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Contact Info
Home Town Waynesboro, Georgia
Last Address Warner Robins, Georgia
Date of Passing Feb 27, 2006
Location of Interment Arlington National Cemetery (VLM) - Arlington, Virginia
United States World War II Flying Ace. Best known for his autobiography "God is My Co-Pilot" about his World War II adventures with the Flying Tigers and the United States Army Air Forces in China and Burma. Born in Macon, Gerogia, he graduated as a second lieutenant from the United States Military Academy in 1932, completed pilot training at Kelly Field, Texas, in October 1933 and was then assigned to Mitchel Field, New York. He initially flew the air mail in 1934, then commanded a pursuit squadron in Panama and helped instruct other pilots at bases in Texas and California. After World War II began, he went to Task Force Aquila in February 1942 to the China-Burma-India Theater where he pioneered in air activities involving the evacuation of thousands of Allied troops and refugees trapped when the Japanese overran Burma. Braving blinding storms and pursued by Japanese fighters, he ferried evacuees to India aboard a C-47 transport plane, flying over 17,000-foot peaks. Soon beca,e executive and operations officer of the Assam-Burma-China Ferry Command, forerunner of the famous Air Transport Command and Hump efforts from India to China. At the request of Claire Chennault, and also became fighter commanding officer of the China Air Task Force, which later became the 14th Air Force. From July 1942, flying a Curtiss P-40 fighter painted with the single eye and tiger-shark teeth of the Flying Tigers, he also roamed the skies on one-man missions. Operating out of Dinjan, India, he strafed Japanese truck columns on the Burma Road linking Burma to China, dropped 500-pound bombs on bridges across the Salween River and hit barges loaded with Japanese troops. By October 1943 he flown 388 combat missions and shot down 13 enemy aircraft to become one of the earliest aces of the war. Returned to the United States in late 1943 for a speaking tour to encourage defense production for the war effort, and then became deputy for operations in the School of Applied Tactics at Orlando, Florida. Returned to China in 1944 and flew fighter aircraft equipped with experimental rockets against Japanese supply locomotives in eastern China. He then was assigned to Okinawa to direct the same type of strikes against enemy shipping until the war ended. Was then assigned to staff duty in Washington and other stations until 1949 when he became commander of the very first Jet Fighter School at Williams Air Force Base, Arizona. In late 1949 he was assigned as commanding officer of the 36th Fighter Bomber Wing at Furstenfeldbruck, Germany. Graduated from the National War College in 1954 and was assigned to Plans at Headquarters United States Air Force, and then promoted to brigadier general and assigned as director of information under the secretary of the Air Force. In October 1956 he became the base commander at Luke Air Force, Arizona until his retirement from the Air Force October 31, 1957. His military decorations included two Silver Stars, three Distinguished Flying Crosses and three Air Medals. In retirement, he was as busy as ever. He walked the 2,000 mile long Great Wall of China in 1980 at age 72, ran with the Olympic Torch in 1996 (at age 88), and throughout his eighties kept flying anything he could get the Air Force to let him try, including the F-15, F-16 and B-1B. Many aviation enthusiasts came to know him through his tireless volunteer work with the Museum of Aviation at Robins Air Force Base, Georgia. His log books recorded over 33,000 hours of flying time. In addition to writing "God Is My Copilot" which was made into a film in 1945, he also authored 13 other books including "Boring a Hole in the Sky," "Look of the Eagle," "The Day I Owned the Sky" and "Flying Tiger: Chennault of China."
Description The Burma Campaign ( 7 Dec 1941 to 26 May 1942) in the South-East Asian Theatre of World War II was fought primarily between British Commonwealth, Chinese and United States forces against the forces of the Empire of Japan, Thailand, and the Indian National Army. British Commonwealth.
On 8 December 1941, after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States declared war on Japan and became an active participant in World War II. For some months prior to that attack, however, the United States had been supporting China's war against Japan with money and materiel. Pearl Harbor formally brought America into World War II, but it was an earlier American commitment to China that drew the United States Army into the Burma Campaign of 1942.
Japan had invaded China in 1937, gradually isolating it from the rest of the world except for two tenuous supply lines: a narrow-gauge railway originating in Haiphong, French Indochina; and the Burma Road, an improved gravel highway linking Lashio in British Burma to Kunming in China. Along these routes traveled the materiel that made it possible for Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Chinese government to resist the Japanese offensives into the interior.
In 1940 Japan took advantage of the German invasion of France to cut both supply lines to China. In June, with France focused on the war in Europe, Japanese warships moved into French Indochina and closed the railroad from Haiphong. A month later, threatening war if its demands were not met, Japan secured an agreement from the hard-pressed British government to close the Burma Road to war materiel temporarily.
The Burma Road reopened in October 1940, literally the sole lifeline to China. By late 1941 the United States was shipping lend-lease materiel by sea to the Burmese port of Rangoon, where it was transferred to railroad cars for the trip to Lashio in northern Burma and finally carried by truck over the 712-mile-long Burma Road to Kunming. Over this narrow highway, trucks carried munitions and materiel to supply the Chinese Army, whose continuing strength in turn forced the Japanese to keep considerable numbers of ground forces stationed in China. Consequently, Japanese strategists decided to cut the Burma lifeline, gain complete control of China, and free their forces for use elsewhere in the Pacific.
