The National Broadcasting Company and its affiliated stations present The Pacific Story. Music In the mounting fury of world conflict, events in the Pacific are taking on ever greater importance. Here is the story of the Pacific and the millions of people who live around this greatest scene. The drama of the peoples whose destiny is at stake in the Pacific War. Here is the tale of the war in the Pacific and its meaning to us and for the generations to come. Music Tonight's Pacific Story from Hollywood in Washington, D.C. comes to you as another public service with drama of the past and present and commentary by Colonel C.Y. Liu, speaking for General Tang Tsumao, Director of the Chinese Air Forces in the United States. Music China's Air Force. It was on August 14th, 1937. I'll never forget it. We were in Hangzhou reading the reports as they came in over the teletype. The shelling of Shanghai yesterday is now regarded as the first phase of a large-scale military action aimed at control of all this section of China. A squadron of Japanese bombers is headed inland in the general direction of Nanking and Hangzhou. That means that they should be here in Hangzhou in no time at all. Wang Jingsu handed me the dispatch. I couldn't believe it. Come on, Mr. Page. We must get out of here before they come. We went out into the street and scanned the skies. Almost no one ran for shelter. Our fighting planes will take off and fight them, will they not? Yes, I think they will, Wong. Do you think our fighters can stop them, Mr. Page? I didn't know how to answer. The prospect of being bombed was terrifying. No one knew much about it then. We were pretty sure that the Japanese would come in strength, and I knew there were few fighting planes in the Hangzhou area. What do you think, Mr. Page? Well, it's hard to say, Wong. I remember that just four weeks before, as a result of the incident at the Marco Polo Bridge, General Isomor Chung Ka-Shek had called his generals together at Kuling, and it had been unofficially reported then that China had only about 200 war planes. Most of these were of inferior quality, and I knew that many of these had been up to North China. Which direction do you think they will come from, Mr. Page? They may come from any direction. There! There's a plane! One plane, see it? I squinted upward and saw one fighter climbing over the city. Is that one of them? No, Wong. I think that's a Chinese fighting plane. We were to learn later that the pallet of that plane was Chow Ting Fong. Look how high he is flying! Chow Ting Fong was climbing for the clouds, which were very high that day over Hangzhou. Well, there are two more. No, three more planes! These are Chinese fighting too, Wong. How many Japanese bombers must they fight? Soundedly, I hope there wouldn't be too many, for I knew the condition of the Chinese Air Force. I'd been in China since 1932, when Colonel John Jewett, the American, came over as military aviation advisor to China. Japan had just invaded and occupied Manchuria, and it looked fairly certain to the Chinese that they would have to fight. There wasn't time to build a navy, so the Chinese decided to develop an air force. Well, Jewett came over and all he found at Qianqiao, near Hangzhou, was one ramshackle hanger and a field yet to be enlarged and re-equipped. About 200 Chinese who had had some training in flying were turned over to him. He made all of them take a refresher course, and half of the 200 failed. He made pilots of the rest of them and then started from scratch, training Chinese youngsters to fly who had never even driven an automobile. One of these was Chow Ting Fong. That one plane, that first one has disappeared into the clouds. That was Chow Ting Fong. Look! Big planes! Over there! Over there! Those must be the Japanese. Are those the Japanese bombers, Mr. Page? I think they are. There are six of them. They were not much more than dots, but we could see that they were coming in fairly low. Where are our fighters? Where have they gone? We had seen Chow Ting Fong disappear into the clouds high above, but we did not know what had become of the other Chinese fighters. The Japanese will be over us in another minute. They started to unload their bombs. Look! Look! Coming down out of the clouds! Down out of the clouds, down on top of the low-flying bombers, diving like a plummet, came Chow Ting Fong. There are the other Chinese fighters coming down on them too. Yes. Look! They are diving right into the Japanese planes. The Chinese came down. The machine guns blazing. The Japanese bombers had no escort. One of the Japanese bombers is falling. Look at it! It's falling! It's on fire! It's going down! There goes another one! Chow Ting Fong's bullets ripped into the bombers as he dived on them and zoomed up. In an instant he was diving on them again, spitting fire. He's hitting another one. It's coming down. And that one over there too. It's falling. It's falling. I stood their breath. These were some of the young Chinese, hardly more than raw recruits that I'd seen trained. They were getting their baptism of fire. There's only one bomber left! Only one left! Chow Ting Fong dived at it. He's hit it! He's hit it! It's going down! Six bombers shot down and not one of our fighters lost. That day, August 14th, became China's Air Force Day. In three days the Chinese pilots, fighting against the best the Japanese could send against them, knocked down 44 Japanese planes. The Chinese Air Force had established itself as a worthy fighting army. Well, that was a real start, that victory. It inspired the Chinese. They started immediately to