3: The "I" of The Flying Tigers
Recognizing that other parts of the globe could use air service, C.M. Keys turned his sights on Asia. His Curtiss-Wright Corporation partnered with the Chinese-formed China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC) to provide air travel between Hong Kong and Shanghai. This took on a significant role in the history of modern China as well as William Douglas Pawley, who saw the opportunity to sell warplanes not just in the Western Hemisphere, but to the expanding military-industrial market in the Eastern Hemisphere. By the time he was through in China, Pawley had racked up tens of millions of dollars in aircraft sales; his first commission of $250,000 in 19401 represents the equivalent of $5 million in 2024.
With solid experience in Cuban aviation under his wings, Pawley was called upon by Curtiss-Wright to determine why CNAC was losing money. Always looking for opportunities to enrich himself, he envisioned developing new routes in China as he had done in Cuba. This would create demand for more planes and more sales commissions for himself while funneling their construction to his own aircraft factory in China. He sailed to Shanghai in January 1933 to negotiate the factory proposal with the Nationalist government, but Thomas Morgan, President of Curtiss-Wright, took charge of negotiations, and the contract was signed April 1st, giving the routes to Juan Trippe’s Pan American.2
In 1935, Pawley hosted a reception honoring the Chinese Minister of Aviation, General Mao Pang-chu (aka General Mow) and members of his staff during the Miami Air Races. The Chinese group was wrapping up a global tour to learn about “air methods.” Their earlier visit to Russia, was followed by the group being guests of Adolph Hitler in Germany and Benito Mussolini in Italy, then they proceeded to France and England. Arriving in Miami, they were graciously hosted by Pawley at a reception held in the palm gardens of the recently built 18-story Roney Plaza Hotel, attended by some 300 guests.3
Among the people Pawley introduced Mow to was pilot Claire Chennault, an older-looking contemporary, whom Pawley recruited to train Chinese pilots.
Chennault had been a married schoolteacher/principal in Louisiana, but his academic career was derailed when he impregnated a 17-year-old student, convinced his brother, Bill, to marry her, and then ran off with her to Wisconsin. By crossing state lines, Claire Chennault was in violation of a white slavery law and brought to trial. Although guilty as charged, the trial was held in the wrong jurisdiction negating the outcome.
Two years later, World War I put Chennault on a new course, learning to fly in the Army Air Service. He was trained by Ernest Allison who later became chief of operations for China National Aviation Corporation. After World War I, Chennault graduated from pursuit pilot training and eventually became Chief of Pursuit Section at the Air Corps Tactical School. In Miami, Chennault so impressed the Chinese that two years later he became an aviation advisor to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek as war broke out between China and Japan.4
As the Japanese menace grew and the communist civil war expanded, Pawley organized a fighting force with Chennault that would muster a group of volunteer American pilots in 1941 to help the Generalissimo’s Nationalist Chinese forces, the Kuomintang (KMT), fight the invading Japanese.
The pilots became legendary as the American Volunteer Group (AVG) Flying Tigers. Their planes flew the dangerous route over the towering Himalayas “Hump” to keep supplies for Chiang’s KMT flowing along the 800-mile dirt Burma Road linking Lashio, Burma and Kunming, China. The AVG pilots were trained to fly during miserable conditions when fog, rain and cloud cover would help them be obscured from Japanese Zeros, but it also exposed them to the hazards of icing as well as the dangers of flying with primitive radio direction finders and at high altitudes in unpressurized cabins. After building Central Aircraft Manufacturing Company (CAMCO) plane factories in China, William Pawley eventually established one in India that he managed with the assistance of his brothers, Edward, Eugene and Wallace.5Amid helping the Nationalists, William Pawley was struck with a personal loss. On July 2, 1937, the same day that Amelia Earhart disappeared while attempting to circumnavigate the globe, Edward Porcher Pawley, 72, suffered a heart attack during a visit to his globe-hopping son’s Miami home. His obituary revealed that the senior Pawley had been born in Florence, South Carolina, into the family that gave its name to Pawleys Island. After selling supplies to sailors with the Atlantic Fleet in Guantánamo, Edward had become a consul to Cuba, and then presided over a trading company bearing his own name in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Edward’s son, Eugene, who had been born in Cuba, worked with him in Haiti. In addition to William and Eugene, the senior Pawley was survived by his wife and two other sons, Edward P. Pawley, Jr. of Buffalo, N.Y. and Wallace Pawley of St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. At the time of senior Edward’s death, the Florence newspaper described William as “an airline official and once president of the national aviation system” of Cuba.6
William’s father died a few months before The New York Times reported that hearings of a House of Representatives committee disclosed that while most Americans were suffering financially during the depression, William Douglas Pawley earned $156,087 which placed him ahead of the president of Coca Cola in the “Highest Salaries Paid in America” but well behind the half-million dollars earned by the highest paid executive, Alfred Sloan of General Motors.7
In 1938, William used his wealth to buy Intercontinent in its entirety and made his brother, Edward, vice president.
The following year Mamie Porrit became Intercontinent’s secretary in Loiwing, China where Wallace seemed to be in charge. She was not impressed with the Pawley brothers. In a letter to a friend, she described Edward in Rangoon, Burma as being no “heavyweight when he weighs his gray matter and ... as lazy as Wallace” who ran up thousands of dollars in gambling debts that William covered. Eugene “is the dumbest of the lot.”8 To the contrary, an FBI background check the following year revealed that Eugene not only worked with his brother in China but “spent World War II in the Office of Strategic Services in Washington, D.C. as head of the China desk.”9
Overtly Eugene was known as Intercontinent’s head of sales who had lived through the Japanese siege and occupation of Hong Kong. While in that occupied territory, Eugene saw a “most bizarre” horse-racing competition at the Happy Valley Racecourse. According to Eugene, the Japanese jockeys were so inept that they put in charge of the competition the besieged Chinese jockeys along with a knowledgeable English rider. Naturally, with the enemy running the races the Japanese never won.10
Chennault and Pawley were not always working as a cohesive unit. At one point, when Chiang ordered an $8.8 million U.S.-built fleet of planes from Pat Patterson, Chennault negotiated the contract, but Pawley sabotaged the deal, and in the process bankrupted Seversky, which would have built more than fifty P-35s.11 In another incident, in the spring of 1941, Pawley almost stopped a shipment of Curtiss-Wright Tomahawks equipped with Allison engines from General Motors because he wanted a $450,000 commission, which Curtiss-Wright considered exorbitant. On April 1, Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau pressured Pawley to withdraw the demand “in exchange for $250,000 to be paid by the Chinese, plus a contract to assemble the planes in Burma.” Two weeks later, Pawley and T.V. Soong created an enterprise for fighter squadron training.12 William Pawley later testified before a Congressional committee that he, not his employee Chennault, had organized the Flying Tigers at the request of the Chinese.13
The Chiangs wanted Pawley to replace the Soviet volunteer pilots with U.S. pilots. Former Navy Captain Bruce Leighton, who worked as a vice president of Pawley’s personal holding company, Intercontinent, pressured Admiral Harold Stark, Chief of Naval Operations, to give Chiang Kai-shek “an air force of 100 fighters, 100 bombers, and 50 pilots, who would be supplemented by the cadets Chennault had trained in Kunming. The Pawley family would handle the entire affair as a commercial enterprise,” not as U.S. government intervention.
