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

All was not lost. Despite Trippe’s success in acquiring China Airways, Pawley had made important connections that would blossom into greater wealth and fame through unanticipated world events. 

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.3Among the people Pawley introduced Mow to was pilot Claire Chennault, an older-looking contemporary, whom Pawley recruited to train Chinese pilots. 

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9: Forrestal Plunges into the Cold War

On the Sunday night of May 22, 1949, former Secretary of the Navy and recent first Secretary of Defense James Forrestal was found dead on the ground outside Bethesda Naval Hospital. A few months earlier he had been asked to resign as Secretary of Defense by President Truman and then spent time with Robert Lovett in Hobe, Florida before entering Bethesda Naval Hospital for depression.

While some questioned if he had intentionally died by suicide, fallen accidentally or been induced to jump by experimental drugs or nefarious forces, Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin was convinced that “communists hounded Forrestal to his death. They killed him just as definitely as if they had thrown him from that sixteenth-story window in Bethesda Naval Hospital.” McCarthy also stated that “while I am not a sentimental man, I was touched deeply and left numb by the news of Forrestal’s murder. But I was affected much more deeply when I heard of the communist celebration when they heard of Forrestal’s murder. On that night, I dedicated part of this fight to Jim Forrestal.” McCarthyism was born.1

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50: Cold War Replay

In September 2022, General Michael Minihan, head of the Air Mobility Command, told a military conference that the U.S. Air Force was responsible for more enemy deaths than any of the other U.S. military organizations. Three months later he predicted that China would invade Taiwan where Pawley's friend Chiang Kai-Shek and thousands of nationalists made their home after communists had seized the mainland seven decades earlier. In anticipation, the U.S. Air Force increased its presence in the Philippines.

General Minihan also shared with conference attendees a personal orgasmic pleasure— with the killing of “‘your enemy, every part of your life is better. Your food tastes better. Your marriage is stronger.’”1 

I disagree. In the early 1970s, a decade after the Kennedy assassination, I wrote this song called "Inhumanity."

I am the madness

That makes men want to kill. 

I am the taste of blood

That gives them the thrill.

I am the feeling

That drives a mother wild, 

Until she beats to death

Her helpless baby child.

I am the fist

Raised in anger.

I am the cry

Let’s gang bang her!

I am the daggers

Seen in many eyes.

I am the voices

Of a thousand million lies.

I am the crowd 

Full of faces 

Chanting names 

At other races.

I am the soul of hypocrisy 

Making a shambles

Of this democracy.

I have razed civilizations,

Destroyed powerful men, 

Ruined the lives of many, 

And I’ll do it once again. 

For I am fear and trouble, 

Terror and death at my best, 

And if I get a hold of you

I will never, never ever let you rest.

For I am insanity.

And there’s a little bit of me,

To a moral-less degree,

In all humanity.

I am in humanity.

~ Inhumanity. Lyrics & Music: David Price Cannon (1973)

On January 30, 2023, Spencer Ackerman, a 2014 Pulitzer Prize-winning national security journalist, wrote about General Minihan and concluded “anyone who's read Stanley Karnow's excellent book In Our Image will recognize as a retread of both Cold War and pre-Cold War imperial form ... Trump is Truman, Biden is Eisenhower, Mattis is Forrestal, McMaster is Acheson, Campbell is, I guess, John Foster Dulles, and this guy Minihan seems to think he’s Curtis LeMay.”2

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