develop an air force. The Soviets sent them help. Major General Chenolt came over as chief advisor on military aviation. Young Wong Ching Tzu went away to prepare himself to be a flier. I've had two years in the Chinese Military Academy before I came here, Mr. Page. Oh, is that so? Now you're a warrant officer, are you, Wong? Yes, sir. And in six months, if I qualify in squadron flying, I will be commissioned as second lieutenant. Okay, Wong, pack me out and join your squadron now. Yes, sir. Going to be a good pilot then, boy. Yes. Are all your cadets graduates of the Chinese Military Academy? No. Quite a few non-commissioned pilots are trained in the flight sergeant school. Oh, I see. Well, how much military training do they get? Well, they get three months, and then they begin their flying lessons. Then they train for three years. Three years? Yes. They graduate as first class flight pilots. They finally wake themselves up to be flight sergeants. And those specially qualified can take more training and become commissioned officers. Oh, look. Wong is ready to take off out there with the squadron. That's wonderful. There's the remarkable thing about it, Page, is that nearly all those pilots like Wong didn't know a thing about mechanics before they started. Most of them had never even tightened a nut on a bolt. There was something amazing about watching the development of the Chinese Air Force. It seemed to take shape right before my eyes. They not only trained pilots, but they sent their pilots to the war college. We are studying together with Army officers, so we may be better able to cooperate with them. The work of the two services was closely knit together. The emphasis is on strategy and tactics and command. Special classes were set up in pursuit, attack, bombardment, radio, gunray, and all the other things. But what they needed most was planes. We must have planes. We must have planes. We must have planes. We must raise the money for planes. We must buy planes for the government. The words went out through China, and the Chinese people responded. I saw their answers come in at Junqing. The people of Xinjiang will give ten planes to the government. The 14 travel groups of Xinjiang, the Wild West of China, were among the first to donate war planes. The Chinese and the Philippines have raised one million pesos for war planes. The Chinese beyond the seas have raised six million three hundred thousand dollars for war planes. And in China itself, in Zhejiang province, the most ambitious campaign of all was organized. We of the Chinese Aviation League will raise twenty million dollars, Chinese, to buy one hundred war planes for the government. China had become air conscious, and soon even the remotest parts of the nation were to become familiar with the drone of airplanes overhead. Youngsters were recruited from among the best of Chinese youth to be trained as pilots. The Air Force Mechanical School was expanded. A juvenile school for boys from 12 to 15 was established. But as the war dragged on and China's situation became more serious, the need for more planes and more facilities became grave. The Japanese watched the developing Chinese Air Force. They knew as well as we did what a powerful weapon the Air Force could be. They were determined to destroy it before it became strong. When the Japanese get through with this field, there will be nothing left for us to fight with. This was Wong, a young Chinese I'd seen learning to fly several years before. How helpless we are. We must stand by and watch them blow our field to pieces. This was the field of Hengchow, the field that John Jewett had come through nine years before, and the field where young Wong had learned to fly. It was the Chinese west point of the air. When the last bomb had been dropped, the Japanese left, and the field and most of its facilities lay in ruin. They command the quarters, pilots, and crews together. They have destroyed our plane. They have destroyed our field. But they have not destroyed us, nor our will to fight. We must get to Chungking, but we have no way to get there but to walk. We will walk. I saw those valiant men of the Air Force, without planes, with nothing but what they had on their backs and in their hands. I saw the moment March to Chungking. They cannot crush us, Mr. Page. Well, your situation won't be much better at Chungking, will it, Wong? Not at Chungking, perhaps. But perhaps we will get orders there to go elsewhere. Where, do you think? I do not know. I must go now, Mr. Page. They marched to Chungking, then to Kunming, a thousand miles. Then the order came through. The training of Chinese pilots will be moved to India and to the United States. This was 1941. Relations between the United States and Japan were growing worse. There was talk around that war might break out at any time. It was in October of that year that the Flying Tigers landed in Burma. All right, one side. Watch this fuselage coming up. Hang leg. Come and drill. Hey, give me a look down this same road, Lieutenant. The rest of the parts are on their way in now. Good. How long will it take you to get those tomahawks assembled? Well, we haven't got the facilities for a hurry-up job, but we'll get these planes together as fast as we can. We need every minute. They're assembling the other fighters up at Tunggol. And as soon as they're ready, we'll take off from here in Rangoon and join them. It took weeks to get those tomahawks assembled. The men who made up this first volunteer group in the Chinese Air Force were American Army, Navy, and Marine pilots. While they were getting ready at Tunggol and