task, the Chinese demonstrated in bloody fashion by sinking several cargo vessels and defending destroyers. These attacks were carried out in the face of severe antiaircraft fire (Japanese warship crews even then were outstanding at their duties) and not without heavy losses at times.'

  But once again, the attacks could be maintained only to that moment when the Japanese made their decision to wipe out the enemy forces. After one particularly heavy raid against their shipping, the Japanese met the successive bombing strike with a milling swarm of Mitsubishi fighters. Twelve Northrops dove against the Japanese ships. The Mitsubishis intercepted them long before they could reach their bombing position, and in the swift slaughter that ensued 11 bombers tumbled in flames. One light bomber escaped to stagger back to Hankow.

  It seemed almost that Japanese fighters were biding their time to finish off this sole survivor. Several days later the pilot took his repaired Northrop into the air; almost at once the scream of a diving fighter split the air, and the Northrop was tom into blazing fragments.

  On December 2, over the broken city of Nanking, the Japanese ran down the curtain. At the start of the battle the Chinese had nearly 90 fighter planes to resist their enemy, plus different types of bombers the exact number of which is difficult to ascertain; there appeared to have been from fifty to a hundred planes. On December 2, the Chinese unexpectedly put up a heavy force of Russian-built fighter planes over Nanking, hoping to catch the Japanese unaware. But the pilots in the Type 96 fighters were in prime form; they were as taut and ready for battle as any fighter pilots could be, and they responded with aggressive attacks against the late-model Russian planes. Led by Lieutenant Nango, the Mitsubishis tore the enemy formations into shambles, and then proceeded to chew up the individual fighters remaining. Ten Russian planes fell from the skies; only two escaped. That night the Japanese celebrated their one-sided victory—not a single Mitsubishi had been lost.

  Thus ended the first major phase of the air war in China. Elated by a few initial victories, the exultant Chinese were taught quickly that Japanese airpower represented a formidable force not to be dismissed lightly. Not only was Japanese equipment superior to any that it encountered, but the air elements thrown into the battle by Japan had great staying power. Initial losses could be absorbed within the structure of the Japanese air forces, for the Japanese learned their lessons swiftly and took prompt remedial action that eliminated continued prohibitive losses.

  With control of the air securely in their hands, the Japanese pressed even harder on the ground. Not even desperate resistance, enhanced by cooperation among the different Chinese factions who could no longer ignore the threat of disaster from the powerful Japanese, could stem the tide. The long Chinese withdrawal into the interior of the vast China mainland began—a march that became a bloody and battered retreat, with rearguard actions to hold off the thrusts of advance Japanese elements while the main body of the army, and the centers of government, rushed to place distance between themselves and the enemy. It was a staggering withdrawal . . . more than 2,000 terrible miles up the Yangtze.

  There were two separate military aspects to this retreat. Chinese air-base facilities were carried to areas beyond the flight range of the aggressive Mitsubishi fighters. This was necessary not only to save the remaining Chinese air force from total extinction in combat, but to provide the bases and the means to institute new training, and to bring in as many additional fighters and bombers from foreign sources as the Chinese could purchase.

  Simultaneously, the government prepared a last-ditch stand at Hankow to cover the mass retreat into the Szechwan Basin. Protected by towering mountains, Chinese forces could put the rugged terrain to good defensive use, adding to their regrouped strength the logistic problems of the Japanese, who were stretching their supply lines to the breaking point. If the Japanese were held back long enough, Chiang Kai-shek could realize the establishment of a new political and military government headquarters in the city of Chungking, well within the mountainous area of Szechwan.

  No one had anticipated that the Japanese would so quickly develop a complete grasp of airpower needs in the China war. Their concept of combat in the air was a development of the single word attack, and they had little intention of allowing the Chinese to remain free of their fighters and bombers so that they could build up their strength.

  As quickly as the Chinese set up new air force headquarters at Nanching in Central China, some 335 air miles southwest of Shanghai, the Japanese moved to counter that advantage for their adversaries. The advantage was, to be sure, strictly a limited one—the new air force headquarters lay beyond the striking range of the Mitsubishi Type 96 fighter planes. This deficiency the Japanese intended to correct—and at once.

