Claire Lee Chennault

"Chennault" redirects here. For other uses, see Chennault (disambiguation).

Claire Lee Chennault
Claire Lee Chennault
Buried	Arlington National Cemetery
Allegiance	Republic of China United States of America
Service/branch	United States Army Air Corps
Years of service	1909 - 1945
Rank	Lieutenant General
Commands	1st American Volunteer Group, Flying Tigers
Battles/wars	World War I Sino-Japanese War World War II Burma Campaign China-Burma-India Theater
Awards	Army Distinguished Service Medal (2) Distinguished Flying Cross (2)

Lieutenant General Claire Lee Chennault (6 September 1893 – 27 July 1958), was a United States military aviator who commanded the "Flying Tigers" during World War II. His family name is pronounced shen-awlt.

Early life

Born in Commerce, Texas, to John Stonewall Jackson Chennault and Jessie (Lee) Chennault. His mother was born 20 August 1876 in Franklin Parish, Louisiana, the second daughter of William Wallace Lee (1836-1911), son of Henry Bryant Lee and his wife, Margaret Bell Lee, prominent slaveowners and planters of Scott County, Mississippi, and his second wife, Josephine Gilbert. Chennault was raised in the town of Waterproof in Tensas Parish, Louisiana. Chennault began misrepresenting his birth date as September 1890, perhaps as early as the middle of 1909. He was too young to attend college after he graduated from high school, so his father added three years to his age. The 1900 US Census record from Franklin Parish, LA, Ward 2 states that C L Chennault was age six in 1900, with a younger brother age three (born in Louisiana).

Military career

Chennault attended Louisiana State University between 1909 and 1910 and received ROTC training (Claire). He learned to fly in the Air Service during World War I, remained in the service after it became the Air Corps in 1926, and became Chief of Pursuit Section at Air Corps Tactical School in the 1930s. Poor health and disputes with superiors led Chennault to resign from the service in 1937. He then joined a small group of American civilians training Chinese airmen and served as "air adviser" to Kuomintang (KMT) Nationalist Government leader Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and his wife, Soong May-ling, during the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945). Chennault participated in planning operations and observed the Chinese Air Force in combat from a Curtiss Hawk 75). In this period, he would organize the International Squadron.

Flying Tigers

Chennault's 1st American Volunteer Group (AVG) — better known as the "Flying Tigers" — began training in August 1941 and fought the Japanese for six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Chennault's three squadrons used P-40s and his tactics of "defensive pursuit" to guard the Burma Road, Rangoon and other strategic locations in Southeast Asia and western China against Japanese forces. Chennault made a great contribution by training the first-generation Chinese fighter pilots.

File:ClareChenn.jpg

Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss) thanked Chennault by inducting him into the Society of Red Tape Cutters on 30 August 1942

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 colonel. He was later promoted to brigadier and then major general, commanding the Fourteenth Air Force.

China-Burma-India theater

Throughout the war Chennault was engaged in a bitter dispute with the American ground commander, General Joseph Stilwell. Chennault asserted that the Fourteenth Air Force, operating out of bases in China, could attack Japanese forces in concert with Nationalist Chinese troops. In contrast, Stilwell insisted that air assets be diverted to his command for an offensive to force the opening of a ground supply route through northern Burma to China. This 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, as he was suspicious of British colonial interests in Burma, and because he was not prepared to begin major offensive operations against the Japanese. 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.

Good weather in November 1943 found the Japanese Army air forces ready to challenge Allied forces once again and they began both night and day raids on Calcutta and the Hump bases while their fighters struck back vigorously against any Allied air intrusions over Burma.

In 1944, Japanese ground forces advanced and seized Chennault's forward bases, though they were severely mauled by the Fourteenth's air force at the Salween River and other chokepoints. Slowly, however, the greater numbers and greater skill of the Allied air forces began to assert themselves. By mid-1944, Major General George E. Stratemeyer's Eastern Air Command completely dominated the skies over Burma; this superiority was never to be relinquished.

By mid-1944, logistical support reaching India and China via the Hump finally reached levels permitting the long-awaited Allied offensive into northern Burma. In formulating their strategy for defending Burma in 1944, the Japanese failed to appreciate Allied air capabilities. The Japanese Army did not succeed in invading India because it had been unable to establish and maintain the long supply lines necessary to maintain their troops. The Allies did not depend upon such supply lines, either to support their troops, or to maintain their jungle penetration offensives. Instead, hundreds of Allied transport planes brought food, ammunition, and all manner of supplies directly to Allied troops. If there were no nearby airfields where they could land, the airmen dropped these supplies into rice paddy or jungle clearings. Anything that might break was dropped by parachute; everything else was free-dropped. Thus, the Allies' only supply line came through the air, which they controlled completely. And, having driven Japanese combat planes from the skies, the Allies had no worries about air strikes against their bases in India.

