Major General Claire L. Chennault to President Roosevelt 31
Dear Mr. President: Thank you for your kind letter of March 15,32 which greatly encouraged me by its assurance of interest in our problems. In accordance with your request, I believe I should make another report on the general situation here.
[Page 58]The picture’s dominant feature is the strong probability that the Japanese will launch two offensives in China during the spring and early summer. Preparations for these offensives have recently been going forward apace. Movements of troops and equipment up the Yangtsze River, for example, have never been so heavy. Since the Japanese can hardly have resources to spare for any but major strategic objectives, I personally consider the offensives virtually certain, and expect them to be both serious and determined in character.
The first will be a double drive, upwards from the enemy position at Hankow and downwards from the positions on the Yellow River, to take the Chinese-held section of the Peiping–Hankow Railroad. Its immediate objective will be to provide an alternative line of communications for the enemy holdings on the upper Yangtsze, and thus guard against the 14th Air Force interdicting traffic on the River itself, which now carries all supplies for the Yangtsze spearhead. Once the enemy holds the Honan plain, through which the railroad runs, he will have an easier avenue of attack on the Szechwan plain, Chengtu and Chungking.
The second offensive will be an enveloping movement based on Yochow and Nanchang, to take Changsha. Its immediate objective will be to obtain command of the wealth of Hunan Province, one of the richest in China, to which Changsha is the key. Once the enemy holds Changsha, he will be in a position to move southward, either along the old Canton–Hankow railroad, or along the spur line on which are situated our main forward air bases at Hengyang, Lingling and Kweilin and Liuchow.
I suspect the Japanese High Command is preparing these offensives in anticipation of having to abandon their holdings in South East Asia and South West Pacific in order to be better able to maintain their last line of defense of Japan proper in China. For this purpose, neutralization of our China base on their flank is obviously essential. If the two offensives merely gain their immediate objectives, such neutralization will have been brought perilously close.
I wish I could tell you I had no fear of the outcome. I expect the Chinese forces to make the strongest resistance they can, both along the Peiping–Hankow Railroad and before Changsha. We shall do our best to give them, by use of air power, a margin over the Japanese. But owing to the present concentration of our resources on the fighting in Burma, little has been done to strengthen the Chinese Armies in the interior, and for the same reason the 14th and Chinese Air Forces are still operating on a shoe string. If we were even a little stronger, I should not be worried. Since men, equipment, supplies and transportation are all still very short, I can only say to you that we shall fight hard.
[Page 59]I am the more concerned, since the shrewdest Chinese leaders I have consulted are convinced that any Japanese success within China will touch off violent new price rises, and probably cause political unrest, with inevitable effects on the energy of the Chinese resistance. I note a mood of discouragement among the more influential Chinese. This, I may add, has lately been considerably increased by the Russian bombing of Chinese troops on the Sinkiang–Outer Mongolian border. Such foresighted men as Dr. Soong privately regard the episode as the probable first move in a campaign to assert Russian influence in Asia—a campaign which would eventually take the form of a Russian attack on the Japanese in Manchuria, junction between the Russians and Chinese communists in North China, and ultimate establishment of a Chinese Communist state or states in North China, Manchuria and perhaps Sinkiang. If this is indeed the Russian plan, the Chungking regime can hardly defeat it, and will have difficulty in surviving it, as the Chungking leaders well know.
Forgive me for rendering a pessimistic report. I can assure you at least that I and the other men of the 14th Air Force will not relax our determination to make our shoe string stretch to cover any eventuality which may arise. If I may say so, your leadership, and the sense of what you are accomplishing elsewhere, are powerful inspirations to us.
With kindest personal regards [etc.]