The U.S. State Department’s official history reveals that with FDR’s blessing “the State, War, and Navy Departments approved a nonprofit contract between a corporation formed by Pawley and representatives of the Chinese government, by which the former was to organize and supply an American Volunteer Group to China. Acting as supervisor was Chennault. With Army and Navy sanction, Pawley and his associates visited government air bases throughout the United States, offering good pay, adventure, and a hint of bonuses for men who would sign up. The lure was irresistible, and the first pilot contingent of 101 volunteers (sixty-three of whom were from the Navy) arrived in late July in the Far East, where they were to fly 100 P-40s released by the United States to China. The British did their part to aid this enterprise by agreeing to make available in Burma training facilities for the group, soon to be christened the ‘Flying Tigers.’ A call soon went out for a second volunteer group shortly before Pearl Harbor, and ground personnel for this group were en route to China when war began.”14
China received significant financial support from the U.S. although it was only a fraction of what T.V. Soong had requested from Henry Morgenthau, Roosevelt’s treasury secretary. Soong said the money was needed for currency stabilization and Burma Road improvements, as well as to buy hundreds of fighter planes and light bombers. When Chiang later requested additional aid in the amount of up to $300 million, he received only $100 million from Morgenthau.
At the time, there were Americans whose prejudices were reinforced by the “science” of eugenics and consequently felt Japanese killing Chinese yellow men was less important in the global arena than German’s waging war against the white nations of Europe. Michael Beschloss, in The Conquerors, also raised the specter that Morgenthau’s assistant, Harry Dexter White, who was a secret Soviet spy, may have influenced the reduction in support to the Chiang’s Nationalists because the Soviets favored the Chinese Communists.15
On February 1, 1941, while Pawley, Leighton and Chennault were touring aircraft factories in Southern California, their plane sputtered from iced-up carburetors. When Pawley asserted that they may crash, Chennault voiced his disdain for Pawley by saying he would not want his body found alongside Pawley’s in the wreckage. Fortunately, the plane reached San Francisco, and Chennault caught the Clipper for Hong Kong and a CNAC Douglas aircraft transport home.16
On April 15, 1941, President Roosevelt penned an executive order allowing pilots in the Navy, Marine Corps, and Army Air Corps to sign one-year contracts with Pawley’s CAMCO in China, without losing rank when they rejoined the military. To recruit Flying Tiger pilots and mechanics, Pawley’s youngest brother, Eugene, ran ads in the Los Angeles Times seeking aviation people for overseas work. The potential recruits then viewed a slide show of the Burma countryside.17
Among those who volunteered was Gregory “Pappy” Boyington. He resigned his Marine Corps commission on August 26, 1941 to join CAMCO in protecting the Burma Road which stretched for over 700 miles through China. During his months with the Flying Tigers, he became a squadron commander, flying 300 combat hours and downing six Japanese planes before the AVG disbanded. Returning to the Marines, he would eventually destroy 22 more Japanese aircraft, get shot down, captured, held as a prisoner of war for 20 months, be freed and then receive the Medal of Honor.18
Not all recruits were of the caliber of Boyington. In November of 1941, Chennault, as commander of the AVG, fired off a letter to both CAMCO in New York and T.V. Soong, criticizing the quality of Pawley’s CAMCO “trained” recruits. He wanted the timid and incompetent weeded out so AVG would stop wasting money and valuable equipment.19
Those who did pass muster were extraordinary, like Boyington, whom Chennault praised in his book, Way of the Fighter. While bloodied over China, the AVG pilots in air battles over Rangoon for 10 weeks showed their intense strength. This tiny force faced more than a thousand Japanese aircraft over Southern Burma and Thailand and destroyed more then ten times the number of planes the Flying Tigers lost.20 The ferocity of the Flying Tiger pilots was reflected in their highly recognizable P-40s which were decorated with distinctive tigershark-teeth markings.21
In 2013, the CIA finally declassified a November 1941 report on “The Situation in the Far East” by George Acheson, Jr., Assistant Chief of the Division of Far East Affairs, United States Department of State. The report was sent to Col. William J. Donovan, Coordinator of Information, Apex Building, Washington, DC. The observations were presented just weeks before Japan attacked American ships at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, which forced the U.S. into World War II. Included in the report was a section by Edgar Ansel Mowrer, a reporter who won a 1933 Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the rise of Adolph Hitler in Germany. Pressured to leave Germany, Mowrer turned his attention to China and was asked to provide insights on establishing a U.S. intelligence infrastructure in the Far East. On October 30, 1941 he traveled 150 miles north of Rangoon and met with Joseph Alsop, a Washington columnist who was serving as secretary to Col. Chennault of the “First Group of American Volunteer Aviators.” Mowrer reported that while many of the pilots were well-paid and in high spirits, ten had deserted. Col. Chennault complained about the competency of his staff officers, the lack of adequate supplies and voiced concerned his P-40 planes weren’t as good in fighting power as Japanese Zero planes which had “far superior climbing power and ceiling.” Mowrer noted, “Coming from a man of Chennault’s dogged courage and determination to succeed, such complaints betrayed an underlying pessimism.”22
Ironically, the training supervisors, including Chennault, were considered “too old and inexperienced to have mastered” the P-40, and Joseph Alsop “had never even flown a plane.”23
Later Mowrer traveled to pick the brains of the Pawley brothers “who assemble aircraft for China.” Their scheme to lighten Burma Road traffic by establishing “a regular freight airline from Rangoon (or better still, from Lashio) to Kunming” seemed both “feasible and economical” however “the necessary planes were still lacking when I talked to Mr. Pawley in Rangoon.” Mowrer's final 1941 Far East report to William Donovan noted that the people of Burma despised the British and Chinese equally and half of them hoped Japan would defeat China.24
The report recipient, Col. William J. Donovan, Coordinator of Information, soon after would lead the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) intelligence agency which evolved into the Central Intelligence Agency after World War II ended.25 Part of his war effort was to gather intelligence; part was to disseminate deception that would undermine the enemy and boost U.S. troop morale. The Morale Operations black propaganda unit was made up of writers and artists who could create believable lies in the form of news stories, documents, radio messages, postcards. One of the writers targeting the Japanese was twenty-eight-year-old reporter Elizabeth “Betty” McIntosh who was so beguiling and adept at deception she would eventually work for the CIA in a similar capacity until retiring in 1973 some dozen months after Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt requested her assistance.26
Chiang Kai-Shek’s Nationalist air force was headed by the Generalissimo’s second wife, who also was in charge of propaganda for the KMT. Madame Chiang was Soong Mei-ling, one of the three Soong sisters, daughters of a Vanderbilt University educated man who returned to China as a Methodist minister in 1886 and made his fortune printing and selling Bibles to the Chinese as they were converted to Christianity by missionaries. Each daughter is said to have married for a specific reason—Soong Mei-ling for power; Ail-ling for money; and Quin-ling for love of China.
