The
early years of Chinese military aviation were somewhat sporadic and involved a
variety of different actors. During this time, China was embroiled in a civil
war between a variety of different warlords. Some of them were fairly strong and
they all had standing armies of sorts. A few even developed somewhat organized
aviation units. However, there was a real issue in getting aircraft as the rest
of the world had placed an embargo on providing military equipment or even
something that could be used as military equipment. This means that what
aircraft were used were either obsolete types that were there before the war, or
were smuggled in. Even this latter method was not foolproof as many smuggling
attempts did not succeed.
This particular volume covers the air arms of Beijing
and Guangzhou with the latter being the better organized and equipped of the
two. It looks into the early days of aviation in particular and those pilots who
made a major impact. Not surprising is that many of these men were
Chinese-Americans who started flight schools both in the US and in China, for a
military air arm is pretty useless without trained aviators and mechanics.
The book is basically divided into three sections. These
are Northern China; Beijing, Southern China, and Guangzhou. Not surprising that
Guangzhou was the most modern of the areas in this book and it is what was
eventually controlled by Chiang Kai-shek. It is obvious that the author has done
a lot of research, and I appreciate that when sources contradict, he provides
both rather than just picking one of them. When you add in some great period
photos, maps and the usual pages of color profiles, you have a very interesting
book.
September 2026
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