  Lieutenant Commander Genda (who played a major role in the attack against Pearl Harbor) had an intrinsic grasp of airpower needs. As
the air staff officer of the 2nd Combined Air Flotilla, he recommended that the Japanese Navy establish a series of forward air bases, no more than primitive outposts, between Shanghai and the new retreats of the enemy. In this fashion the Mitsubishi fighters could stage close to the Chinese positions and join the Japanese bombers as they flew to attack their targets; the indispensable fighter escort could thus be maintained, despite the extreme ranges faced by the fighter planes.

  Commander Okumiya provides us with an official study of airpower in these early months of the war in China:

  “Employing Type 95 land-based attack bombers as emergency transport planes, the Navy flew fuel and mechanics for the fighters into Kuangte Air Field. Although occupied by the Japanese Army, the airfield was partially isolated, since the enemy still controlled the supply lines. Our fighter planes landed at Kuangte for refueling, then resumed their flights for the Nanching area. Those planes with sufficient fuel to return directly to Shanghai flew nonstop from the target area; the remainder with short fuel reserves made another stop at Kuangte.

  “The novelty of the new tactics proved completely successful, as repeatedly our fighters made disastrous surprise raids against the unsuspecting Chinese. . . . The demands of battle forced the naval planes into unexpected situations for which they had not been trained. Carrier-based dive bombers, attack bombers, and Type 95 [biplane] carrier-based fighters repeatedly reconnoitered, bombed, and machine-gunned enemy forces in direct cooperation with our army units, which were advancing steadily westward from the Shanghai area to Nanking. Although lacking in training and in experience, the naval pilots performed these missions so successfully that they received the greatest praise of the ground units, who benefited materially from their supporting attacks.

  “These special operations were discontinued after three months of fighting, marked by the fall of Nanking. Many lessons were gained in the way of new tactics and operations from the campaign, especially (1) that air groups and combat planes trained at sea for sea duty can serve successfully without special training in any air campaign over land, and (2) that the key to success in any land or sea operation depends upon command of the air.

  “The outstanding combat successes of the Type 96 [Claude] fighter planes ended a long-standing controversy in Japan, destroying once and for all the validity of the arguments of those who insisted upon retaining biplane-type fighters. Even with due consideration for its exceptional maneuverability, the short range and slow speed of the Type 95 carrier-based fighter doomed it to extinction. It required the final test of combat to determine which of these two fighter types would be the most effective in war.

  “The China air battles vindicated completely the Navy's insistence upon the strictest training for all pilots and air crews. Although the naval pilots were trained specifically for operations against enemy surface fleets, their quality enabled them to perform with an efficiency superior to that exhibited by our Army pilots. Conversely, it was also determined that pilots trained specifically for maneuvers over land experienced great difficulty in overwater operations, even in merely flying long distances over the ocean.

  “We discovered that the extended range of our Navy bombers opened new vistas of aerial warfare and that with these far-flying aircraft we could attack enemy positions far behind the front lines or while several hundred miles at sea. Most important of all, perhaps, we learned that certain types of air campaigns could not be strictly defined as either strictly ‘land’ or ‘sea’ battles, but required of the pilots the ability to fight under any conditions.”3

  For a brief time—a distressingly brief period—it appeared that the fighting in China might come to a swift end—not through unquestioned military victory but through negotiation. With the occupation of Nanking in December of 1937, military operations in middle China ground to an indecisive halt, while political meetings to come to a mutual agreement to halt the war were instituted

  The negotiations failed almost as quickly as they started. The continuance of the fighting was laid directly at the doorstep of the powerful hierarchy that ruled the Japanese Army—and their decision, states Okumiya, was abetted by “the desire of influential Chinese parties to see the war continued.”

  Whatever the complications and the political thievery behind the scenes, the war paused only a heartbeat, and flamed again with renewed fury. A month after the pause Japanese army units pounded Chinese defenses into rubble to conclude the Hankow operation triumphantly. A little more than one year later they were the undisputed rulers of Hainan Island and brought operations in the Shansi campaign to a position of strength, and consolidated all planned gains in enemy territory. In the interim the air war entered a fierce new stage, complicated by additional foreign elements in China, long-range Japanese attacks, and a brief interlude wherein a powerful Russian air force was sent to China to test its mettle against the old enemy of Russia—the Japanese military.

