Chennault Inductee Narrative

It has been said that Claire Lee Chennault was a legend in his own lifetime: That he was one of a kind and there had never been an airman quite like him and never would be. Also he has been called a genius and a master tactician. It has also been said that he performed miracles. In any event, he was a great American, a great soldier, and a genuine authentic, American hero.

It was here at Maxwell Field in 1931 that he organized the first army air corps aerobatic team. The purpose of this team, known at “three Men on a Flying Trapeze” was to prove that pursuit aircraft could fight as a team. The men selected for this team, because they too were superb airmen were William C. (Billy) McDonald and John H. (Luke) Williamson.

Chennault and Billy Mitchell had similar problems. Mitchell got in trouble with the military for trying to sell the concept of the bomber. By the time Chennault started trying to sell his theories on the pursuit plane the military had become so well sold on the bomber that they had decided there would be no need for fighter planes.

Claire Lee Chennault was born in Commerce, Texas in 1890. He moved to a small town in Louisiana on the Mississippi River while he as still a small boy and grew up there. He enjoyed hunting and fishing there and for the rest of his life.

After attending Louisiana State University and graduation form Louisiana Normal School, he taught school until1917. He then joined the Army and promptly applied for flight training. He was promptly turned down. It was not until his fifth request that he was finally accepted. Meantime, he was able to get some unauthorized flying time at Kelly Field because of help from some of his friends who were instructors and crew chiefs. So when he was accepted into the flying training program, he already had a good many hours of flying time. He was assigned to fly pursuit planes. While here at Maxwell, he served as Senior Instructor in Pursuit Aviation, Chief of the Pursuit Section, and as a member of the Pursuit Development Board. He fought for his fighter plane concept for many years with little success. In alter years military tacticians realized that Chennault was correct in this theory of aerial warfare. Many of the principles he developed at Maxwell were responsible for our combat successes in World War Two.

In April 1937 he retired from the Army Air Corps as a Captain after twenty years of service. The next day he was enroute to China to help Generalissimo and Madam Chiang Kai-shek build the Chinese Air Force, “The Flying Tigers.” He worked twenty hour days and was finally able to implement the concepts which he had tried to hard to sell to the army, and quickly proved that his theories had been correct. With outdated fighter planes and poor maintenance capabilities, the Chennault trained fighter pilots demolished scores of Japanese bombers. He very soon became a national hero to the people of China.

It was obvious to him that the Chinese would have to have help against the Japanese. He went directly to President Roosevelt and presented the situation. As a result, he was promised one hundred P-40 aircraft and was allowed to recruit pilots, maintenance and staff people form the military. One hundred pilots and one hundred sixty-five support people volunteered. During the first seven months after Pearl Harbor, his Flying Tigers shot down about 300 enemy aircraft and damaged several thousand others. They lost very few aircraft.

In July 1942 The Flying Tigers were deactivated, Chennault was promoted to Brigadier General and given a command that later became the Fourteenth Air Force. During a three year period this new unit destroyed just under one thousand enemy aircraft with a loss of less than two hundred. Although Chennault made many enemies in high places, all the people who worked with him and under him loved him and knew him to be a man of great compassion and love for those who flew with him and worked with him. After the defeat of Japan he had hardly had time to settle down at home when he was called back to China to help with another serious problem. The Communist Chinese were trying to take over the country and the Generalissimo had to have an air transport system. Chennault put in some more twenty hour days to bring this about. He made an effort to again get help for China from the United States government, but this time with no success.