On June 8, 1944, the Chinese 71st Army broke through the Japanese defenses around Longling, the largest city along the Burma Road on the west side of the Salween River. Marshal Wei Lihuang recognized an opportunity when the Japanese shifted most of their forces north to oppose the XXth Army Group in the Gaoligong Mountains.…
On May 28, 1944, the 27th Troop Carrier Squadron began airdropping supplies to Chinese troops on the Salween Front. The 27th was a C-47 squadron with hard-won experience supporting British irregulars and Allied armies in Burma. Their transfer to the 14th Air Force in China brought a new dimension to the campaign in southwest China.…
On May 17, 1944, Stilwell’s End Run Task Force captured the airfield at Pamati, two miles west of Myitkyina. They had marched 112 miles in twenty days, through dense, hostile jungle and over the six-thousand-foot Kumon Range. Each of the three columns lost anywhere from one quarter to one half of their mules and horses…
On May 15, 1944, Chinese troops from the XIth Army Group captured Pingda, the first town liberated from the Japanese south of the Burma Road during the Salween Campaign. The Japanese 56th Division was spread thin across the hundred-mile front and offered little resistance. The Chinese, however, had not yet learned to consolidate their positions…
On May 11, 1944, forty thousand troops from the Chinese Expeditionary Force (CEF), or Y Force, as the Americans called it, crossed the Salween River to retake southwest China from the Japanese. The Salween was rapid and unnavigable, a turbulent river between two colossal mountain ranges. The Chinese called it Nujiang (怒江), or “Angry River.”…
On April 21, 1944, Lieutenant General Joseph W. Stilwell created the End Run Task Force to make a surprise attack on the Japanese airfield two miles west of Myitkyina, Burma. Myitkyina was the key to North Burma. The Japanese used it as a staging field for fighters attacking American transports flying the “Hump” airlift. Capturing…
On April 17, 1944, the Japanese Army launched Phase One of Operation Ichi-go. It was the most ambitious military operation they had undertaken since the beginning of the war. Initially, a division of troops struck out south from the Yellow River bend to connect the railway from Beiping (Beijing) to Hankou. Eventually, the operation would…
On April 14, 1944, Chiang Kai-shek finally approved the Salween Campaign. It had been almost two years since the Chinese Army and the Flying Tigers had stopped the Japanese 56th Division as it drove along the Burma Road to the west bank of the Salween River. Lieutenant General Joseph W. Stilwell had been fighting his…
David Hayward has written an excellent autobiography of his experiences as a B-25 pilot in Burma and China during World War II. Previously, Mr. Hayward put together several publications for the 22nd Bomb Squadron Association, which included some of his own reminisces, but he finally decided to compile his own story. He did a great…
The Battle of Shanghai is oddly one of the best documented, but also least remembered battles from the period before America’s entry into World War II. Peter Harmsen, in Shanghai 1937: Stalingrad on the Yangzi, seeks to makes use of the former to rectify the latter. Mr. Harmsen made use of a wide variety of…