The Republic of China came into being in 1911 with the overthrow of the Imperial Manchu Dynasty. This followed a long period of weak and ineffective rule, with the loss of territory and rights through the Unequal Treaties forced upon China by encroaching foreign powers. The leader of the revolution, Dr Sun, Yat-sen, called for the establishment of a constitutional democracy modeled on the United States. However, like many other revolutions that were to follow, these idealistic principles were quickly subverted.
A military strongman, Gen Yuan, Shi-Kai, got himself elected president. He then dissolved parliament, purged followers of Sun’s Nationalist Party and forced Sun into exile. Yuan appointed military governors to each of the provinces, and they had control over local taxes and could raise their own military forces. Yuan declared himself emperor in 1915 and was, in turn, deposed. With troops, and the means to finance them, the military governors of the provinces found themselves with great power and influence. They became known as ‘warlords’ as they fought each other for dominance in government, and years of chaos and civil wars duly followed.
There is one interesting side note from the ‘Warlord Period’. Chekiang Province had a small air force that lasted about seven months in 1924 before it was absorbed by another warlord following the ‘Jiangsu-Chekiang Conflict’. A small air arm of a minor warlord would have been of little historical interest but for the fact that its commander was Etienne Tsu (, Tsu Bin-hou). Tsu was originally from Shanghai and he went to college in France. Fascinated with aviation, Tsu obtained his pilot’s licence in 1914. Upon the outbreak of World War 1, Tsu volunteered to fight for France. He was assigned to Escadrille N37 of the French Aéronautique Militaire and saw action in 1916-17, scoring three confirmed aerial victories – two German aircraft and one observation balloon. He was also credited with two enemy aircraft ‘forced to land’, which, according to some aviation historians, makes Tsu an ace.
During the Chinese civil wars of the 1920s, two of China’s closest neighbours and regional rivals, the Soviet Union and Japan, supported rival factions. As a result of its victory in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05, Japan had assumed control of the Kwantung Leased Territories from Russia. The governor of the territories, called Kanto-cho in Japanese, had a large, modern Kwantung Army at his disposal. The Kanto-cho governor supported the government in Peking, which was also backed by warlords of the Northern Faction.
One of the most powerful warlords in the Northern Faction was Marshal Chang, Tsuo-lin, the military governor of the three resource-rich eastern provinces known to the West as Manchuria. Chang, nicknamed the ‘Old Marshal’, had the largest army, and he also started building an air arm (the Manchurian Air Force) as early as 1920. It duly played an important role in the fighting against rival warlords in 1922 and 1924. By the late 1920s, the Manchurian Air Force was the largest in China.
Newly delivered Hawk IIIs with Chinese inscription on their noses. The closest aeroplane honours the business Yi Cheng Hsiang (), an inn or hotel in the city of Paoting that donated money to finance its purchase. Unlike the remaining Hawk IIIs in this photograph, the aircraft has yet to have its large fuselage side number applied. This shot was probably taken during a public display held before the Sino-Japanese War erupted. It is believed that many CAF aircraft featured inscriptions prior to the conflict. Unfortunately, few photographs were taken at the time, and even fewer have survived into the 21st century. This, coupled with the loss of CAF records, means that it is impossible to match inscriptions to aircraft numbers (All photographs courtesy of the Aviation Historical Society of the Republic of China [AHSROC] unless otherwise specified)
The Soviet Union, wary of the Japanese presence in China, supported a small but growing Chinese Communist Party. Stalin also realised that he needed a more powerful ally to counter the Japanese influence. He supported Sun, Yat-sen’s Nationalists, which had retreated to Sun’s southern province of Kwangtung (known to the West as Canton). The Nationalists began building an army for a ‘Northern Expedition’ to wrest control of China from the warlords and unify the country under one central government. The Soviet Union provided arms and advisors to support this effort, including aircraft and pilot training.
Sun died of cancer in 1925 and was succeeded by military man Chiang, Kai-shek, who duly led the ‘Northern Expeditions’. In 1928 the Northern warlord regime collapsed when the ‘Old Marshal’ Chang withdrew his support. The Japanese Kwantung Army assassinated him shortly thereafter, thinking perhaps that it would get better cooperation from his son, the Young Marshal Chang, Hsue-liang, who succeeded the ‘Old Marshal’ as military governor. The Japanese were to be bitterly disappointed, however. The ‘Young Marshal’ Chang declared his support for the Nationalists, essentially uniting China under Chiang, who set up his capital in Nanking.