Chennault had long argued for expansion of the airlift, doubting that any ground supply network through Burma could ever provide the tonnage needed to re-equip Chiang's divisions. However, work on the road, known as the Ledo Road, continued throughout 1944, though it was not actually completed until January 1945. Training of the new Chinese divisions commenced; however, estimates of monthly tonnage (65,000 per month) over the road were never achieved. By the time Nationalist armies began to receive large amounts of supplies via the Ledo Road, the war had ended. Instead, the airlift continued to expand until the end of the war, after delivering 650,000 tons of supplies, gasoline, and military equipment.

Postwar

Chennault, who unlike Joseph Stilwell had a high opinion of Chiang Kai-shek, advocated international support for Asian anti-communist movements. Returning to China, he purchased several surplus military aircraft and created Civil Air Transport (later Air America). These aircraft facilitated aid to Nationalist China during the struggle against Chinese Communists in the late 1940s, and were later used in supply missions to French forces in Indochina and the Kuomintang occupation of Northern Burma throughout the mid and late 1950s, providing support for the Thai police force.

In 1951, a now-retired Major-General Chennault testified and provided written statements to the Senate Joint Committee on Armed Forces and Foreign Relations, which was investigating the causes the fall of China in 1949 to Communist forces. Together with General Albert C. Wedemeyer, Vice-Admiral Oscar C. Badger II and other, Chennault stated that the Truman administration's arms embargo was a key factor in the loss of morale to the Nationalist armies.

In particular, Chennault advocated changes in the way foreign aid was distributed, encouraged the U.S. Congress to focus on individualized aid assistance with specific goals, with close monitoring by U.S. advisers. This viewpoint may have reflected his experiences during the Chinese Civil War, where officials of the Kuomintang and semi-independent army officers diverted aid intended for the Nationalist armies. Shortly before his death, Chennault was asked to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee of the Congress. When a committee member asked him who won the Korean War, his response was blunt: "The Communists."

Death and legacy

P-40 Warhawk "Joy" at the USS Kidd Louisiana Veterans Memorial & Museum in Baton Rouge

Chennault was ultimately promoted to lieutenant general, one day before his death at the Ochsner Foundation Hospital in New Orleans. He died of lung cancer in 1958 after the removal of most of one lung the previous year. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery (Section 2, 873).

Chennault is commemorated by a statue in the ROC capital of Taipei, as well as by monuments on the grounds of the Louisiana state capitol at Baton Rouge, and at the former Chennault Air Force Base, now the commercial Chennault International Airport in Lake Charles, Louisiana. An antique P-40 aircraft, nicknamed "Joy", is on display at the riverside war memorial in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, painted in the colors of the Flying Tigers. A large display of General Chennault's orders, medals and other decorations has been on loan to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum (Washington D.C.) by his widow Anna Chennault, since the museum's opening in 1976.

Chennault is recognized as a major war hero in China. His Chinese name is Chen-na-de (陳纳德). In 2005, the "Flying Tigers Memorial" was built in Huaihua, Hunan Province, on one of the old airstrips used by the Flying Tigers in the 1940s. Chennault's first wife, Nell Thompson, was an American of British ancestry. By the time he was serving in China, they had divorced. Chennault then married Chen Xiangmei, a young reporter for the Central News Agency. Anna Chennault, as his wife was known, became one of Taiwan's chief lobbyists in Washington.

See also

• Flying Tigers
• Chiang Kai-shek
• Madame Chiang Kai-shek
• National Revolutionary Army
• Whampoa Military Academy
• Second Sino-Japanese War
• History of the Republic of China
• Military of the Republic of China
• Kuomintang

References

Bibliography

• Byrd, Martha. Chennault: Giving Wings to the Tiger. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University Alabama Press, 2003. ISBN 0-8173-0322-7.
• Caidin, Martin. The Ragged, Rugged Warriors. New York: Ballantine, 1978. ISBN 0-345-28302-3.
• Chennault, Claire. Way of a Fighter. New York: Putnam's, 1949.
• "Claire Lee Chennault." Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement 6: 1956-1960, Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Michigan: Thomson Gale, 1980.
• Ford, Daniel. Flying Tigers: Claire Chennault and His American Volunteers, 1941-1942. Washington, DC: HarperCollins|Smithsonian Books, 2007. ISBN 0-06124-655-7.
• Hessen, Robert, ed. General Claire Lee Chennault: A Guide to His Papers in the Hoover Institution Archives. Palo Alto, California: Hoover Institution Press, 1983. ISBN 0-8179-2652-6.
• Latimer, Jon. Burma: The Forgotten War. London: John Murray, 2004. ISBN 0-7195-6576-6.
• "1900 United States Federal Census, Franklin Parish, Louisiana, Ward 2." Ancestry.com 20 January 2007.
• Scott, Robert Lee Jr. Flying Tiger: Chennault of China. Westport Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1973. ISBN 0-8371-6774-4.

External links

• Flying Tigers Memorial in China, see http://news.xinhuanet.com/photo/2005-08/10/content_3334777.htm
• http://www.warbirdforum.com/clc.htm Short biography of Chennault
• http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/history/prewwii/clc.htm
• http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/clchenna.htm
• http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,790624-1,00.html