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William D. Pawley

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William D. Pawley
United States Ambassador to Peru
In office
July 20, 1945 – April 27, 1946
PresidentHarry S. Truman
Preceded byJohn Campbell White
Succeeded byPrentice Cooper
United States Ambassador to Brazil
In office
June 13, 1946 – March 28, 1948
PresidentHarry S. Truman
Preceded byAdolf A. Berle, Jr.
Succeeded byHerschel V. Johnson
Personal details
BornWilliam Douglas Pawley
September 7, 1896 (1896-09-07)
Florence, South Carolina
DiedJanuary 7, 1977(1977-01-07) (aged 80)
Miami Beach, Florida
Political partyRepublican
Spouse(s)
Annie Hahr Dobbs
​
​
(m. 1919; div. 1941)​

Edna Pawley
EducationGordon Military Academy
ProfessionEntrepreneur

William Douglas Pawley (September 7, 1896 — January 7, 1977) was a U.S. ambassador and noted businessman who was associated with the Flying Tigers American Volunteer Group (AVG) during World War II.

Early life

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William Douglas Pawley was born in Florence, South Carolina on September 7, 1896. His father was a wealthy businessman based in Cuba, and young Pawley attended private schools in both Havana and Santiago de Cuba. He later returned to the United States, where he studied at the Gordon Military Academy in Georgia.[1]

Pawley as a younger man

Business career

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In 1927, Pawley began a connection with Curtiss-Wright that would make him an extremely wealthy man. He was the company's sales rep for China.[2] In 1928, he returned to Cuba to become president of Nacional Cubana de Aviación Curtiss, which was sold to Pan American Airlines in 1932. He then became president of Intercontinent Corporation in New York, evidently founded by Clement Keys, the former president of Curtiss. In 1933 he moved to China, where he became president of China National Aviation Corporation an airline running between Hong Kong and Shanghai.[3] Pawley finally sold out to Pan Am again. He later assembled aircraft in partnership with the Chinese Nationalist government under the corporate name of Central Aircraft Manufacturing Company in Hangzhou, Wuhan, and finally Loiwing on the China-Burma border. (CAMCO was owned in partnership with the Chinese government, with the Pawley family interest represented by Intercontinent, which now served as a Pawley family holding company.)[4]

World War II

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In 1940, Hindustan Aircraft Limited was set up in India with Pawley providing the initial organization.

In 1941, with his brothers Edward and Eugene, he was involved with the organization and support of the 1st American Volunteer Group, popularly known as the Flying Tigers.[5] The brothers established an assembly plant at Mingaladon airport outside Rangoon, Burma, where the AVG's Curtiss P-40 fighter aircraft were assembled, while an Intercontinent office in Rangoon (now Yangon) provided payroll and other housekeeping services to the group while it trained upcountry at Toungoo. Later, when Allied forces were driven out of lower Burma by the Japanese, the CAMCO factory and airfield across the border in Loiwing, China, served as a base for the AVG. When Loiwing in turn was captured by Japan in May 1942, Pawley moved his operation to India as a partner in Hindustan Aircraft Limited.[4]

Later years

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Pawley was appointed as U.S. Ambassador to Peru by Harry Truman in 1945. He was named U.S. Ambassador to Brazil in 1948.[6] In 1949 he took over the Havana Trolley Company, and in 1950 he founded Autobuses Modernos in Havana.[7] In 1951 Truman brought him back into the fold with a job as an advisor in the State Department on the region of East Asia.[1] In 1954 President Dwight Eisenhower appointed him to the Doolittle Commission, which evaluated the efficiency of the CIA's methods and operations.[8]

Postwar, Pawley was an active member of the Republican Party. A close friend of both President Dwight Eisenhower and Central Intelligence Agency director Allen W. Dulles, he took part in a policy that later become known as Operation PBSuccess, a plan to remove unfriendly foreign leaders from power. Pawley played a role in Operation PBSuccess, a CIA plot to overthrow the Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 after Arbenz introduced reforms affecting the United Fruit Company. Pawley is thought to have served in Peru, Brazil, Panama, Guatemala, Cuba and Nicaragua between 1945 and 1960.

On 9 December 1958, as the Cuban Revolution was in full-swing, Pawley met with the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista after being dispatched by the U.S. Department of State. Pawley attempted to convince Batista to step down and retire to Florida so he could be replaced by a military junta. Batista refused.[9] After Castro took power Pawley's sugar businesses were confiscated by the government, like many others he got involved in the sugar industry in Florida, purchasing the Talisman Sugar Corporation in 1962.[10] Pawley was virulently anti-Castro, he told a Miami reporter that "Find me one man, just one man who can go it alone and get Castro, I'll pay anything, almost anything".[11] He deeply regretted that Batista had been forced from power, stating "the deliberate overthrow of Batista by Wieland and Matthews, assisted by Rubottom, is almost as great a tragedy as the surrendering of China to the Communists by a similar group of Department of State officials...we will not see the end in cost of American lives and American resources for these tragic errors".[12]

