Death on a Chinese Mountain

When the embattled American Volunteer Group broke up in China last July 4 some of the pilots came home, some donned the khaki and wings of the U.S. Army Air Forces. Last of these combat pilots still on duty in China was young (25), bronzed Major Frank Schiel of Prescott, Ariz.

Frank Schiel was poised and confident. He had been decorated (Silver Star, Distinguished Flying Cross) for more than 200 breathtaking reconnaissance flights over Burma, Siam, Indo-China and Occupied China. He had participated in every major campaign in China, had shot down six Jap planes; he had stayed on to help knowing Brigadier General Claire L. Chennault train the China Air Task Force.

Last week, exhausted from the grind, he too was ready to come home on leave. But he wanted to make one last reconnaissance flight to the front. As he hurried back to a rear base of the U.S. Air Forces, the weather settled down on him in the midst of the mountains, his plane crashed into a mountainside. Two days later a searching party found his smashed plane, his body beside it, lightly covered with snow.

Said General Chennault: "Schiel was outstanding. He had seen more of Asia than any other flyer of the AVG." His friends buried him in an ancient Chinese cemetery near Kunming.

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