China's Wings

choi

Michael J Ybarra, Help Came Over the Himalayas. Wall Street Journal, Feb 25, 2012
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB ... 36350059466604.html
(book review on Gregory Crouch, China's Wings; War, intrigue, romance, and adventure in the Middle Kingdom during the golden age of flight. Bantam, 2012)

Quote:

"In the 1930s, China was a country in name only. The Nationalist government nominally ruled the Middle Kingdom to the east, while warlords and communists held sway in the interior. Aviation promised to help unite the land. A DC-2, for example, could fly from Chengtu to Chungking, at the center of the country, in two hours instead of two weeks.

"When the Japanese occupied Burma in 1942, the Nationalist government's last overland supply line was cut off. Before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, a quasi-private air force called the American Volunteer Group, or Flying Tigers, had been helping China with its air defense against Japan. The unit was disbanded when the U.S. officially entered the war. Five of its pilots were recruited into the U.S. Army Air Corps. CNAC got 16. Both entities flew supplies to Chungking by traveling over the dangerous Himalayas

"CNAC's supply efforts across the mountains were 'one of the greatest aviation accomplishments of all time,' Mr. Crouch writes. 'The Hump was the world's first strategic airlift.' Yet the airlift's rationale was to keep the Chinese government afloat so it could fight the Japanese—something that Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government was loath to do. It calculated that ending the war with Japan would just mean a new one with Mao's forces. Washington sent missions to cajole the Nationalist to fight; the Chinese promised to do so but rarely did.

Note:
(a) Author Gregory Crouch's site:
http://gregcrouch.com/
(b) Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press. 3 VOLUMES. 2003
http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/ge ... a&ci=0195081374

(i) The Basque surnames Ybarra/Ibarra are from ibar "meadow."
(ii) The English surname Crouch is the precise Middle Eglish word (crouch), from Old English cruc that means "cross." The Old English word was replaced in Middle English by the word "cross," from Old Norse "kross").
(iii) The English surname Bond (Middle English bonde; Old English bonda) means a peasant farmer or husbandman, due to teh notion of bound servitude.

(c) Curtiss-Wright
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtiss-Wright
(was the largest aircraft manufacturer in the United States at the end of World War II; Curtiss-Wright came into existence on July 5, 1929, the result of a merger of 12 companies associated with Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company of Buffalo, New York, and Wright Aeronautical of Dayton, Ohio,[2] and was headquartered in Buffalo, New York)
(d) Moon Fun Chin
(e) Pan American World Airways
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_American_World_Airways
(commonly known as Pan Am; was the principal and largest international air carrier in the United States from 1927 until its collapse on December 4, 1991; Founded in 1927 as a scheduled air mail and passenger service operating between Key West, Florida and Havana, Cuba)
(f) Colt's Manufacturing Company
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colt's_Manufacturing_Company
(founded in 1836 by Samuel Colt)
(g) Flying Tigers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Tigers
(The 1st American Volunteer Group (AVG) of the Chinese Air Force in 1941–1942, famously nicknamed the Flying Tigers, was composed of pilots from the United States Army (USAAF), Navy (USN), and Marine Corps (USMC), recruited under presidential sanction and commanded by Claire Lee Chennault)