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Air War In The CBI

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Attention of the Western world was focussed on the China-Burma-India area long before Japan's Pearl Harbor attack and subsequent expanding conquests defined the CBI as a theater of war. The Burma Road was one of the initial objectives once Japan launched its march of conquest. Between December 1941 and May 1942, they overran all of the Malay Peninsula and almost all of Burma. British, Indian and Burmese forces, aided by the Royal Air Force and the American Volunteer Group (the Flying Tigers), resisted but were overwhelmed by enemy superiority in numbers, equipment and planes. Chinese Forces under American General Joseph Stilwell came in to defend the Burma Road but were Forced to retire from North Burma into India.

When the monsoon rains came in June 1942, the Japanese held all of Burma except for fringes of mountain, jungle and swamp on the north and west. General Stilwell grimly summarized the campaign; "I claim we got a hell-of-a-beating. We got run out of Burma, and it is as humiliating as hell. I think we ought to find out what caused it, go back, and retake it."

It was during these early days that the Tenth Air Force was formed at New Delhi, India, and among its first activities was cooperation with the Allies in the evacuation of Burma. With the Burma Road severed, the Tenth Air Force began flying supplies over the Himalayan mountains-the famed Hump route-to Yunnan Province, China.

U.S. Land forces The US forces in the CBI theater were grouped together for administrative purposes under the command of General Joseph "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell, but unlike the other theaters in the war, for example the European Theater of Operations, it was never a "theater of operations" and did not have an overall operational command. Initially the forces were split between those who came under the operational command of the British India Command under General Sir Archibald Wavell the Commander-in-Chief in India and those in China, which (technically at least) were commanded by Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek, as the Supreme Allied Commander in China. However, Stilwell often broke the chain of command and communicated directly with the US Joint Chiefs of Staff on operational matters. This continued after the formation of the South East Asia Command (SEAC) and the appointment of Admiral Lord Mountbatten as the Supreme Allied Commander of South East Asia in October 1943. When the joint allied command was agreed upon, it was decided that the senior position should be held by a member of the British military because the British dominated Allied operations on the South-East Asian Theatre by weight of numbers (in much the same way as the US did in the Pacific Theater of Operations). Stilwell, who also had operational command of the Northern Combat Area Command (NCAC), a US-Chinese formation, was supposed to report to General George Giffard — commander of Eleventh Army Group — so that NCAC and the British Fourteenth Army, under the command of General William Slim, could be co-ordinated. This is something Stilwell refused to do. Stilwell was able to do this because of his multiple positions within complex command structures, especially his simultaneous positions of Deputy Supreme Allied Commander South East Asia, and Chief of Staff to Chiang. As SEAC's deputy leader, he was Giffard's superior, but as operational commander of NCAC, Giffard was Stilwell's superior. As the two men did not get on, this inevitably lead to conflict and confusion. Stilwell, however bitterly resisted [taking orders from Giffard]... To watch Stilwell, when hard pressed, shift his opposition from one of the several strong-points he held by virtue of his numerous Allied, American and Chinese offices, to another was a lesson in mobile offensive-defence. It was not until late 1944, after Stilwell was recalled to Washington, that the chain of command was clarified. His overall role, and the CBI command was then split among three people: Lt Gen. Raymond Wheeler became Deputy Supreme Allied Commander South East Asia; Major-General Albert Wedemeyer became Chief of Staff to Chiang, and commander of US Forces, China Theater (USFCT). Lt Gen. Daniel Sultan was promoted, from deputy commander of CBI to commander of US Forces, India-Burma Theater (USFIBT) and commander of the NCAC. The 11th Army Group was redesignated Allied Land Forces South East Asia (ALFSEA), and NCAC was decisively placed under this formation. However, by the time the last phase of the Burma Campaign began in earnest, NCAC had become irrelevant, and it was dissolved in early 1945.

The allied strategic plan contemplated that the actual defeat of Japan would be accomplished by operations in the Pacific. In the meantime, however, it was essential to defend India and to assist China. We could not afford to make substantial forces available. Our contribution in the CBI theater was almost entirely air and logistic support. The geography of the theater was such that overland transportation was virtually impossible beyond the Indian bases. As a consequence, the air in the CBI theater was called upon, not only to give protection against and to fight down enemy air and disrupt Japanese shipping and rail transportation, but also to transport the men and supplies for all forces and provide much of the fire power even in ground operations.

Full superiority over Japanese air forces was gradually attained. Offensive operations against Japanese supply ports and transportation facilities in Burma became the chief concern of the Tenth Air Force and the RAF Bengal Air Command. The Tenth attacked nearly 150 enemy targets, and with the RAF it prevented the enemy's use of much of the rail facilities in Burma and sank an appreciable amount of shipping.

When operation of the air supply route over the Hump was assumed by the Air Transport Command, the Tenth shared with General Chennault's Fourteenth Air Force the responsibility for protecting the route. A new command structure was created as a result of the Quebec Conference of the Combined Chiefs of Staff in August 1943. This was the Southeast Asia Command under Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten.

Decisions of the conference were that an offensive in North Burma should be undertaken in the winter of 1943 and 1944, and that the Ledo Road from Assam, then under construction by American engineers, should be extended to the old Burma Road at Mongyu as rapidly as the offensive operations progressed.

To carry out these assignments, air supremacy over Burma was essential. To this end all Royal Air Force and United States Army Air Force combat units on the Burma front were formed into the Eastern Air Command, I being appointed Air Commander by the Supreme Allied Commander, Lord Mountbatten. My able Assistant Air Commander, Air Vice Marshal T. M. Williams, set the pattern of performance which marked the successful operation of this joint and integrated undertaking throughout its existence.

