World War II Database

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseWong Tsu (Pinyin romanization: Wang Zhu) was born in Beijing in Qing Dynasty China in 1893. He was selected as a naval cadet in 1905 at the age of 12, and four years later he was sent to the United Kingdom (Armstrong College of Durham University, now University of Newcastle) and later the United States (Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)) to study naval engineering. In the mean time, the Chinese revolution of 1911 took place, with the nascent Republic of China overthrowing the Qing monarchy. He graduated from MIT in 1916 with a degree in aeronautical engineering. Shortly after he learned to fly at the Curtiss Flying Boat School in Buffalo, New York, United States. In May 1916, he was hired by the Boeing Airplane Company as its first trained aeronautical engineer, and in this role he was on the design team of the company's first commercially successful product, Boeing Model C. He also advised on the design of the Boeing Aerodynamical Chamber at the University of Washington. He left Boeing in 1917, returning to China. In 1922, he and fellow engineer Ba Yuzao built the world's first floating docking for the repair and maintenance of seaplanes at Mawei Shipyard in Fuzhou, Fujian Province, China. At Mawei, he would design a number of new aircraft, many of which were seaplanes. As Mawei was administered by the government, his career at this shipyard also marked his entry into government service.

ww2dbaseIn 1928, Wong was made the Director of the Aircraft Division of the Chinese Navy, with his office based in Shanghai, China. In Sep 1929, he returned to Mawei Shipyard as the head of its Naval Aircraft Manufacturing Division. In 1931, he joined the China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC), a Sino-US joint venture, as a senior engineer. In 1934, he was made an advisor to the Chinese military to advise on air force matters; in this capacity, with a honorary rank of colonel, he was sent to Italy in 1935 to observe Italian aviation and to Russia in 1938 to help discuss a plan for a possible Russo-Chinese joint aircraft factory in Xinjiang Province in western China. Concurrently, between 1934 and 1937, he was the highest ranking Chinese executive in the US-Chinese joint venture Central Aircraft Manufacturing Company (CAMCO), working out of an office at its Hangzhou factory in Zhejiang Province, China. CAMCO assembled Hawk II and Hawk III aircraft for the Chinese Air Force as the conflict between China and Japan escalated. On 7 Jul 1939, the Chinese government formed the China Aviation Research Institute at the temporary war time capital of Chengdu, and Wong was made its deputy director. The institute was tasked with the manufacturing of aviation components locally in China for the war effort. In 1944, he was awarded the Order of the Resplendent Banner 6th Class and the Order of Loyalty and Valor. In 1945, he was awarded the Gancheng Medal Rank A 1st Class, Guanghua Medal Rank A 1st Class.

ww2dbaseIn Dec 1948, as the Nationalist government suffered losses in the civil war against the Communists, Wong was relocated to the island of Taiwan. In Nov 1949, a betrayal within CNAC, now based in Taiwan, resulted in the loss of 12 passenger and cargo aircraft to the Communists; in its aftermath, the Nationalist government appointed Wong as the new general manager, replacing Liu Jingyi, who was accused of being incompetent for not having detected the betrayal. In Dec 1955, he retired from government service and became a professor at the Department of Aeronautical Engineering at the National Cheng Kung University in Tainan, Taiwan, Republic of China. He was known as a dedicated educator, overworking himself to prepare for lectures and writing technical books. Deteriorating health led to his retirement from the university in 1964, and he passed away from liver disease in Mar 1965.

Wong Tsu Interactive Map

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Wong Tsu Timeline