Foreign Relations of the United States, 1947, The Far East: China, Volume VII

893.00/5–447: Telegram

The Ambassador in China (Stuart) to the Secretary of State

Nanking, May 4, 1947—noon.
[Received May 4—5:30 a.m.]

963. Following the conversation with the Generalissimo reported in Embtel 916, April 28, midnight, Madame Chiang sent for General Chou Chih-jou, Commander in Chief of China Air Force, and General McConnell, Director Air Division, AAG.⁹⁷ Transcribed below are the pertinent parts of the latter’s memorandum of that conversation:

“Madame Chiang in opening the conversation said that on the previous evening she had a conversation with Mr. Butterworth, American Minister to China, and among other things Mr. Butterworth made two statements which the Generalissimo wanted her to discuss with General Chou and me for the purpose of clarification.

She said that the first question was: Mr. Butterworth had made the statement the previous evening that there was in Kunming and Chengtu in storage approximately 56,000 tons of military equipment, property of the CAF, which could be used for maintenance of the CAF if it could be removed to east China. She asked General Chou and me if this was actually the case. I told her that it was the case and General Chou said the actual tonnage was around 27,000 tons. I told Madame Chiang Mr. Butterworth had been given the figures by me. At the time of our survey at Kunming and Chengtu conducted jointly by officers of my staff and General Chou’s staff, the estimated tonnage was about 56,000. Madame Chiang asked if it could be actually used by the CAF and General Chou and I said it could if it could be removed from west China to locations where it could be made available to using agencies of the CAF. We jointly told Madame Chiang a plan for its movement by surface transportation had been made up jointly by members of General Chou’s staff and members of my staff and had been approved by both General Chou and me and had been transmitted to the Chief of the Supreme General Staff of the Ministry of National Defense with recommendations to be approved, the money incident to its execution be appropriated and that it be extruded with the minimum delay. I showed Madame Chiang a copy of the plan and I showed her further a letter from General Lucas, Chief of the AA Group, to General Chen Cheng transmitting to him direct a copy of the plan and adding his own recommendation for its approval and implementation. I told Madame Chiang that this would be a slow process of movement unless it was given the very highest priority for transportation. I told her further that transportation could be expedited by use of transport aircraft for that purpose and rather than use the CAF transports for that purpose, commercial aircraft of domestic airlines could be very well chartered to do it. General Chou stated that he had taken out of west China many of the critical articles of supplies to the point that such items were nearly exhausted. Madame Chiang asked me where they could get critical articles of supplies such as General Chou referred to and I told her that they could not be procured; that the items which were critical in China were critical all over the world and I myself could not secure them for my own operations. Madame Chiang said that she would explain all of this to the Generalissimo.

Madame Chiang then stated that the next question was the movement of CAF tactical units without moving their supporting service organizations with them and thus wasting tactical equipment through lack of maintenance and supply. She said that Mr. Butterworth had said that CAF tactical air force units were being moved to new locations and that because of the expense involved in moving the service units, they were not also being moved to the same location. She asked General Chou and me if this were true. General Chou did not answer and I told Madame Chiang that the cases in point to which Mr. Butterworth referred was the movement of the first medium bomb group from Hankow to Peiping and that Colonel Tseng on General Chou’s staff had informed that they were not going to be able to move the service group which supports the first medium bomb group because it would cost too much and they did not have the money and could not get the money. She asked General Chou if this was true and General Chou replied that he had not asked for the money and this operation was in the planning stage. She stated that Mr. Butterworth made the ‘bald statement’ that this was actually true and I told her that this statement Mr. Butterworth made was undoubtedly made on the basis of my comments to him and that if it was in fact not the whole truth it was because I had been misinformed. I told her that the information which Mr. Butterworth had given her both about the surplus stocks in west China and about the movement of tactical units without their accompanying service units was information I had passed on to him during conversations which he and I had had on the subject. She stated that she accepted the principle of the surplus property in west China but she wanted to be further informed about the matter of the tactical units being moved to places where they did not have service support.

This brought up the manner of the employment of the CAF and General Chou and I jointly told Madame Chiang that the CAF was scattered in small units all over China where there was no possibility of getting not only proper service support but any service support at all. We jointly stated that this was because the ground force commanders demanded that small packets of aircraft be placed at their entire disposal and that they designated the location where they wanted this aircraft; that the Supreme General Staff upheld these demands and General Chou was forced to comply with them. We told her that this was dissipating the CAF to the extent that if it should continue it would not have any appreciable effectiveness at all within 15 to 18 months from now. We told her that many of these airdromes upon which the ground force commanders demanded the employment of aircraft were unsuitable for operations and as a result there were an excessive number of aircraft accidents. We told her that whatever logistical support the CAF might be able to extend these isolated packets of aircraft by use of air transport for delivering required spare parts, etc., was nullified by the requirements of the Generalissimo and the Supreme General Staff using these transport aircraft for communications purposes and for airlifting ground force troops. We told her that unless these practices were stopped and unless the ground force commanders were told to present their combat and transport requirements to General Chou with the understanding he would fulfill these requirements as best he could through operations which he himself directed, or detailed to his air force commanders, the CAF would soon be non-existent. We told her that unless these units could be pulled together and placed on airdromes on suitable lines of communications where service support could be rendered, the effectiveness of the tactical organizations would soon be depleted. Madame Chiang then stated that she accepted this principle and that she would tell the Generalissimo that he should issue orders telling the Supreme General Staff and ground force commanders that they should inform General Chou of what support they wanted and that General Chou should have full authority as to how this support would be rendered.