During most of the 1944 campaign, for the key town of Myitkyina, with its important airfield, the Japanese were effectively blocked from reinforcing North Burma through the Irrawaddy Valley by columns of seasoned British and Indian troops under General Wingate. Others were taken in by gliders in an airborne invasion directed by U. S. Colonels Philip G. Cochran and John R. Alison, one of the most spectacular operations of the war. They were the First Air Commando Group. The airborne engineers did effective work in this operation. While General Stilwell's forces were advancing on Myitkyina, troops of the Generalissimo came From China. Patrols of the two forces finally met at Tengchung in the Summer of 1944, establishing the first thin hold on Northern Burma.

As fast as the combat forces moved ahead, U. S. Engineers, commanded by Major General Lewis A. Pick, shoved the Ledo Road forward behind them. On January 28, 1945, a convoy of American trucks and material from India crossed the Burma-China frontier. The new road-appropriately named the Stilwell Road-was open.

In addition to the normal air supply of the 14th Army in Central Burma-a huge but routine commitment averaging at the time about 1,750 tons daily-the Eastern Air Command continued to furnish accurate and indispensable fighter and Fighter-bomber cooperation with the ground forces, often destroying enemy strongpoints within 100 yards of our front lines.

The capture of Rangoon early in May 1945 brought to a close one of the most difficult and most original campaigns of the entire war. It was a campaign conducted over the world's most difficult terrains and in one of the world's most arduous climates. Obviously, ground divisions could not have been moved rapidly about had we not achieved air supremacy and achieved it early. The Allies ruled the Burma skies from March 1944 on.

The Eastern Air Command built its Force from a meager 78 transport type aircraft to a total of 444 of these work-horses. In four critical months a total of 307,000 tons of supplies were moved, 54,172 sorties being flown in the month of March 1945 alone with a peak haul of 98 999 tons.

During the entire conquest of Burma the Air Transport Command never faltered in its assigned job of hauling over the Hump an ever increasing tonnage-in excess of 46,000 tons during May, 55,000 tons during June, to a maximum of 71,000 tons in July 1945-for the vital needs of the Fourteenth Air Force and the Chinese Armies.

This vital and hazardous traffic stands as one of the great logistical accomplishments of the war against Japan. It alone made possible the indispensable cooperation which Major General Claire Chennault's Fourteenth Air Force was able to give the Chinese Armies and the attacks by China-based Superfortresses on Japan's home islands.

Growing out of the AVG and the China Air Task Force, the Fourteenth, though numerically small, had a tremendous job. It had to conduct effective fighter and bomber operations along a 5,000-mile front which extended from Chunking and Chengtu in the north to Indo-China to the South, from the Tibetan plateau and the Salween River (in Burma) in the west, to the China Sea and the Island of Formosa in the east.

The mission of this ill-equipped air force was six-fold:

1. to defend its own life-line over the Hump;
2. to Ferret out and destroy Japanese aircraft and troop concentrations;
3. to destroy the enemy's military and naval installations in China;
4. to smash and disrupt 1ap shipping along the China coast and on the numerous inland waterways of China;
5. to destroy enemy supplies and military installations in Indo-China, Thailand, Burma, and Formosa; and
6. to encourage Chinese resistance and provide all possible aerial support to their ground forces.

To accomplish this ambitious, but imperative mission, the Fourteenth struck and harassed the enemy from strategically-located airbases in China. Chennault took full advantage of his interior positions, which were spotted on the hub of a semicircle stretching from Ichang to Hankow and down and around the coast to Canton and Hong Kong, with the Japanese concentrated around the rim of this huge hub. Theoretically, this battle formation gave tactical advantage to the Fourteenth Air Force, and, given an appreciable quantity of planes, men and supplies, the Fourteenth could have blasted the enemy out of China. Since the Hump prevented adequate supplies, the Air Force had to rely on unorthodox tactics to cause the Japs as much damage and confusion as limited supplies permitted. The Fourteenth jabbed the enemy off balance and kept him guessing.

The AAF in China launched its important attacks from three main bases. From its northernmost lair at Hengyang, the Fourteenth was in a position to attack the important Jap-held ports of Hankow and Canton, as well as Jap installations and traffic movements in the inland waterways of central China. From its main and satellite fields at Kweilin, the Fourteenth swept the coast off the South China Sea and hammered at the port of Hong Kong. From Yannanyi and nearby fields, its planes roared out to protect the eastern terminus of the supply line over the Hump and struck out at Jap air and supply installations and troop movements in an around the strategically-important Burmese towns of Myitkyina, Bhamo, Katha and Lashio.

During 1944 the Japanese launched twin drives which severed unoccupied China and overran seven of the principal bases from which the Fourteenth Air Force had been operating. But by the Spring of 1945 the impact of the smashing Allied attack across the Pacific and the ever-increasing forces of American-trained Chinese under the leadership of Lieutenant General Albert L. Wedemeyer, the China Theater commander, were felt deep in Asia.

With the Burma campaign completed, the Air Forces in China reorganized. The Tenth Air Force from India moved to Luichow, China, and both the Tenth and the Fourteenth were placed under my command with headquarters in Chungking. Victory in the East brought to light many new concepts and tactics in warfare, particularly in regard to the use of air power. Many were the result of experiments initially conceived and tested by the Eastern Air Command. The Burma campaign in itself showed that whole armies can be transported, supported, evacuated and supplied by air.

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