World War II was not the first conflict to touch western Yunnan. In Travels,Marco Polo describes an epic battle that took place there in 1277. According to Polo, the King of Mien, a medieval kingdom in central Burma, refused to pay tribute to Kublai Khan. The Great Khan sent ambassadors in 1271 and 1273, and…
The British commando leader Orde Wingate asked for light aircraft to evacuate his wounded from the jungles of Burma. By the time Philip Cochran arrived in November 1943, however, the light aircraft operation had expanded into a full-blown air task force, later designated the 1st Air Commando Group. In addition to four squadrons of small…
Robert “Buck” Burris passed away last Wednesday, December 5, 2012. He died of liver cancer. He had been fighting it for some time, but if he was discouraged or depressed about it he never showed it. To the end he kept a positive attitude and was a constant source of encouragement for others. His daughter…
Richard Maddox’s niece, Pat Gibson, called me this week to tell me of the passing of her uncle. She found my phone number on a piece of paper that fell from his belongings while she was going through his personal effects. Mr. Maddox was an armament instructor at Lowry Field prior to serving with the…
When Orde Wingate executed the First Chindit Campaign in February 1943, he was hoping to use guerrilla tactics learned from his career in Africa and the Middle East to improve the situation for the Allies in Burma. He called his operations “long-range penetration,” or LRP. Essentially, he split his forces into columns small enough to…
There are many critics of how both Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek and General Joseph Stilwell handled the war in China. While not excusing poor judgment or bad decisions, I believe their choices were very much constrained by the impossible situations they found themselves in. Stilwell was responsible to General Marshall and President Roosevelt as U.S. Theater Commander…
World War II in China hardly merits any notice in history books this day in age, save for its relegation to the footnotes of the Pacific campaign. It was not the main arena in which America fought the Japanese. However, it was in many ways the main arena for the Japanese battling the Allies. While…
On 11 November 1944, 9 P-51s from the 25th Fighter Squadron and 7 P-38s from the 449th were on a fighter sweep over Thailand when they were jumped by five Royal Thai Air Force (RTAF) Nates. They caught the Mustangs low and shot down Lieutenant Henry Minco. The P-38s had a great deal of difficulty…
I was very happy to see Air Power History publish a review of The Forgotten Squadron in their Winter 2011 issue. The review is written by Lt Col (ret) Golda Eldridge and is presented in full here: This book is noteworthy not only for its subject and narrative quality, but also for other aspects including…
I recently found this photo in the national archives of a few of the 449th Fighter Squadron’s pilots outprocessing from China on 10 October 1945 to return to the United States after the end of World War II. The processing center is in Yankai, China, and the pilots are, from left to right, Lieutenant W.H.…