Ai-ling, the oldest sister, married a descendant of Confucius and one of China’s richest bankers, Dr. H.H. Kung, whom Pawley had befriended along with Kung’s brother-in-law, Chiang Kai-shek.
Quin-ling wed physician, philosopher Sun Yat-sen, the first person to head the Chinese republic after overthrowing the Qing dynasty in 1911. Upon Sun’s death in 1925, she threw her support to the communist Mao Tse-tung who fought a protracted civil war against Chiang’s KMT beginning in 1927. With the financial backing of the Soviet Union’s communist leader Joseph Stalin, Mao eventually drove Quin-ling’s sister and brother-in-law out of power and into exile on Taiwan in 1949, where the Chiangs ruled for 25 years.27
The brother of the three sisters was T.V. Soong who served as Chiang Kai-shek’s finance minister, foreign minister, premier, and leader of the China lobby that traveled to Washington, D.C. to get American financial support for the Flying Tigers to defend China from the Japanese. Soong grew into one of the world’s richest men by the end of World War II.
Like her sisters, Madame Chiang was American educated and graduated Wellesley (Class of 1917, with honors). Her command of the English language, charm and beauty easily influenced Americans when lobbying on behalf of her husband’s troops. Massachusetts Governor Leverett Saltonstall considered her the world’s most charming woman, and she ranked among the most admired women 17 times in Gallup polls. The Generalissimo and Madame Chiang —leaders of the world’s most populous country—were named 1937’s “Man and Woman of the Year” by Time magazine whose publisher, Henry Luce, had been born in China to Presbyterian missionaries.
Madame Chiang’s dark side included the fact that as Secretary General of the Chinese Commission on Aeronautical Affairs, she had some of her Chinese Air Ministry shot to death, suspecting them of thievery. Her impulsive desires to treat enemies ruthlessly were not limited to Chinese targets. While staying at the White House, the “Dragon Lady,” as Madame Chiang became known, indicated to President Franklin Roosevelt’s wife, Eleanor, that she would have slit the throat of John L. Lewis, who had unionized U.S. Steel workers. Coincidentally, Lewis was considered the runner-up in 1937 as Time’s “Man of the Year.” Mrs. Roosevelt concluded that Madame Chiang knew nothing about democracy, though often claiming to be for it, and President Truman would eventually call her family thieves.
Nonetheless, Madame Chiang made history in 1943 as the first Chinese woman to address a joint session of Congress pleading for financial support of the Chiangs in their fight against Japan. Six decades before the more highly advanced U.S. Air Force attempted surgical bombings on Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, Madame Chiang declared to the U.S. press that her air force could bomb Tokyo without hurting women and children. An impossibility that also proved impossible when Israel retaliated against Hamas in 2023-24.28
On December 20, 1938, newspapers in America carried a report that Edward Pawley of Shanghai had testified before a federal grand jury looking into an attempted illegal sale of 2,000,000 outmoded Lee-Enfield rifles to China, which Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek turned down. Edward Pawley told the grand jury that individuals could not get licenses to export rifles but that a corporation could. The grand jury found that the scheme had been concocted by Philip Musica (aka F. Donald Coster) president of the 105-year-old McKesson & Bobbins drug firm. Exposed as a master swindler who used a fictitious department to hide $18 million worth of illicit alcohol and gun-running activities, Musica chose suicide.29
At T.V. Soong’s home in Chevy Chase, Maryland, Claire Chennault and others formulated a strategy for intensive lobbying of the White House for more warplane production. Thomas Corcoran, a member of the Roosevelt administration, soon became a close ally of the China Lobby and remained so for decades to come, even co-hosting with Anna Chan Chennault a 1980s reception for the cabinet of newly elected President Ronald Reagan, which I managed to sneak into carrying a video camera (the Marine guard assumed I was press). Claire Chennault was so concerned about the superiority of the Japanese Mitsubishi planes that he warned army chief of staff, General George C. Marshall, about their potential threat to the U.S. While Marshall shared his concern, few others paid attention.30
With Chinese financing, Pawley built the $4 million CAMCO plant at Loiwing in Yunnan province, with his youngest brother Wallace in charge and produced over $5 million in aircraft assemblies. Partially owned by Pawley, CAMCO was headquartered at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City where the annual Christmas tree lighting takes place. One of CAMCO’s contracts was for “55 Mohawk fighters, 75 Vultee attack planes, and 33 CW-21 Demon interceptors—Pawley’s latest export marvel, a warplane derived from a Curtiss racer,” according to Flying Tigers expert Daniel Ford, whose book by the same name fully details this period.31
On October 26, 1940, Japanese Mitsubishi’s destroyed the new CAMCO factory and dozens of planes at Loiwing. Pawley salvaged the machinery and aircraft assemblies and shipped them to Bangalore in India. There he established Hindustan Aircraft Ltd., chaired by Sir John Higgins, for building planes for the Royal Air Force and perhaps selling to the RAF some of Chiang’s Mohawks and Vultees, according to Daniel Ford. Pawley was grateful for being able to outsource manufacturing to India and worked with the Indian Institute of Science to establish a Department of Aeronautical Engineering and funded scholarships programs.32
Among those who continued to ignore Claire Chennault's alarm about the capabilities of the Japanese Mitsubishi planes were the commanders at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii who would learn a painful truth when the U.S. Naval Base in paradise was struck by a Japanese sneak attack on December 7, 1941, resulting in the deaths of 2,400 Americans and destruction or damage to 19 U.S. Navy ships including 8 battleships.
