Talyn
Emissary
A Forgotten Front
Many students of World War II view the Pacific War through the lens of battles such as Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Iwo Jima, or Okinawa. The popular image is one of a contested beachhead with landing craft coming ashore to drop off Marines amidst heavy Japanese machine gun fire and artillery while Navy fighters from offshore carriers roll in against ground targets. Although critical to the downfall of the Japanese Empire, the common outline of America’s war against Japan viewed through island hopping only tells part of the grand epic which is the Asia-Pacific War.
Like the Eastern Front in the European Theater of Operations (ETO) fixed much of the Wehrmacht against the Red Army, the front in China presented a similar front of importance in tying down most of the Japanese ground forces from 1937-1945.
U.S. 14th Air Force in China and Lessons for Irregular Air Warfare - Consortium of Indo-Pacific Researchers
Air Insurgents: The U.S. 14th Air Force in China and Lessons for Irregular Air Warfare By Grant T. Willis, Fellow, CIPR | Jan 18th, 2026 “Destroying an enemy’s airplanes by seeking them out in the air is, while not entirely useless, the least effective method. A much better way is to destroy his...
indopacificresearchers.org
The Nationalist Chinese forces under Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek provided the Allies with a critical theater to fix Japanese resources away from other Imperial strongholds throughout the vast Pacific.
In December 1941, Japan had 155,000 troops throughout the Pacific and Southeast Asia while 1,300,000 were deployed to China and Manchuria. By 1945, Japan had 1,640,000 troops stationed across the Pacific and Southeast Asia, 1,980,000 Japanese troops were in China and Manchuria, and a further 3,532,000 were stationed.
Spawning from the remnants of the mercenary American Volunteer Group (AVG) otherwise known famously as “The Flying Tigers” and follow-on “China Air Task Force”, the newly established 14th Air Force stood up in 1943. The 14th had retained much of its heritage and hard-fought combat experience through the leadership of Claire Chennault and other pilots who fought for Chiang’s government before and after Pearl Harbor.
Maj. Gen. Claire “Old Leatherface” Chennault, Commander, AVG, CATF, and 14th Air Force,
https://www.ftlhs.org/about-general-claire-chennault/
Happy Thanksgiving
On 4 November 1943, Flying Tiger veteran and former naval aviator/Chennault loyalist, Col David L. “Tex” Hill, arrived at the 23rd Fighter Group (23d FG) headquarters in Kweilin, China. Col Clinton D. “Casey” Vincent met him with an idea. A surprise attack on the Japanese air base at Sinchiku in Northwestern Formosa (modern day Taiwan) based on intelligence obtained from a solo reconnaissance flight flown by Col Bruce Halloway months before.
