World War II Database

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseWang Guangfu (Wade-Giles: Wang Kwang-fu) was born in Beijing, China in 1914 to Wang Zhichang, a university professor and a high level official to the Beiyang Government whose ancestral home was in Tianjin. In 1935, he passed the examination for the Central Aviation Academy, and then attended the institution between Mar 1936 and Jul 1939. During that time, he received fighter pilot training in Kunming, Yunnan Province, China in Aug and Sep 1937. In Jul 1943, his squadron, 7th Pursuit Squadron of 3rd Pursuit Group, along with the 8th Pursuit Squadron, were transferred to Karachi, British India (now Pakistan) for advanced training with US Army Air Forces personnel. He returned to China in late 1943. Flying P-40N fighters, he was successful through 1944, with his personal best date being 27 Oct 1944 when he scored 3.5 victories (the half being a Ki-43 aircraft shared with Lieutenant Heyward Paxton) over Jingmen Airfield in Hubei Province, China. Toward the end of the war, he flew P-51K fighters, scoring a diving victory on a Ki-44 over Nanjing, China in a P-51K fighter as his final victory of the war. In late 1948, he was ordered to transfer to Taiwan as Communist forces neared the airfield where he was stationed in northern China. Because his sister Wang Guangmei had married Chinese Communist leading figure Liu Shaoqi on 21 Aug 1948, even though Wang's loyalty was not in serious doubt, he was transferred from his initial squadron duties at Pingdong (Postal Map: Pingtung) County in Taiwan to the Air Force Staff School as an instructor; he would never gain time in a cockpit after this transfer. In 1962, he was transferred to the military history section of the Air Force as its chief. In 1964, he retired from military service. In his retirement, he established the Shunda Trading Company. In 1985, he and his wife visited his son in Dallas, Texas, United States and decided to remain. He passed away in his home in Dallas in 2008 and was buried at the Restland Memorial Park in Dallas.

Wang Guangfu Interactive Map

Photographs

Wang Guangfu Timeline