World War II Database

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseClaire Lee Chennault was born to John Chennault and Jessie Lee in Commerce, Texas, United States and his family moved to Waterproof, Louisiana, United States early on in his life. His middle name was given in honor of General Robert E. Lee, a distant relative on his mother's side. In his younger years he ventured the bayous of Louisiana; "My earliest recollections are of roaming the oak woods and moss-draped cypress swamps in northeast Louisiana. Life in these woods and on the bayous and lakes taught me self-confidence and reliance and forced me to make my own decisions", he said in his book Way of a Fighter. His mother passed away when he was eight years old, and some time after his father married his teacher Lottie Barnes. After education at Louisiana State University (where he was a cadet in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) program) and Louisiana State Normal, he became a teacher in a small school in Athens, Louisiana. In 1911, he married his first wife, Nell Thompson. When WW1 broke out, he joined the US Army and served at Kelly Field where he worked as ground crew for aircraft; although rejected as an aviator several times, he was trained by various instructors who generously offered him the rear seats of their training aircraft while explaining the basics of flying. Very soon, he was skilled enough to fly some of the army aircraft on his own, though without permission from the Army. Officially, he became an aviator after WW1 when he re-joined the Army and entered the fighter pilot training program. In 1923, he was sent to Pearl Harbor as the commanding officer of the 19th Pursuit Squadron; it was at Pearl Harbor, US Territory of Hawaii where he considered himself to be most productive, initiating new plans for Air Corps organization and new tactics in aerial warfare. One of his innovations during this period was the use of airborne infantry, but it was way ahead of his time, and the idea was ridiculed. He was a strong supporter of the defensive capabilities of fighters against hostile bombing missions, but it was a view that was not shared by his superiors whose understanding of aerial warfare was deeply rooted in the obsolete theories from the WW1 period. After many disagreements, he retired from the army on 30 Apr 1937 under the guise of poor health.

ww2dbaseChennault's love for aviation kept him in the same field, however. A day after his retirement from the US Army, he was en route t to China, where he took a civilian position directly under Chiang Kaishek's wife Song Meiling training Chinese pilots. He provided a training program for Chinese pilots, some of whom knew little more than taking off and landing. He negotiated with the Secretaries of the Army and the Navy to give special permission for pilots to resign from their US Army and Navy postings to fly for the Chinese Air Force, which was normally not allowed for US citizens, provided that these pilots promised to return under the US banner should the US enter the war. Last but not least, he persuaded the US government to send 100 P-40 fighters originally intended for Britain to China; the first P-40 aircraft arrived in China months before the US officially entered WW2. With the American pilots and planes, he established the First American Volunteer Group (AVG), "Flying Tigers". After the US officially entered the war in Dec 1941, AVG fought against the Japanese as an independent entity for another six months; after which, he was re-commissioned in the US Army at the war time rank of colonel, and the AVG was absorbed into the US Army 14th Air Force with Chennault at the helm. He often acted in the capacity of the liaison between Chinese leader Chiang Kaishek and American leaders in Washington D.C. The pilots of the former AVG relied on Chennault's defensive pursuit theory to defend the Burma Road and to support ground operations throughout the campaigns in the China-Burma-India theater. Understanding the value of intelligence, he traded information gained from high-level aerial photography flights with US Navy's Sino-American Special Technical Cooperative Organization (SACO) under the command of Milton Miles, which operated agents across China to monitor Japanese warship and convoy movements. Behind the back of the Chinese leaders, Chennault also worked with the Communists to gain intelligence on Japanese troop movements in areas where the Nationalist Chinese had no presence. By early 1945, he had once again been frustrated by his colleague, this time more so due to the Office of Strategic Services' efforts to interfere with his operations and George Marshall's perception that Chennault had been less than loyal to Joseph Stilwell. As a punishment Marshall and Henry Arnold moved Chennault's 14th Air Force to northern China, a move that made no strategic sense, simply to get Chennault out of the way. Chennault once again retired, again under the guise of health concerns, and left China on 31 Jul 1945. While US officers typically held the view that the Chinese were difficult to work with, Chennault's view was the opposite; in a 1958 letter to Milton Miles, Chennault worte:

ww2dbaseAt the end of his military career, Chennault achieved the rank of major general and was awarded with 17 medals including the Distinguished Service Medal and the Distinguished Flying Cross. He was regarded as a hero to the Chinese, who had affectionately given him the Chinese name Chen Nade and later erected a statue in his likeness in Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China.

ww2dbaseIn 1946, Chennault returned to China to establish the airline Civil Air Transport Company (CAT), whose corporate logo was that of the Flying Tigers. CAT was charged with flying supplies from the port cities of Shanghai and Guangzhou into the interior, part for civilian use and part for military purposes in the resumed Chinese Civil War between the Nationalists and the Communists. Later, CAT also aided anti-Communist efforts in the Korean War. During this time, the previously divorced Chennault married Ann Chen, a reporter for the Central News Agency, who was many years his junior. In his private life, he was an outdoorsman who enjoyed gardening, fishing, and golfing. His health deteriorated slowly from bronchitis and lung cancer, and passed away as a lieutenant general in 1958. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, United States.

Claire Chennault Interactive Map

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Claire Chennault Timeline

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2.  BILL says:
11 May 2009 04:35:42 PM

Chennault sent reports about the Japanese Zero, to the US War Dept. but all reports were filed away, and never read. The Flying Tigers and Claire Chennault will be linked forever, in Aviation History. I even flew on (CAT) Civil Air Transport C-47, Taipei,Taiwan.

14.  Alan Chanter says:
9 Sep 2016 05:49:40 AM

The Chinese were the originators of the term ‘Flying Tigers’ from a proverb – ‘Like tigers with wings, their strength is irresistible’. Madame Chiang reportedly said of them “They are my angels, with or without wings”. The pilots themselves, however, preferred the simple ‘American Volunteers’.