Rangoon, the Japanese struck at Pearl Harbor. We waited for the arrival of the Flying Tigers in Kunming, and I'll never forget when they came winging in on B-Summer 19. Nothing ever looked so good to me as those P-40s. We can expect the Japanese here any time now. The tomahawk fighters were dispersed about the field. Their preparations were rushed to get them ready for anything the Japanese might try. The next day, the Japanese came. Look at that. Ten of them. But the Flying Tigers and their P-40s were already in the air. Look at that! Look at them attacking Pan! Just what the old man taught them. Chinolta taught them that one P-40 against one Japanese plane is off-numbered three to one. But the two P-40s working together can out-hit and out-fight any six Japanese. Wow! There goes the first jack! They smear him! He's coming down, he's coming down! And there goes another! Our guys are swarming all over! Add up, boys! Bust them up! Give them the wax! They had a whole jack squadron of scatterers! Look at them scram! Hey, look! They shot the wing right off that jack! All the time, the Japanese planes were knocked out of the air, brought damage so badly they could not get back to base. But General Chinolta taught them work well. In four and a half months, his Flying Tigers shot down and destroyed more than 200 Japanese planes. The Chinese began to breathe more easily. For meantime, many of the Chinese pilots who had been bombed out near Hang Chow and had been walked to Chungking and Kungming, now were at Thunderbird Field in Arizona. It's an impressive sight here at Thunderbird Field, ladies and gentlemen. The first class of Chinese to be graduated as pilots are all lined up here, and a finer group of young men you've never seen. There are 42 of them. All of them had at least 150 hours in the air before they came here to the United States. And in these 20 weeks of intensive training, which they've just finished, they've been given the standard training of American fliers. They've learned to fly both American Pursuit and Bomber planes. The graduation ceremonies are over now, and I'm going to bring one of the young pilots up to the microphone. Just step right up to the microphone, Lieutenant Wong. Thank you. Lieutenant Wong, you Chinese have hung up some kind of a record here at Thunderbird, haven't you? Well, I do not know. He's just modest, ladies and gentlemen. Lieutenant Wong and most of the other Chinese pilots completed the 10-week primary course here in six weeks, and they completed the advanced course in about the same time. Congratulations. Thank you. Lieutenant Wong, what would you say has been your greatest difficulty here at Thunderbird? Well, I think the language. Well, I can imagine. It is not only the English that is strange to us, but even among us there are many dialects, and some of us have difficulty understanding the others. But all of you have given a good account of yourselves anyway. Have you really enjoyed your training here, Lieutenant? Yes, sir, we have. We have enough training planes and gasoline here to get our full quota flying, and there are no air raids to interrupt our training. Well, thank you very much, Lieutenant Wong. Will he turn you now? When the first group came back to China, another group went over. They went over in groups of 50. As each group came back, they went into active service against the Japanese. There goes the first squadron. We are next. It was Wong, Captain Wong now, sitting in the cockpit of his fighter on the field of Chengking. There is the signal. Let's go. See you later, Mr. Page. He waved to me as he started taxiing out onto the field. The Chinese Air Force colonel stood beside me with a solemn face. I spoke to him. Colonel, you are sending up just about everything you have on this mission, aren't you? Yes, and if we had five or ten times as much, still we could hardly match the strength of the enemy. Yes, I know. Man for man, we are more than their match, but we have too few planes. The ones we have are the same old P-40s that we used by the Flying Tigers. Here they come. Yes. I am inspired every time I see them take off. They are magnificent. Yes. The task they have is almost impossible. The enemy fields are all around us, supplied with plenty of planes and plenty of supplies. And our flyers must keep the air clear all the way to Chengtu and as far in the other directions. Captain Wong and his squadron disappeared. The colonel and I walked off the field in silence. About an hour later, it started. The Japanese planes approaching. Japanese planes approaching. Man the anti-aircraft. Man the guns. Come, hurry. We must save the planes. Double quick. Get the planes to safety. The Japanese clashed with the field with bombs, wave after wave of them. And when the bombers were gone, waves of fighters came. They dived on us with their machine guns barking. They stripped the field and the hangars and the planes again and again. They are trying to destroy everything we have. They have used everything. Fragmentation bombs, incendiaries, anti-personnel bombs, machine guns, and still they come. They came back. Again and again. Again and again. At last they were gone. We walked out on the field to survey the damage. There was ruination everywhere. Major, get your men out there and fill in the holes on the runway. Our squadrons will be back in a couple of hours. They all worked like mad to get the field into some kind of shape so the Chinese pilots could land. Everyone worked. Just before dusk, the planes started to come in. Well, there's the first one. Why? Colonel, it shot up like a sieve. Look at the holes in