The attack necessitated the U.S. Army Air Force to enter the Pacific Theater of war. As a result, the mercenary American Volunteer Group was disbanded on July 4, 1942. Many of the Flying Tiger pilots joined CNAC and flew unarmed C-47 transports. During the next three years, CNAC crews made more than 38,000 trips over the Hump on the eastern end of the towering Himalayan Mountains. Many were lost in the treacherous weather and to marauding Japanese planes.33 Pawley’s namesake son was among the pilots who successfully traversed the Hump many times in 1944.34 The flights were viewed proudly by his mother, Annie Hahr Dobbs, despite the fact her husband William Pawley had previously executed his scheme to divorce her by taking up residency in a Havana, Cuba hotel before flying to India to marry his secretary Edna.35
Henry Luce’s Time magazine found Pawley’s travels between Miami and the China-Burma-India theater worth noting and devoted an article in its September 7, 1942, issue to the virtually unknown “China Swashbuckler ... a mystery man of U.S. aviation ... who has concocted one big international aviation deal after another ... usually at a profit.” 36
Earlier, on April 11, 1942, Clare Boothe Luce had taken photos of Pawley’s aircraft manufacturing plant at Kunming for the July 20, 1942 Life magazine while she was traveling throughout the world as an observant critic.37
Colonel William J. Donovan, head of the Office of Strategic Services in Washington, DC, had become aware of Luce’s skill as a critic when he read a 1941 letter from Wallie (Wallace) Deuel on written on the letterhead of the OSS New York City Office at 630 Fifth Avenue. “You may have heard already about Mrs. Luce’s campaign of political warfare in respect of the British Empire, but it’s so interesting and so relevant to our operations that I am taking a chance of boring you with a repetition.” While in the Middle East, she interviewed “Auchinleck, among others, and obtained from him some extremely important and previously confidential information. According to one account she even learned the date on which the British offensive in North Africa would take place. She wrote this information down in her notebooks, she also inscribed her opinion of Auchinleck and of the British Administration in that part of the world and elsewhere, all of this in extremely uncomplimentary terms.” After her notebook was seized by the British officials in Trinidad and sent to perhaps Churchill himself, Auchinleck was disciplined, and Luce spoke off-the-record at the Overseas Press Club providing “a very strongly anti-British Empire position” and let it be known that she felt the Suez Canal should be turned over to the Egyptians” and the Panama Canal should be in Panama’s hands.38 Clare Boothe Luce was becoming an international force to be taken seriously.
In May 1942, Luce addressed a meeting of the J.I.C. of the Coordinator of Information office run by Donovan. She “traveled to the Middle and Far East via the Trans African ferry route, visiting Burma, India, and the Middle East. She had extensive opportunities for formal and informal conversation with the major military and political figures, as well as various airmen, soldiers, and political figures.” Madame Chiang expressed to Luce “great bitterness” at the British who were not cooperating with General Stillwell’s Chinese forces. Luce arrived in Mandalay shortly after the Japanese killed five thousand people in bombing raids. She did not believe the Japanese would invade China or India and “would move against Russia before June of this year.” As for the Flying Tigers, she hoped they would be disbanded and their “experience in fighting Japanese planes would be transferred to American pilots in training, especially at Karchi ... She felt neither the AVG nor General Stillwell should return to China, despite their obvious value” and General Stillwell’s “comradeship with the Chinese and his willingness to share the front-line dangers and hardships.”
The report on her observations was prepared by Walter W. Rostow, who decades later would be President John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s Director of Policy Planning and President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s National Security Advisor.39 (During John F. Kennedy’s presidency, Wallace Deuel, who had brought Luce to Donovan’s attention, would be the CIA employee asked to write a report on the Bay of Pigs fiasco for the CIA’s Lyman Kirkpatrick. His report relied primarily on input from Grayston Lynch whose activities under Theodore Shackley at the CIA’s JMWAVE station in Miami included 100 raids on Cuba.)40
People across America would learn about Pawley’s entrepreneurship in India when his Hindustan Aircraft facility was unveiled in the spring of 1943 on the pages of Life. The morale boosting article detailed how the “mystery man who agitated the famous Flying Tigers into existence” had moved his seven-year-old plant near the Burma border to India’s progressive Mysore state after Japanese had bombed his China factory. In addition to a portrait of William D. Pawley, Life included a photo showing the “23-year-old Maharajah of Mysore, President William Pawley and Board Chairman Sir John Higgins, ex-Air Vice Marshal. In next group come E.P. Pawley and the Prime Minister of Mysore.”41
For Pawley, the Flying Tigers episode of his life was one of the most important, demonstrating the power of air warfare while uniting him and his brothers42 in a venture that required trust and complex coordination. At the time, Pawley believed his creation of the Flying Tigers was his greatest accomplishment because it “kept China in the war.” He told Time, “‘Unquestionably I have been one of the prime contributors to China’s defense.’”43
The outsourcing from the United States of aircraft manufacturing also gave Pawley global contacts and respect. While in India, he, Lyle C. McCarty, and Sir John Higgins, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Hindustan Aircraft, Ltd. (HAL), provided advice and help to develop the Indian Institute of Science Department of Aeronautical Engineering which started functioning in 1942. Initially it was geared to the expansion of Pawley’s HAL plant in Bangalore. To nurture brilliant Indian students, Pawley offered the best student a $3,000 scholarship (later upped to $5,000) for use at an American college.44
CAMCO’s profit was estimated at upwards of a million dollars a year on $30,000,000 in plane sales to China and repairs. Time traced Pawley’s venture from Shanghai to Hankow to a million-dollar factory in Lowing and then to a three-million-dollar plant that the government of India built for Pawley in Bangalore in 1940. Time also marveled at how Pawley helped tout the Flying Tigers for two years starting in 1939 and with typical “luck” had 100 American Volunteer Group flyers already in China to wage war against the Japanese after the surprise bombing of the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor that resulted in thousands of deaths in December 1941.45
In August 1942, Pawley departed for a year to his Bangalore plant. Some 5,000 native laborers were employed there along with 35 U.S. supervisors. They turned “out three kinds of planes (engines are imported) and one glider model” and kept “the R.A.F., the Indian Air Force, the U.S. Fleet’s air arm and the Chinese Air Force in repair.”47
Despite what appeared to be a schedule without time to spare, Pawley took his secretary in India, Edna Earle Cadenhead, as his second bride on June 30, 1943. She, too, was far from home—the daughter of James Franklin Cadenhead of Tulsa, Oklahoma.48
Pawley also would take advantage of his time and connections in India to build an ammonium-sulfate plant in Travancore in 1944.49
That same year, two Office of Special Operations cables were sent from the cable desk in L Building in Washington, D.C. referring to Pawley. A September Cable 21503 to Kunming was “in regard to equipment” and noted that “Pawley is stated to have a complete record of all material left in Rosslyn for the Tolstoy Project.” It doesn’t reveal which Pawley brother, and the December Cable 29740 “was a request from Macao Calcutta for the travel status of one Pawley fnu” (first name unknown).50
Rosslyn, Virginia was the location of fascinating projects. The black propaganda OSS Morale Operations Branch distributed from there a million counterfeit notes printed in Washington, D.C. “The notes were flown to the Philippines in December of 1943 and distributed to six different guerrilla groups”51 fighting the Japanese. Women, such as reporter Elizabeth McIntosh and famous cookbook author Julia Child, played essential roles in the Morale Operations Branch.