However, China was ‘united’ in name only. In 1927 the Nationalists discovered a Chinese Communist plot to kidnap Chiang, Kai-shek. They purged the Chinese Communist Party from their ranks and expelled the Soviet advisors. This led to a split between the left and right wings of the Nationalist Party. The left wing rallied support from a number of provincial military governors to oust Chiang, leading to the Great Plains War of 1930. The right wing of the Nationalists under Chiang was hard pressed initially, but it prevailed in the end. However, the huge conflict, which involved more than one-and-a-half million men, left the Nationalist government nearly bankrupt.
Once again ‘Young Marshal’ Chang of Manchuria had played a key role in the conflict, committing a large army from Manchuria to the Great Plains War on the side of Chiang, Kai-shek. This was the last straw for the Japanese governor of Kwantung Territories. With the ‘Young Marshal’ Chang and almost half of his troops away, the Japanese Kwantung Army invaded and seized Manchuria in September 1931. This was to sow the seeds for a wider conflict with China and eventually the USA.
Weakened by the Great Plains War, China was in no position to contest the Japanese seizure of Manchuria. The League of Nations proved unable to stop the Japanese installing a puppet government and having Manchuria declare independence from China as the new nation of Manchukuo.
Faced with the threat of further aggression by Japan, the Chinese Central Government under Chiang, Kai-shek embarked on a long-term programme to build up its armed forces. Advisors were brought in from Germany to train the army while the US government provided flight instructors under Col Jack Jouett (the ‘Jouett Mission’) to help build the air force. From 1932 to 1935, ‘Jouett Mission’ instructors helped train Chinese cadets at the Central Aviation Academy at Schien Chiao, near Hangchow in Jiangsu Province. These aviators were to bear the brunt of the early fighting in the Sino-Japanese War and produce the first aces of the CAF. Among them were young men who had fled Japanese-occupied Manchuria.
The invasion of Manchuria was known as the ’18 September National Humiliation’ to the Chinese. It galvanised Chinese public opinion, with volunteers determined to free Manchuria, and donations to help arm them, pouring in from all over China. The Central Government also received money from Chinese communities around the world, who also sent men to fight the Japanese. However, huge obstacles remained. There was still an active Communist insurrection supported by the Soviet Union, and factional rivalries continued within the Central Government and the highly autonomous provinces.
Kwangsi provincial forces had fought on the losing side of the Great Plains War, but they were able to retreat largely intact back to theit home province. An uneasy truce between Kwangsi and the Central Government duly followed, and the invasion of Manchuria in September 1931 set aside any immediate threat of renewed hostilities. However, the Kwangsi provincial government remained wary of the Central Government – so much so that they accepted Japanese help to build their air force. The Japanese Army Air Force (JAAF) provided aircraft and instructors, and a number of Kwangsi pilots were even sent to the JAAF Academy at Akeno for advanced training.
Two years prior to the Japanese seizure of Manchuria, Gen Chen, Chi-tang had taken over as military governor in Canton. Under Chen, the economy of the province grew rapidly. With his new-found riches, Chen was able to invest in expanding his air force in 1931 following the invasion of Manchuria to the northwest. This military build-up in provinces such as Canton was, at least on the surface, in support of the national effort against Japanese aggression. Indeed, when Chinese forces clashed with Japan in the 1932 Shanghai Incident, the Cantonese Air Force had sent men and aircraft north to support the Central Air Force. However, when the Central Government proposed changes in 1936 curtailing the autonomy of Canton, such as replacing the local currency with a national one, Gen Chen baulked. Indeed, the Canton and Kwangsi provisional governments formed an alliance to resist the Central Government.
Playing on public impatience at the apparent lack of action against Japan, the provincial leaders of Kwangsi and Canton mobilised their troops on the pretext that they would be ‘marching north to demand the Central Government fight the Japanese’. Civil war seemed imminent – all this at a time when Japan continued to expand its influence and grab more territory in northern China. The Kwangtung–Kwangsi Crisis came to a sudden halt when large number of pilots from the Cantonese Air Force organised a mass defection and flew their aircraft north to join the Central Air Force. A number of Cantonese instructors in the Kwangsi Air Force also defected. Cynics suggest that the defection was the result of Nationalist Chinese agents bribing Cantonese Air Force officers. However, the sheer number of highly educated pilots who ‘voted with their aeroplanes’ suggests that this was a ‘grass roots movement’ of servicemen wanting to put national interests above provincial and factional issues.
Overnight, the Chinese Central Air Force almost doubled in size, making it much better prepared to fight a war. Nevertheless, numerous challenges remained, many of which had not been satisfactorily resolved when war broke out with Japan in July 1937.