  CHAOS

  As the defenses of Nanking, during the autumn of 1937, crumbled beneath the mounting fury of the Japanese attacks, and as the fall of the city became imminent, Chiang Kai-shek directed Chennault to set up a network of air defenses and training centers well removed from the reach of the Japanese.

  It was a time of devastation and mounting horror for the Chinese. Nanking after ks fall in December, 1937, suffered explosive and incendiary damage and terrible destruction directly at the hands of Japanese soldiers “turned loose” by their commanders. In the weeks ensuing, one Chinese center after the other collapsed into Japanese hands. The aerial defenses of the Chinese had become a thin ghost; the Mitsubishis proved virtually invincible in the air. Wherever they reached their guns slashed and flamed Chinese aircraft.

  As a matter of survival, the Chinese pilots learned to make one pass at their enemy—if they could penetrate the screen of Mitsubishis protecting the bombers—and then dive away at full throttle. Opposition in the air to the Japanese had degenerated into these hit-and-run tactics. Chinese fighters skulked at high altitude, waiting for a break in the aerial armor of the protecting fighter screens. They were expected, if nothing more could be done, at least to carry out this minimum defense against the enemy’s bombers. There was sense in this procedure; to come to grips with the Mitsubishis in a protracted dogfight promised only destruction.

  But they were expected to fight—no matter how carefully they might have to choose the moment. One Chinese fighter pilot, when attacked, immediately dove away from the fray, leaving his fellow pilots to fend as best they could. This the Chinese considered to be overstepping the bounds of caution, and to be outright cowardice. The pilot was shot to death by a firing squad.

  The gaunt skeleton of the Chinese Air Force, which could not be filled out without an entirely new training program, months of time, and replacement aircraft (in which crews had to be trained), demanded emergency stopgap measures against the Japanese. Could foreign pilots be recruited in numbers sufficient at least to stem the tide until strength might be rebuilt? It had been done in Spain; why not use the same technique in China?

  Claire Chennault reportedly was against the idea of an assortment of foreign pilots. He argued that stopgap measures did not win wars, and that the only means of rebuilding the Chinese Air Force was through a large and sustained training and re-equipping program. Chiang Kai-shek took a different view. He wanted a powerful Chinese Air Force as much as Chennault did, but in the meantime, for lack of crews and planes, the skies were naked to the enemy and Chinese were dying. Anything in the air would help, and a foreign legion of paid mercenaries appeared to be the only solution to China’s immediate and critical needs.

  The Chinese government was in dire need of replacements for its force of Northrop light bombers which had been destroyed by the Japanese. China had purchased 150 of the Northrop 2E bombers (export models of the Northrop XA-13 designed for the U.S. Army) and had lost every plane. Available to the Chinese as a replacement was the Vultee VI1GB attack bomber, a single-engine raider that was fast, carrie
d four guns firing forward as well as a single dorsal and belly gun, and could haul a heavy bomb load over ranges up to 2,000 miles. It was an airplane vital to the immediate requirements of the air war, and 30 of the bombers were rushed to Chinese air units. Other American warplanes also were purchased, among them export models of the U.S. Army’s Martin B-10 bomber. The Martin 139, as the export version was known, had a top speed of 260 miles per hour and carried a heavy bomb load; nine were bought.

  The Generalissimo’s personal pilots, Royal Leonard and Julius Barr, were given the task of selecting from a “ragged and somewhat motley mob” the pilots who would form the complement of the International Squadron. After contacts were made, in late 1937 and early 1938, around the world, the Chinese contracted for the services of three Americans, one Dutchman, one German, and four Frenchmen. They hoped to fill out a combat group by adding the six best Chinese bomber pilots to the foreigners. These men in turn would soon be able to lead additional pilots and crews into battle as fast as new planes were made available.

  Almost from the start the International Squadron ran into trouble, although their initial series of misfortunes was not of their own making. Chinese pilots selected to fly with the International Squadron considered the hiring of the “foreign dogs” to be a stinging rebuke to their own capabilities, and the pilots stormed off the airfield in a rage, refusing to have anything to do with Claire Chennault or his alien fliers. In full sympathy with their pilots, a group of Chinese bombardiers rose en masse and also trooped off. No matter that China was dying; no matter that the Japanese were striking out in all directions with terrifying success—loss of face could not be incurred by following the foreigners. It was a pure and simple case of “to hell with you and to hell with the war.”