ANNALS OF THE CHINESE AIR FORCE

Moon Chin turns 110!

Moon Fun Chin was born in 1913 and brought to America by his father at an early age, graduating from high school in Baltimore. He went to the Curtiss-Wright flying school, got his pilot's certificate, and at the age of 20 returned to China and began to fly as co-pilot for China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC). He became a captain in 1936 at the age of 26. Among other adventures, he was the pilot who flew the newly-minted Brigadier General Jimmy Doolittle from Kunming to Calcutta after the his B-26 raid on Tokyo that rivaled the Flying Tigers for their morale boost on the American people. (The star was provided by Chennault.)

In 1946 he joined Chennalt's Civil Air Transport (CAT), a paramilitary airline during the civil war between Chiang Kai-Shek's Nationalst forces and Mao Zedong's Communists. The war ended with Chaing's and CAT's exile to Taiwan, the offshore island that China had ceded to Japan in 1895 and was returned to Nationalist control after it was liberated by US forces. CAT was gradually absorbed into the CIA and became the spook airline Air America. About the same time, in 1964, Moon Chin founded his own intra-Taiwan airline.

There's more about Moon Chin on Tom Moore's CNAC website. I'm also grateful to Carol Ma and Brad Smith for bringing me up to date on this legendary pilot. (Confusingly, there are two Moon Chins. I thought I had interviewed this man at Eddie Rector's apartment in 1989, but evidently that was Moon Hon Chen, who lived not far away in Bethesda, Maryland.)

Updated May 13: Captain Moon Fun Chin died May 9, aged 110 years and 27 days. What a life!

The code-man's story

John T Ma was a university student outside Chongqing in 1941 when the American Volunteer Group came to China. When Chennault set up his headquarters at Wuchiaba airport, there went out a call for interpreters, and young Mr Ma volunteered. In time he became a "code man" as well, and after the war ended he came to America, went to work for the Hoover Institution at Stanford, and was responsible for bringing the Chennault Papers there, to the great benefit of researchers like me who wanted to know more about the Flying Tigers. Here's an excerpt from his autobiography as published in Beijing in 2017. Blue skies! -- Daniel Ford

The CAF files