Claire Lee Chennault born September 6, 1893 in Commerce, Texas, died July 27, 1958 in New Orleans) is an American Air Force General. He is considered a war hero in both China and the United States.
Claire Lee Chennault is of French - Huguenot - ancestry and counts among her distant ancestors Sam Houston, founder of Texas, and Robert Lee, general of the Confederate States Army during the Civil War. His mother came from an old family of landowners in Louisiana. Raised in the town of Waterproof, Louisiana, he lies about his age so he can enter Louisiana State University right out of high school.
Military Career
He then received training from the Reserve Officers and Training Corps, and was introduced to aviation with the United States Army Air Corps, then becoming an instructor during the First World War. He then served in various units of the United States Air Force, before leaving active service in 1937, due to disagreements with his superiors and hearing problems.
Chennault then offered his services to the government of the Republic of China, and in June 1937 became an aviation adviser to Chiang Kai-shek, who, having taken refuge in the center of the country, continued to direct it and organize the fight against the Japanese invader. and the National Revolutionary Army. The Second Sino-Japanese War began a month after his arrival in China:during the conflict, he contributed to the strategy of the Chinese air force. He worked from the summer of 1938 under the direct supervision of Song Meiling, the wife of Chiang Kai-shek, who headed the aeronautical commission, and asked him to set up an air force on the model of the army of the American air3. Chennault then worked to set up a squadron of foreign pilots
From 1940, to deal with the seriousness of the Chinese military situation, Chennault asked for help from the American government. The United States was then officially neutral in the conflict, but the Lend-Lease program allowed American President Franklin D. Roosevelt to authorize the dispatch of a series of Curtiss P-40 Warhawks. Through a private military company (CAMCO), Chennault recruited 300 Americans, technicians and pilots, who had officially entered China. Made up of volunteer soldiers, but also adventurers and mercenaries, this team is the first unofficial contribution of the United States to the conflict in China.
At the end of the summer of 1941, his team was officially recognized as the American Volunteer Group (AVG), in a politico-legal phenomenon comparable to that of the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War. Officially formed in August, the fighter squadron known as the Flying Tigers in China fought for seven months against the Japanese in the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Burma Campaign. Chennault officially rejoins the American army, with the rank of colonel (then lieutenant general):in July 1942, the Flying Tigers are dissolved and incorporated into the United States Army Air Forces. In March 1943, Chennault took command of the 14th USAAF, which included part of the Flying Tigers personnel.
Chennault notably came into conflict with General Joseph Stilwell, military adviser delegated by the United States to Chiang Kai-shek:Chennault, supported by Chiang, pushed for more concerted action by American forces in China against the Japanese, while Stilwell favors air support for the war in Burma and more generally the land war.
The CBI (China-Burma-India) theater of operations air war uses as a strategic point the transport over the hump of the Himalayas with twin-engine transport Curtiss C-46 Commando and Douglas C-47 Skytrain, in order to ensure the supply of allied forces between China and Burma. In 1943, the Japanese returned to the air offensive; in 1944, as part of Operation Ichi-Go, they managed to take some of Chennault's bases in China. The offensive, however, fails to stop the attacks of the American Air Force, which simply moves its bases of operation. In 1945, the American air force contributed to stopping a new Japanese offensive west of Hunan, within the framework of the general Chinese counter-attack.
Return to civilian life
Demobilized after the war, Chennault remained active in Asia and created the Civil Air Transport airline in 1946, which provided significant logistical assistance to the nationalists during the Chinese civil war and which ensured, in 1948-1949, the transfer of several thousand Chinese between mainland China and Taiwan. In 1951, the company was bought by a holding company controlled by the CIA; it is later renamed Air America. Civil Air Transport personnel found Cathay Airlines and China Airlines in intertwined combinations.
In 1945, he created the "Flying Tigers Line" which quickly became the largest (and most discreet) charter company in the world, taking care of military transport that could not be done by the United States Air Force. She plays a (discreet) role during the Korean War; its services were also hired by the French during the Indochina War to ensure supplies during the Battle of Ði?n Biên Ph?.
In 1947, Chennault also married a Chinese woman, Chen Xiangmei, born in 1925, better known as Anna Chennault, and subsequently active in the United States as a lobbyist in favor of the State of Taiwan.
He died of lung cancer in a military hospital and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.