Morning, Noon & Night

"Last year on this day I trembled in a dugout when Japanese planes droned overhead. This year we are comfortably eating here."

Veteran, bespectacled General Ho Kuo-kwang, commander of China's air defenses, breathed these thankful words last week at a banquet in Chungking. All day there had been mass meetings, speeches, athletic contests. Forty-eight boys & girls, the youngest only seven, had leaped bravely from a parachute tower. Winner of the contest was nine-year-old Sung Kuo-shua. The celebration was of Chinese Air Force Day--and the blossoming of new hope in China's old, war-weary land.

The Sky Dragons. China's great, good friend, Brigadier General Claire L. Chennault, had said: "Today the Japanese bomber is the hunted, not the hunter." All that week there had been fresh signs that this was true. Winging over the lonely shores of the South China Sea, U.S. planes bombed Haiphong in Indo-China, the big invasion base where the Jap squatted, glaring at Yunnan Province and waiting for the end of the monsoons.

It was the most dangerous, most important mission the task force had yet undertaken. Unlike most other raids in China, this one required a flight across treacherous mountains, through heavy weather, and an. approach over enemy-held Indo-China territory. If the Jap spotted the force on its way to Haiphong he would have time to send fighters from Canton and Hanoi to intercept it on the way home. Nonetheless, stout, scowling Colonel Caleb Haynes, boss of General Chennault's bombers, set out to hit Haiphong with everything he had.

Colonel Haynes himself led the raid. His bombers plastered the Haiphong water front, fired oil dumps, squarely hit one 4,000-ton freighter. His escorting fighter planes, swooping low, strewed incendiaries and machine-gunned fleeing soldiers. The task force returned to its base without losing a plane. Colonel Haynes to his men: "Perfect mission."

That was not all. Never resting, within one short day Chennault's men flew to the port of Canton (see col. 1), where the Jap had entrenched himself along the Pearl River; attacked the Japanese base at Hankow; pounded Jap-held points at Nanchang, Sienning and Yochow on the Canton-Hankow railway.

The week was the climax to five weeks of constant harassing which General Chennault's Army Air Forces--nicknamed Sky Dragons by the Chinese--had given the Jap.

Eyes for the Blind. They were still only a handful--with a thousand missions to perform. They accomplished what they did by courage, by surprise, and through the coaching of the smart and experienced General Chennault. They had only a few more planes than the old Flying Tigers, who rarely had more than 50 ships fit to fly. They still could not challenge the Jap's mastery of the air. But at last China's armies had eyes to see with; they no longer moved like blind worms mercilessly pecked at by birds overhead. Now the Jap had to endure his share of pecking.

Fortnight ago, for the first time in China's five-year-old war, the Chinese Army made an attack with air support. Fighter planes of General Chennault's 23rd Pursuit Group, carrying medium bombs strapped to their wings, flew over Linchwan, smashed the Jap headquarters, barracks and supply depots as Chinese on the ground launched their attack. Chinese troops cleared out the nearby town of Huwan, fought their way into Linchwan's suburbs. Last week the fight was still going on, while the Sky Dragons harried Jap supply lines and reinforcements.

The Chinese Rejoiced. As Chungking finished its day of celebration, she listened to more good news. A British R.A.F. was taking shape in China, would soon add its strength to the Americans'. The Chinese were grateful indeed. But China's ultimate hope was a self-reliant force of her own, strong enough to insure her national safety. Air Force Day was the anniversary of Aug. 14, 1937, when 103 old Chinese planes made eight raids on the Jap in Shanghai.

From Chungking went an appeal to President Roosevelt for more planes. Said the commander of the First Route Air Force: China must also make its own machines, produce its own fuel, train its own personnel. Said veteran General Ho, winding things up: "This day next year we want to turn on the radio and hear that the Chinese Air Force bombed Tokyo in the morning, the U.S. Army Air Forces bombed Tokyo at noon, and the R.A.F. completed the day's job in the evening."

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