Pawley’s Tolstoy Project probably refers to the grandson of War and Peace Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy—Count Ilia Tolstoy—an émigré who became an OSS officer in charge of the strategic Himalayan country of Tibet where he was sent on a mission to curry favor from the ten-year-old Dalai Lama. Ilia gave the adolescent a gold Patek Phillipe chronograph pocket watch from President Roosevelt, and then the young leader asked for a favor: could America supply a long-range radio transmitter to communicate to fellow Tibetans. The OSS was ready to provide it, but some in the U.S. State Department felt it might anger Chiang Kai-Shek’s army which was considering occupying Tibet. Chiang’s Nationalists considered regions of Tibet to be part of the Chinese Empire, and the United States tried to avoid officially recognizing Tibet as an independent nation. The radio transmitter eventually arrived in November 1943—fourteen months after the Dalai Lama’s request. The Chinese were not happy.52
William Pawley’s role was probably providing air transport of the radio transmission equipment to India but maybe not all the way into Tibet because the Tibetan government, according to Tolstoy, considered “‘motor vehicles as modern and anti-Tibetan.’” Pawley’s aircraft no doubt would fall into the same category.53
Rosslyn and Ilia Tolstoy also were involved in arming Tibetans to fight the Chinese if they invaded the country. American gun manufacturers such as Smith & Wesson and Colt sent shipments of their weapons for OSS projects to the U.S. Navy Fowler Building in Rosslyn, Virginia.54
In a 1944 letter to the editor of The New York Times, Melvin Hildreth, a Democratic national committeeman, complained that The Times Magazine’s tribute to Major General Chennault did not also praise William D. Pawley, “the energetic and patriotic American who, as early as 1937, emphasized the importance of defending the Burma Road.”55
Burma would serve as a training ground for others who caught covert-operation fever. One of them was Ross L. Crozier, who, like Pawley, would have a role in the 1954 Guatemala coup and later, like Pawley, work with the anti-Castro DRE in 1963.56
But first Pawley’s path would take him to the horse country of Virginia. The Washington Post on April 22, 1944, reported that Pawley, “well-known figure in American aircraft exporting has purchased Belvoir, estate of the late Fairfax Harrison” at Warrenton, Virginia, placing him close to the center of political power.57
By December 1944, Pawley was being considered for OSS security clearance.58 Seven months later President Truman named Pawley as Ambassador to Peru and the following year as Ambassador to Brazil where Pawley focused his attention on improving relations with the United States and preventing communism from spreading to South America. In an earlier letter to the President, Pawley had urged that a joint effort be made by Truman and Churchill to get “a commitment from Stalin at Potsdam to cease and desist Soviet subversive activities in the Americas.”59
During Pawley’s Ambassadorships, President Truman honored his service in China by presenting Pawley with the Medal of Merit, a military medal bestowed on civilians. The citation read:
WILLIAM DOUGLAS PAWLEY, for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services to the United Nations. Mr. Pawley, with keen foresight, urged the strategic importance of defending the Burma Road as early as 1937. Through his indomitable will and perseverance, such defense was made possible. His initiative provided the means of action in the air which proved an important factor in preserving the Republic of China. Mr. Pawley accepted the responsibility for employment of the American Volunteer Group (The Flying Tigers), and through his untiring efforts this splendid company of volunteers was assembled and transported to China. When air action proved impossible because of damaged planes, without hesitation he assumed leadership and at great personal risk brought from other fronts the needed materiel. In spite of danger, he joined them in the field, and by procuring necessary supplies and providing maintenance and repairs made possible the heroic resistance which the American Volunteer Group offered in defense of Rangoon. His courage and fighting spirit are in keeping with the finest traditions.60
Despite his triumph in China, Pawley was tormented. Decades later, when he wrote his autobiography, he reflected that 1935 was the year “that I first began to feel a growing alarm at the threat of world communism ... the subject of this book [Russia Is Winning].”61
In the post-war years, CNAC saw its routes dwindle as the communists took power. In 1946, Lt. Gen. Chennault and Whiting Willauer—using surplus planes and former Flying Tiger pilots—formed Civil Air Transport (CAT) to support Chiang Kai-shek. After his defeat, CAT evacuated Nationalists from their mainland homes to the island of Taiwan in 1949. Soon thereafter, the CIA took control of CAT and began supporting the colonial French against communists seeking to independence for Vietnam. CAT flew clandestine missions in the surrounding countries and the CIA eventually established Air America and Air Asia.62 “The theory of the acquisition of Air America in 1949 was denial of assets to the Red Chinese.”63
As for Pawley and Chennault, their Flying Tigers relationship had hit turbulence years earlier. Together they had negotiated with the British—who had long controlled Burma—to set up the aircraft operations there. Later in 1940, Chennault visited Pawley’s repair facility on the Burma border and found it operating at excellent levels in a climate that was so unfriendly that Pawley not only had to deal with keeping operations going in the heat and humidity, but also had to bring in five doctors to fight bubonic plague. Chennault, nonetheless, begrudged the fact that Pawley had made $250,000 in commissions selling Curtiss-Wright Model 21 interceptor aircraft to China, and then began focusing more on building them than repairing AVG P-40s which Chennault preferred. When Chennault complained to the Madame and Generalissimo Chiang, the Chinese government bought the operation from Pawley enriching him more, and he left for India to establish the airplane assembly facility in a safer location. Before leaving for India, Pawley asserted that Chennault was trying to claim all the credit for forming the AVG and “had neglected his AVG pilots during the battles of Rangoon” which made Chennault irate and unwilling to associate with Pawley in the future.64
Fourteen years after receiving his Medal of Merit from President Truman, Pawley would testify before a Senate Committee and assert that he had an unsurpassed role in organizing the Flying Tigers but “Claire Chennault, whom I employed at the Chinese request, got credit for it and as I did not do that for credit, I employed all the men that were involved in that, and I owned the company that was used for the purpose, I was the only stockholder and president of the company and Mr. Roosevelt thought that media was a good one to use because the employment of pilots and mechanics had to be done under cover, and I provided the cover.”65
In the decades ahead, Anna Chennault would gain more political influence after her husband's 1958 death, and William Douglas Pawley who had been described as "godfather of the Flying Tigers” in a Luce publication would become involved with Clare Boothe Luce in Cuba-related intrigue.66
FOOTNOTES:
1 Anthony R. Carrozza, William D. Pawley, The Extraordinary Life of the Adventurer, and Diplomat Who Cofounded the Flying Tigers, (Dulles, Virginia: Potomac Books, Inc. 2012). Page 77.
2 William M. Leary, The Dragon's Wings: China National Aviation Corporation and the Development of Commercial Aviation in China (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1976).
“Wong Tsu biography.” China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC) website.
>> CNAC benefited from the aircraft insights of Wong Tsu. Born in Beijing, Tsu was a Massachusetts Institute of Technology aeronautical engineering graduate who had learned to fly Curtiss Flying Boats in Buffalo, New York then became the first engineer at Boeing in Seattle, Washington. From 1934 through 1937, Tsu served as CAMCO’s chief engineer.