it. Yeah. How could any human being live inside of a plane shot up like that? The Colonel didn't answer. We walked over to where the plane had taxidined. Look at the blood coming out of the cockpit. The pilot sat motionless in his seat. Come on you over there. Get this man out of this plane. Some of you men help him. I can get out. All right. I went in to help lift him out. Here, let me help you. Oh. Oh. Hello, Mr. Page. Hello Major Chen. Here, I'll put my arm around you. No. Help. Help the others. I am luckier than they are. There. There. There we are. Major Chen, how did Captain Wong do? Captain Wong is not coming back. They went out again and again against overwhelming odds. A fighting force growing day by day in the face of an enemy bending every effort to destroy it. Liars courageous with meager equipment, hurling themselves against the completely equipped Japanese. By the middle of 1944 on the seventh anniversary of their first great victory, they could look with pride at their impressive record of nearly 800 enemy planes destroyed, 23 warships, nearly a thousand transports and other ships sunk, and 1,600 enemy motor vehicles wiped out. We should have this advanced base ready for operations within two weeks, Mr. Page. Yes. To me, Colonel, this site here, tens of thousands of Chinese working with the most primitive tools, creating a great deal like this out of hills and valleys and farms, shows the indomitable spirit of the Chinese people and their will to have an air force. Yes. But there is much work to be done, Mr. Page. We have established major bases in the rear provinces, and we are building more and more advanced bases like this one, with underground fuel and bomb depots. For we realize, as your military leaders do, that not only must we have an air force, but that we must develop fields to be stepping stones to Japan. Starting with almost nothing 13 years ago, the Chinese Air Force is today emerging as an important factor in the war in the Pacific. To tell the part of this plane, the National Broadcasting Company presents from Washington, D.C., Colonel C.Y. Liu, speaking for General Peng Tzu-Mao, director of the Chinese Air Force in the United States. The next voice you will hear will be that of Colonel Liu. We take you now to Washington, D.C. The National Broadcasting Company has asked me to say a few words on this program. I deeply appreciate its honor. In 1937, China took up arms against the Japanese aggressor. The Chinese Air Force, young and numerically small, unflinchingly gave battle to the invaders. It won a smashing victory in the face of overwhelming enemy superiority. During the ensuing years of China's long stand against aggression, it suffered from shortage of personnel and equipment, but its force restores today all, and fought well with the meager resources at its command. Since Pearl Harbor, China has not been fighting single-handed as formerly. Leading other branches of the Allied Forces, the U.S. 14th Air Force, for nearly three years, has been fighting side by side with the Chinese Air Force. American and Chinese Airmen have grown to be a closely knit unit. Together they see the same sky, and hunt the same enemy. Their exploits have given strength to our ground forces. Their presence over the enemy-held areas has brought hope and assurance to the people under the Japanese tyranny. In the United States, the Chinese Air Force has received the full cooperation of the U.S. Army Air Forces in its training program. Many classes of Chinese pilots have been graduated. These graduates are now serving in China and have distinguished themselves in many battles. There is no element of surprise for me in their outstanding record, because it is the logical result of the finest possible training they have received in this country. Today, the air over China is no longer the exclusive domain of Japanese planes. The air superiority which the enemy enjoyed in the past years has now been wrested from them. More importantly, the U.S. 20th and 21st Air Forces have massed their strength in the Pacific and have brought the entire Japanese homeland under seamless air bombardment. The enemy has lost the control of the air, and because of this loss, he will soon face the mighty Allied land and sea forces in his own backyard. We have all learned from the record of the war in Europe how air power has been the one crucible factor in all its military events today, and how Allied control of the air has made the Allied invasion of continental Europe possible. Japan is certainly no exception, and her collect like that of her last ex-partner in Europe is only a matter of time. The members of the Chinese Air Force, having fought through the past seven hard years as an advance guard against aggression, it is an honor and privilege to be now marching side by side with the Allied forces towards the goal of finer victory. Thank you, Colonel C.Y. Liu. We return you now to Hollywood. You have been listening to the Pacific Story, presented by the National Broadcasting Company and its affiliated independent stations as a public service to clarify events in the Pacific and to make understandable the cross-currents of life in the Pacific Basin. For a reprint of this Pacific Story program, send ten cents in stamps or coin to University of California Press, Berkeley, California. The Pacific Story is written and directed by Arnold Marquis. The original musical score was composed and conducted by Thomas Palusso. Your principal voice was that of Jack Edwards, Sr. This program came to you from Washington, D.C. in Hollywood, California. This is the National Broadcasting Company.
