I have been engaged in the study of the Second World War on an off-and-on basis since I was about eleven. As a part of that ongoing effort, I have just finished my most recent sojourn into the China-Burma-India theater, having read Donovan Webster's The Burma Road, Jack Samson's The Flying Tiger," Carl Molesworth's Sharks over China", White and Jacoby's Thunder Out of China, Barbara Tuchman's Stilwell and the American Experience in China, Maochun Yu's OSS in China, and a skim through The Stilwell Papers. I'll be back to dive into The Dixie Mission and the region's logistics, but I've got to get through my stacks on The Russian Front, the German generals, and a couple of other topics first.
Two Generals
So I thought it would be a good time for a wrap-up, and to address the issue that has been bothering me the most: the conflict between two American generals in the theater, General Joseph Stilwell, Chiang Kai-Shek's chief of staff and China-Burma-India theater commander, and General Claire Chennault, the retired Army captain who was Chiang's air advisor and the organizer of the American Volunteer Group (Flying Tigers,) and, after Pearl Harbor, commander of the U.S. Fourteenth Air Force.
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