>> After Chiang’s Nationalist Kuomintang were defeated in the Chinese civil war, Wong Tsu fled to Taiwan where he became an aviation professor.
3 “Chinese Minister of Aviation Will Be Honored at Smart Afternoon Fete.” The Miami Daily News, January 6, 1935.
Martha Byrd, Chennault: Giving Wings To the Tiger (Tuscaloosa, Alabama and London: University of Alabama Press, 1987). Page 60.
4 Sam Kleiner, The Flying Tigers: The Untold Story of the American Pilots Who Waged A Secret War Against Japan (Viking, 2018).
“Young man behaving badly.” By Daniel Ford, The Warbirds Forum website. https://www.warbirdforum.com/email.htm, [1/3/2022 Newsletter @danford.net]
Martha Byrd, Chennault: Giving Wings to the Tiger (University of Alabama Press, 2003).
China National Aviation Foundation, Wings Over Asia: A Brief History of the China National Aviation—Volume 1 (Abacus). Page 6.
5 Amphibians http://www.cnac.org/mccleskey01.htm.
History http://m2reviews.cnsi.net/reviews/allies/us/cleaverp40b.htm
For a photo of the Pawley brothers, see Civilian personnel: http://www.warbirdforum.com/roster5.htm
6 “Edward P. Pawley Former Florentine Dies in Miami.” The Florence Morning News, July 3, 1937.
7 “Highest Salaries Paid in Nation in 1936 are listed by House Committee.” The New York Times, January 9, 1938. Page 44.
8 “Mamie Porrit finds Shangri-La,” (Letters dated February 18, 1940 and September 24, 1941 from Intercontinent’s secretary to a friend, “‘Jim Prim’”). By Daniel Ford. The Warbirds Forum website.
>> A fascinating read with a frontline perspective of war and the Pawleys.
9 “Industrialist [Eugene] Pawley Dies in Graham, Texas.” The Florence Morning News, July 26, 1977. 8/27/1942 FBI Background Check “Eugene Douglas Pawley—File #NY 100-30633.”
10 “The Race Track.” By G.F.T. Ryall. The New Yorker, September 19, 1942. Page 62.
11 Daniel Ford, Flying Tigers: Claire Chennault and the American Volunteer Group. Chapter 3 “We Are Not Choosers” (Part 2).
12 Daniel Ford, Flying Tigers: Claire Chennault and the American Volunteer Group. Page 55.
“Aviation: China Swashbuckler.” Time, September 7, 1942.
13 ‘Executive session testimony of William D. Pawley September 2 and 8, 1960.” Committee of the Judiciary’s Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and other Internal Security Laws, Report (December 20, 1960). Page 722.
14 https://www.marshallfoundation.org/library/digital-archive/ordeal-and-hope-chapter-16-tyranny-of-the-weak
15 Daniel Okrent, The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics, and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italian, and Other European Immigrants Out of America (New York: Scribner, 2019).
Daniel Ford, Flying Tigers: Claire Chennault and the American Volunteer Group.
Michael Beschloss, The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1941-1945 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002). Pages 150-157.
16 Jim Dalby, March 25, 2000, CNAC China National Aviation. http://www.cnac.org/history01.htm
17 Daniel Ford, Flying Tigers: Claire Chennault and the American Volunteer Group. Page 56.
18 U.S. Army Air Force Aces, World War II, 1939-1945. http://www.americanfighteraces.org/wwllusaf_n-s.html
19 Daniel Ford, Flying Tigers: Claire Chennault and the American Volunteer Group. Chapter 3 “We Are Not Choosers” (Part 1).
20 Claire L. Chennault, Way of the Fighter. http://www.flyingtigersavg.com/tiger1.htm
21 “Gen. Bruce K. Holloway, 87, Head of Strategic Air Command.” By Richard Goldstein. The New York Times, October 9, 1999.
22 "OSS-Correspondence Regarding Far Eastern Affairs.” 1943 CREST OSS Collection. Pages 22 & 23 of Edgar
Ansel Mowrer report.
https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP13X00001R000100420003-5.pdf.
23 Eugenie Buchan, A Few Planes for China: The Birth of the Flying Tigers, (ForeEdge, An Imprint of University Press of New England), 2017). Page 149.
24 “OSS-Correspondence Regarding Far Eastern Affairs,” 1943 CREST OSS Collection. Pages 22 & 23 of Edgar Ansel Mowrer report. https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP13X00001R000100420003-5.pdf.
25 “OSS-Correspondence Regarding Far Eastern Affairs.” 1943 CREST OSS Collection. Page 43 of Edgar Ansel
Mowrer report.
https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP13X00001R000100420003-5.pdf.
26 “Spy Girl” Betty McIntosh Turns 100 Years Old. https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/2015-featured-story-archive/201cspy-girl201d-betty- mcintosh-turns-100-years-old.html
27 The Nixon administration in the 1970s adopted a policy towards mainland China and Taiwan that did not recognize Taiwan as a sovereign state but recognized Chiang as its leader. This opened the door to a relationship with Beijing. George H.W. Bush became Ambassador to China before heading the Central Intelligence Agency and eventually being elected President of the United States.
28 “Madame Chiang.” By Tony Karon. Time, October 24, 2003. http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,526008,00.html.
“Madame Chiang Kai-shek, 106, at Center of China's Tumult." By Mark Feeney. Globe, October 24, 2003.
"Madame Chiang Kai-Shek Dies in NYC at 105.” By William Foreman. Rocky Mount Telegram, October 24, 2003.
“Madame Chiang Kai-shek Dies; Chinese Chief's Powerful Widow.” By Bart Barnes. The Washington Post, October 25, 2003. Page B06.
Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Mao: The Unknown Story (New York: Knopf, 2005). >> Details of Stalin’s support of Mao.
“Generalissimo and Madame Chiang Kai-Shek.” Time online archive, January 3, 1938.
“Madame Chiang Dies at 106.” New York Post, October 24, 2003.
29 “Musica Rifle Deal Bared: China Turned Down Offer to Buy Weapons.” The Coshocton Tribune, December 20, 1938.
30 “Daniel Ford, Flying Tigers : Claire Chennault and the American Volunteer Group (Washington, DC: Smithsonian History of Aviation: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991). Pages 30-45.
31 “Daniel Ford, Flying Tigers : Claire Chennault and the American Volunteer Group (Washington, DC: Smithsonian History of Aviation: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991). Chapter 3 “We Are Not Choosers” (Part 2).
“Mamie Porrit finds Shangri-La” (Letters from Intercontinent’s secretary to a friend). By Daniel Ford. The Warbirds Forum website.