I told Madame Chiang that CAF as it was today represented an investment of dollars 250 million to the Chinese Govt and that unless the Chinese Govt was willing to put the necessary funds behind it to maintain it, the investment would soon be dissipated from wastefulness. Madame Chiang then stated that she understood it and said, ‘We must do something about this because if we don’t take care of our equipment, nobody is going to sell us any more.’

Madame Chiang then asked me about the state of the 8⅓ group program. She requested me to write down what the 8⅓ group consisted of, which I did. She then asked how much of this equipment had been delivered. I told her that I could not possibly say how much had been delivered except for the aircraft and that all except 129 of the aircraft had been delivered. I told her further that upon examination of the aircraft which had been delivered, we found that about 25% of them were not in serviceable condition and that I had made a recommendation to the Hdqs, AAF,⁹⁸ that this 25% be replaced, that Hdqs, AAF, Waited they were willing make replacements provided the aircraft were available and the State Department approved. Madame Chiang said that it seemed to her these replacements should be made immediately since they represented serviceable [unserviceable?] aircraft already delivered and I told her that under the existing restrictions against delivery of military in-use items, such replacements could not be effected at this date.

She then asked me what restrictions I had referred to and I explained to her about the restrictions imposed against delivery of military end-use items as opposed to civilian end-use items. I told her that I had recommended to the Embassy that the civilian end-use items, since they were not restricted for delivery, be included in the over-all McCabe–Soong Pacific Surplus Property Disposal Agreement.⁹⁹ I then had to explain what this agreement encompassed and explained further that if these civilian end-use items, which were surplus in the Pacific and were earmarked for the CAF, were included in this agreement, it would not require the negotiation of another contract and that from then on all negotiations would have to be carried out in the US between duly authorized representatives of our respective Governments. She asked me what the American Embassy had said to my recommendation and I told her that I had not received any indication of its attitude.

Madame Chiang then asked me if I thought it was a good time now to request the US to fulfill the rest of its commitments for the 8⅓ group program. I told her that I did not know; that the request would undoubtedly have political implications of which I was not aware and that it appeared to me the Chinese Ambassador in the US could probably best advise her as to whether or not this was a propitious time to make such a request.

Madame Chiang then asked me what kind of condition the property in the Pacific was in and I told her that undoubtedly it had deteriorated since it had been lying in more or less open storage ever since the end of the war. She asked me to write this down, and I told her that I could not very well do it because I had not personally examined the state of the property. General Chou then stated that his inspectors in the Pacific looked over this property and then said that a considerable part of it was unserviceable. She then asked me to write that down and I wrote ‘General Chou’s inspectors have seen some of the property in the Pacific held against the 8⅓ group program and they have stated that much of it is unserviceable’.

Madame Chiang then asked me about the serviceability of the property in west China. General Chou and I jointly told her that the west Chinese property was in a more serviceable condition than the Pacific surplus property because of the better climate in west China and because most of the west China property was in dry storage.

Madame Chiang then asked me if there was anything else I wanted to tell her and she also put the same question to General Chou and General Chou made no comment and looked at me as if I should make some comment and so I told Madame Chiang substantially as follows: That I hoped she would not lose sight of the main issues involved in our discussion, which were:

(a) That the Supreme General Staff should be told that they were to request only what effect they desired from striking forces and transport forces of the CAF and should leave the method of producing this effect and the types of aircraft used to produce it and the types of bombs and ammunition to the judgment of the CAF Commander.

(b) That the CAF Commander should be the Deputy Chief of Staff (to this statement Madame Chiang wrote in her notes ‘CAF should have adequate representation on the Supreme General Staff’).

(c) That the CAF must have complete autonomy in command and control of operations so as to permit the concentration of tactical units at as few stations as possible in order to provide service backing and to prevent its dissipation by spreading it out in small units over China where service backing was impossible.

(d) That without sound financial support, the CAF could not long survive.

(e) That in the civilian end-use items made available to China under the original McCabe–Soong Pacific Surplus Property Agreement, there were many items which could be used by the CAF and that most of these items were being disposed of elsewhere and that it was merely a matter of priority as to whether they went to the CAF or to some other agency, and that sufficient priority should be given to the CAF to ensure that usable items of this civilian end-use equipment turned over to China under the terms of the original McCabe–Soong Agreement would be made available for the use of the CAF.

Madame Chiang then stated that she accepted these principles and understood them and that she would communicate them to the Generalissimo. (She further stated ‘I only deal in principles.’)

Madame Chiang then asked me to make up for her a proposed deployment plan for the CAF tactical and service units embodying the principles we had discussed. I told her that I could not very well do this without going very closely into the present operations which I was prohibited from doing but that I would make up a deployment plan which I considered sound from a logistical standpoint in conjunction with General Chou and that General Chou could then change it to fit the operational requirements as best he could. General Chou stated that he would do that and then give the plan to Madame Chiang.

She then asked for a schedule of estimated aircraft requirements to be used as replacements for the purpose of maintaining the CAF at its present effectiveness during the next couple of years. I told her that General Chou and I had made up such a plan and that we would give it to her. (Upon looking into this further, I found that our plans only went as far as July 1947 and so we are now making up another schedule which I shall give to General Chou and which, if he cares to, he can give to Madame Chiang.)

Madame Chiang made the remark that it appeared to her the Generalissimo should assess the degree of effectiveness he wanted from the CAF and should then put enough money and authority behind it to get that degree of effectiveness.”

On leaving the Generalissimo’s residence, General Chou said to General McConnell: “I think we have done good”.

Stuart

97. Gen. John P. McConnell, Chief of the Air Division, Army Advisory Group.
98. Army Air Forces.
99. Signed at Shanghai, August 30, 1946, Department of State, Report to Congress on Foreign Surplus Disposal, October 1946, pp. 40–45; for documentation see Foreign Relations, 1946, vol. x, pp. 1033 ff.