In February 1960 he was once again sent to the Caribbean, this time alongside Senator George Smathers, in order to convince the Dominican Republic dictator, Rafael Trujillo, to step down.[13] Pawley had a personal relationship with Trujillo and owned Hotel Hamaca in Boca Chica.[14]

Personal life

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On July 25, 1919, Pawley married Annie Hahr Dobbs of Marietta, Georgia. In 1925, the couple moved to Miami and then to Havana, Cuba, in 1928. They returned with their three children to Miami, where their youngest child was born. The Pawleys then moved to Shanghai, China, with the baby, leaving their other children in Miami Beach with family. Mrs. Pawley lived in China until 1938 with periodic trips back to Miami. They were divorced in 1941.[4][15]

His final residence was in Miami Beach, Florida, where he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, in January 1977,[16] because he suffered from a severe case of shingles.[4] Gaeton Fonzi, of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), had Pawley "near the top" of the list of people he intended to interview, but Pawley's suicide prevented this.[17]

References

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Notes
  1. ^ a b Paterson, Thomas G. (2008). Raising Cane in the 'Glades: The Global Sugar Trade and the Transformation of Florida. University of Chicago Press. p. 167.
  2. ^ Yenne, Bill (2016). When Tigers Ruled the Sky: The Flying Tigers: American Outlaw Pilots Over China in World War II. Penguin Publishing Group. p. 40.
  3. ^ Moore. Tom. "William D. Pawley (1896–1977)." cnac.org. Retrieved: June 4, 2011.
  4. ^ a b c d Carrozza, Anthony R. William D. Pawley: The Extraordinary Life of the Adventurer, Entrepreneur, and Diplomat Who Cofounded the Flying Tigers. Dulles, Virginia: Potomac Books, Inc., 2012. ISBN 978-1-59797-714-2.
  5. ^ Rossi, J. R. "History: The Flying Tigers - American Volunteer Group - Chinese Air Force." AVG: American Fighter Group, The Flying Tigers, 1998. Retrieved: June 4, 2011.
  6. ^ "U.S. AIDE COMMENDS RESULTS OF BOGOTA; Armour Says Rioting Did Not Subtract From Success -Delegates Sign Act Today". The New York Times. 30 April 1948. Retrieved 15 January 2018.
  7. ^ McHugh, Thomas (1986). The Cuban Revolution. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. p. 29.
  8. ^ Carrozza, Anthony R. (2012). William D. Pawley: The Extraordinary Life of the Adventurer, Entrepreneur, and Diplomat Who Cofounded the Flying Tigers. Potomac Books. pp. 197–8.
  9. ^ Mesa-Lago, Carmelo, ed. (1972). Revolutionary Change in Cuba. University of Pittsburgh Press. p. 48.
  10. ^ Hahamovitch, Cindy (2011). No Man's Land: Jamaican Guestworkers in America and the Global History of Deportable Labor. Princeton University Press. p. 141.
  11. ^ Carrozza, Anthony R. (2012). William D. Pawley: The Extraordinary Life of the Adventurer, Entrepreneur, and Diplomat Who Cofounded the Flying Tigers. Potomac Books. p. 229.
  12. ^ Lazo, Mario (1968). Dagger in the Heart: American Policy Failures in Cuba. Funk & Wagnalls. pp. 163–4.
  13. ^ Garfinkle, Adam; Pipes, Daniel (1991). Friendly Tyrants: An American Dilemma. Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp. 33–4.
  14. ^ Carrozza, Anthony R. (2012). William D. Pawley: The Extraordinary Life of the Adventurer, Entrepreneur, and Diplomat Who Cofounded the Flying Tigers. Potomac Books. p. 272.
  15. ^ Illson, Murray (January 8, 1977). "A Lone and Varied Career". The New York Times. Retrieved 15 January 2018.
  16. ^ "William D. Pawley, Financier, Dies at 80". The New York Times. January 8, 1977. Retrieved 15 January 2018.
  17. ^ Fonzi, Gaeton (2013). The Last Investigation. Skyhorse Publishing. p. 57.
Bibliography
  • Cannon, David Price. More Ruthless Than The Enemy: The Dark Diplomacy of Ambassador William Douglas Pawley (Online manuscript). williampawley.blogspot.com. Retrieved: June 4, 2011.
  • Connelly, Matthew. The Declassification Engine: What History Reveals About America's Top Secrets. New York: Vintage Books, 2023, pp. 264-273.ISBN 978-1-101-97367-7
  • Ford, Daniel. Flying Tigers: Claire Chennault and His American Volunteers, 1941-1942. Washington, DC: HarperCollins|Smithsonian Books, 2007. ISBN 0-06-124655-7.
  • Holland, Max. "Private Sources of U.S. Foreign Policy: William Pawley and the 1954 Coup d'État in Guatemala." Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 7, no. 4, Fall 2005, pp. 36–73.
  • Pawley, William. Wings Over Asia. New York: self-published, 1941.
  • "William D. Pawley." Life, 22 March 1943.
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Diplomatic posts
Preceded by United States Ambassador to Peru
July 20, 1945–April 27, 1946 		Succeeded by
Preceded by United States Ambassador to Brazil
June 13, 1946–March 26, 1948 		Succeeded by
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