32 Daniel Ford, Flying Tigers: Claire Chennault and the American Volunteer Group. Pages 42-45. Indian Institute of Science, Sir John Higgins and scholarship details. http://www.iisc.ernet.in and http://aero.iisc.ernet.in/history/detailed_ history.html
Shane O’Sullivan, Dirty Tricks: Nixon, Watergate, and the CIA, (Hot Books Press, 2018). Page 233
33 Anthony Sampson, Empires of the Sky (New York: Random House, 1984).
34 Annie Hahr Dobbs Pawley, Letters to the Editor. Fly Paper, January 15, 1945. Page 3. Embry-Riddle School of Aviation.
35 Pawley v. Pawley, Supreme Court of the United States, October 1950.
36 “China Swashbuckler.” Time, September 7, 1942.
37 “Flying Tigers at Kunming.” By Daniel Ford. Warbirds Forum website.
38 NARA 104-10174-10071 ~ 11/14/1941 OSS Internal Letter “About Clare Booth Luce.” To: William J. Donovan. From: Wallie (Wallace) Deuel. Pages 3 & 4 of 417.
39 NARA 104-10174-10071 ~ 5/13/1942 “Coordinator of Information Memorandum: J.I.C. Subcommittee Meeting, May 12, 1942 (W.W. Rostow attending): Statement of Mrs. Clare Luce.” To: Colonel William J. Donovan. From: Edward S. Mason. Pages 14-16 of 417.
40 Jack B. Pfeiffer, Official History of the Bay of Pigs Operation, Draft Volume V, CIA’s Internal Investigation. April 18, 1984. Page 88 of 181.
>> Wallace R. Deuel was Chief FI/INT when he wrote a letter of recommendation in April 1968 praising Calvin W. Hicks who had been a Guerilla Warfare Officer and served on Task Force W. In the early 1960s, Hicks (aka Cal Hitch aka Wallace Ledbetter beginning October 1950 aka Calvin Wilson Carl in September 1963) served as Chief of Paramilitary Section in the Miami Operations Branch of WH/Cuba and senior Headquarters Case Officer on all PM operations (including Maritime) conducted by the Miami Station against Cuba. In 1971, Hicks had been in the Intelligence Watch (IW)/FI staff for almost four years. Working with Calvin Hicks in IW were Walter Kuzmuk, Joseph Procaccino, Robert Heron, James Pekich, Frank Levy, Howard Orr, George Papadopolos, Robert Sawicki, and Pat Coble, based on a letter by John L. Hart, Chief, European Division. Pekich (aka Mr. Dimitry) and Kuzmuk worked together in WH/4/PM overseeing Unidad Revolutionaria (UR) in 1961.
NARA 104-10193-10077 ~ “CIA OP Files On (Staff Employee).” Pages 11, 13, 27 and 108 of 149.
NARA 104-10065-10005 ~ ‘Response to Reference (Greg Vitale, Aka Guy Vitale And Calvin Hicks), OLC 78- 2590/1, 17 August 1978.
NARA 1994.06.02.15:07:15:780005 ~ Reel 61, Folder B - Unidad Revolutionaria. Page 43 of 318. 41 “American Makes Planes in India,” Life, March 22, 1943.
In the industrial desert of India, American enterprise has produced one first-class airplane factory, shown for the first time on this page. It is William Pawley's Hindustan Aircraft, Ltd., and naturally it is in India'smost progressive state, Mysore, which has plenty of electric power, steel and semi-skilled labor. This one plant saves the U.S. and Britain millions of tons of shipping space in their effort to supply air power on the continent of Asia. Its very existence is a total surprise to most Americans. Its founder and president, William Douglas Pawley, is the same mystery man who agitated the famous Flying Tigers into existence.
For seven years he owned China's only plane factory and sold China $30,000,000 worth of planes and service. When the Japanese last bombed his plant near the border of Burma, he had already moved the machinery and equipment out to Mysore. He is also president of Intercontinent Aviation Corp. in New York, which sold its Florida plant to Vultee last autumn. The factory in Mysore assembles Vultee and Curtiss-type ships and produces Harlow trainers. In a little less than two years it has equipped itself to repair any type of American plane and has dug out a channel for flying boats. William Pawley's flair for being at the right place a few minutes before the right time has come in handy again for the United Nations.
42 “William D. Pawley Kills Himself: He Suffered a Painful Skin Disease.” By Sam Jacobs and Arnold Markowitz, The Miami Herald, January 8, 1977. Page 1.
43 “China Swashbuckler.” Time, September 7, 1942.
44 Indian Institute of Science Department of Aerospace Engineering – History. http://www.aero.iisc.ernet.in/History.aspx
45 “Aviation: China Swashbuckler.” Time, September 7, 1942.
46 Excerpted from the Early Birds of Aviation CHIRP, March, 1957 - Number 56. http://www.earlyaviators.com/earngeor.htm.
>> George Arnold had flown gliders in high school in as early as 1909, but never got his pilot’s license. A decade later he worked on the NC-4 flying boat, the first plane to cross the Atlantic. His resume provides a time line for CAMCO-related activities. The biographical notes were provided to the Early Aviators website by his son, Robert B. Arnold, Palm City, Florida on September 21, 2003:
1915-1916 Remington Arms - Ilion, NY
1916-1925 Curtis Aeroplane & Motor Co.: Engineer & various other capacities in Buffalo, NY and Garden City, NY
1925-1930 Buhl Aircraft: Factory Manager - Detroit, MI & Marysville, MI
1930-1932 B/J Aircraft: Factory Manager - Baltimore, MD
1932/1934 Chance Vought Aircraft: Chief Inspector - East Hartford, CT
1934/1937 Central Aircraft Mfg. Co.: Vice President & General Manager - Hangchow (Shien Chiao), China
1938/1939 Curtiss Wright: Consultant (on loan from Central Aircraft) - Buffalo, NY
1940/1941 Central Aircraft Mfg. Co.: Consultant - Loi Wing, China & Bangalore, India
1942/1944 Intercontinent Corporation: Vice President & General Manager - Miami, FL
1945/1946 Rearwin Aircraft: Consultant & General Manager - Kansas City, KS
1945/1951 Arnold Products: Owner - Pioneer manufacturer of aluminum windows in South Florida. George built houses in Altamonte Springs, FL until his death in 1956.
47 “Aviation: China Swashbuckler,” Time, September 7, 1942.
48 October 1943 married Edna Earle Cadenhead in India noted in divorce appeal documents cited February 24, 1964. See Chapter 1 “Love, Cuba.”
49 World Who’s Who in Commerce and Industry, 1966-67 (Chicago: Marquis - Who’s Who). Page 1015.
50 NARA 1993.08.05.10:02:01:430007 ~ 9/10/1952 Memorandum for Files. Subjects: Pawley, William; Tolstoy Project; Rosslyn Materia. From: Nealon, John, SA/Spec. Referral Br.
Handwritten Note “The following cables were found at the cable desk at L Building.” Cable 29470 dated Dec 28, 1944 and Cable 2150 dated Sept 28, 1944.
51 The US Militaria Forum, Firearms, Ordance & Edged Weapons, OSS Weapons, Member ID: 4,361, Posted 14 May 2017 - 06:43 AM http://www.usmilitariaforum.com/forums/index.php?/topic/289803-oss-weapons/page-2
52 R. Harris Smith, OSS, The Secret History of America’s First Central Intelligence Agency (University of California Press, 1972). Pages 254-256.
“Official Policies and Covert Programs: The U.S. State Department, the CIA and the Tibetan Resistance.” By John Kenneth Knaus. Page 3. Case University (online).
https://case.edu/affil/tibet/tibetanSociety/documents/usstuff.PDF
>> Knaus was a CIA case officer working in Tibet in the 1950s and 1960s. He died April 18, 2016 in his nineties.
53 “Long Riders on the Roof of the World: Page 2: President Roosevelt’s Long Rider Ambassador to Shangri-La.” The Long Riders’ Guild online. http://www.thelongridersguild.com/word06b.htm
54 “Victory Model Hand Guns.” Smith & Wesson Forums (online). https://www.smithandwessonforums.com/threads/oss-serial-range-for-victory-model.150777/
#3 February 19, 2018: “Sources describe an OSS shipment of 500 units (4" barrels) on August 22, 1944.”
#5 May 22, 2020: “Well-traveled S&W Victory 1943 shipped to USN Rosslyn, VA, likely the OSS Fowler Building.”
For more on Ilia Tolstoy, OSS officer see: Maochun Yu OSS in China, Prelude to Cold War (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996).
55 “Burma Road Pioneer.” By Melvin D. Hildreth, The New York Times, April 16, 1944. Page SM2.
Hildreth’s political affiliation. “Oral History of Katie Louchheim.” Conducted by Jerry N. Hess. September 27, 1972. Truman Library website.
56 NARA104-10194-10009 ~ CIA File on Crozier Ross. Page 143
NARA 104-10171-10041 ~ AMSPELL Progress Report for August 1969,
57 “‘China Swashbuckler’ Buys Showplace at Warrenton. W. D. Pawley, Sponsor of ‘Flying Tigers,’ to Reside at Belvoir.” The Washington Post, April 22, 1944. Page 3.
58 NARA 104-10138-10275 ~ 19/8/1952 “Memo: Pawley, William D/OSS Archives Contains A List of Names for a Preliminary, Security Clearance from the Security Office, OSS.” From: Thomas A. Cox, Jr. Special Referral Branch.
OSS Archives file NY-SI-Pers-3 dated 27 December 1944 contains a list of names for a preliminary security clearance from the Security Office [misspelled as Orrice], OSS. This list was sent from CSS, New York, and contains the name of a William D. Pawley of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York City. There is no apparent reply to this above mentioned request.
Another OSS Document (Was-Dir-Off-Safe-3) contains an OSS memo dated 15 January 1945 mentions that a Bill Pawley is running an aircraft factory at Bangalore in India. (Believed to be the Inter-continent Aviation Corp.) His outfit at Bangalore was being considered to handle assembly of small airplanes after they reached India. There is no further correspondence in relation to this matter.
There is no other noteworthy information in the files of OSS Archives concerning William D. Pawley.
59 “Our Man in Havana, William D. Pawley.” By John T. O’Rourke. The Washington Daily News, February 20, 1961.
Pawley also praised Mann: “Tom is brilliant,” says Mr. Pawley; “Couldn’t be a nicer fellow.”
60 Citation Accompanying the Medal for Merit Awarded to William D. Pawley by Harry S. Truman, May 13th, 1946. Presentation at 11:45 a.m.
61 Russia Is Winning by William D. Pawley, Former Ambassador, Trouble-Shooter for Presidents (drafts and edits June 8, 1974, August 11, 1974 and July 1, 1975). George C. Marshall Research Center, George C. Marshall Library. William Pawley Papers, Box 2, William D. Pawley Papers, 1945-1970, .5 lf, 42.
62 Civil Air Transport (CAT) Notepad, Artifacts, Central Intelligence Agency https://www.cia.gov/legacy/museum/artifact/civil-air-transport-cat-notepad
>> In August 1950, the Agency secretly purchased the assets of Civil Air Transport (CAT), an airline that had been started in China after World War II by Gen. Claire L. Chennault and Whiting Willauer. CAT would continue to fly commercial routes throughout Asia, acting in every way as a privately owned commercial airline. At the same time, under the corporate guise of CAT Incorporated, it provided airplanes and crews for secret intelligence operations.
“C.I.A. Funny Business” Opinion. The New York Times, June 8, 1993. Section A, Page 24
>> Air Asia was created in 1955 to be the aircraft service unit of CAT. It was sold to E-Systems in 1975.
“In 1959, Air America became an arm of CAT.” CAT Association Timeline (Online) https://catassociation.org/history/cat-historical-milestones
“Felix Smith, Who Piloted Covert Flights Over Asia, Dies at 100.” By Sam Roberts, The New York Times, October 17, 2018.
63 NARA 157-10014-10144 Miscellaneous Records of the Church Committee. “SSCSGO, Report.” Page 143 of 264. Declassified December 15,2022.
>> Covers various CIA proprietaries, witting and unwitting.
64 Jack Samson, The Flying Tiger: The True Story of General Claire Chennault and the U.S. 14th Air Force in
China. (Guilford, Connecticut: The Lyons Press paperback, 2005). Pages 70, 54, 66, and 122.
>> A. L. Patterson wrote: “I had been an old friend of Chennault’s from the time he led the ‘Three Musketeers’ (sic) precision Curtiss Hawks at the first International Air Show at Mines Field in 1927. So when Chennault resigned and came to China he suggested I secure the Seversky representation which I did. I got the order for the 50 P-35’s with funds etc. But Bill Pawley pulled such unbelievable stunts to kill it, that H.H. Kung finally cancelled the order and gave me additional North America NA-16 aircraft.”
65 “Communist Threat to the United States Through the Caribbean –September 2 and 8, 1960 Testimony of William D. Pawley.” Hearings Before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, Eight-Sixth Congress. Part 10. Pages 722-726.
[Page 722] Mr. SOURWINE. You mentioned something about your activity in China? Didn’t you also have a part in organizing the Flying Tigers?
Mr. PAWLEY. Yes I did organize the Flying Tigers ... but Claire Chennault, whom I employed at the Chinese request, got credit for it and as I did not do that for credit, I employed all the men that were involved in that, and I owned the company that was used for the purpose, I was the only stockholder and president of the company and Mr. Roosevelt thought that media was a good one to use because the employment of pilots and mechanics had to be done under cover, and I provided the cover.
66 “Aviation: China Swashbuckler.” Time, September 7, 1942.
Labels: CAMCO, Chiang Kai-shek, China, Claire Chennault, CNAC, Curtiss-Wright, Donovan, Flying Tigers, Howard Hunt, Japan, KMT, Luce, Miami Air Races, Nationalists, OSS, Pawley, Soong, Trippe, Watergate
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