China's Wings

China's Wings PDF Author: Gregory Crouch
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 034553235X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 545

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Book Description
From the acclaimed author of Enduring Patagonia comes a dazzling tale of aerial adventure set against the roiling backdrop of war in Asia. The incredible real-life saga of the flying band of brothers who opened the skies over China in the years leading up to World War II—and boldly safeguarded them during that conflict—China’s Wings is one of the most exhilarating untold chapters in the annals of flight. At the center of the maelstrom is the book’s courtly, laconic protagonist, American aviation executive William Langhorne Bond. In search of adventure, he arrives in Nationalist China in 1931, charged with turning around the turbulent nation’s flagging airline business, the China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC). The mission will take him to the wild and lawless frontiers of commercial aviation: into cockpits with daredevil pilots flying—sometimes literally—on a wing and a prayer; into the dangerous maze of Chinese politics, where scheming warlords and volatile military officers jockey for advantage; and into the boardrooms, backrooms, and corridors of power inhabited by such outsized figures as Generalissimo and Madame Chiang Kai-shek; President Franklin Delano Roosevelt; foreign minister T. V. Soong; Generals Arnold, Stilwell, and Marshall; and legendary Pan American Airways founder Juan Trippe. With the outbreak of full-scale war in 1941, Bond and CNAC are transformed from uneasy spectators to active participants in the struggle against Axis imperialism. Drawing on meticulous research, primary sources, and extensive personal interviews with participants, Gregory Crouch offers harrowing accounts of brutal bombing runs and heroic evacuations, as the fight to keep one airline flying becomes part of the larger struggle for China’s survival. He plunges us into a world of perilous night flights, emergency water landings, and the constant threat of predatory Japanese warplanes. When Japanese forces capture Burma and blockade China’s only overland supply route, Bond and his pilots must battle shortages of airplanes, personnel, and spare parts to airlift supplies over an untried five-hundred-mile-long aerial gauntlet high above the Himalayas—the infamous “Hump”—pioneering one of the most celebrated endeavors in aviation history. A hero’s-eye view of history in the grand tradition of Lynne Olson’s Citizens of London, China’s Wings takes readers on a mesmerizing journey to a time and place that reshaped the modern world.

China's Wings

China's Wings PDF Author: Gregory Crouch
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 034553235X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 545

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Book Description
From the acclaimed author of Enduring Patagonia comes a dazzling tale of aerial adventure set against the roiling backdrop of war in Asia. The incredible real-life saga of the flying band of brothers who opened the skies over China in the years leading up to World War II—and boldly safeguarded them during that conflict—China’s Wings is one of the most exhilarating untold chapters in the annals of flight. At the center of the maelstrom is the book’s courtly, laconic protagonist, American aviation executive William Langhorne Bond. In search of adventure, he arrives in Nationalist China in 1931, charged with turning around the turbulent nation’s flagging airline business, the China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC). The mission will take him to the wild and lawless frontiers of commercial aviation: into cockpits with daredevil pilots flying—sometimes literally—on a wing and a prayer; into the dangerous maze of Chinese politics, where scheming warlords and volatile military officers jockey for advantage; and into the boardrooms, backrooms, and corridors of power inhabited by such outsized figures as Generalissimo and Madame Chiang Kai-shek; President Franklin Delano Roosevelt; foreign minister T. V. Soong; Generals Arnold, Stilwell, and Marshall; and legendary Pan American Airways founder Juan Trippe. With the outbreak of full-scale war in 1941, Bond and CNAC are transformed from uneasy spectators to active participants in the struggle against Axis imperialism. Drawing on meticulous research, primary sources, and extensive personal interviews with participants, Gregory Crouch offers harrowing accounts of brutal bombing runs and heroic evacuations, as the fight to keep one airline flying becomes part of the larger struggle for China’s survival. He plunges us into a world of perilous night flights, emergency water landings, and the constant threat of predatory Japanese warplanes. When Japanese forces capture Burma and blockade China’s only overland supply route, Bond and his pilots must battle shortages of airplanes, personnel, and spare parts to airlift supplies over an untried five-hundred-mile-long aerial gauntlet high above the Himalayas—the infamous “Hump”—pioneering one of the most celebrated endeavors in aviation history. A hero’s-eye view of history in the grand tradition of Lynne Olson’s Citizens of London, China’s Wings takes readers on a mesmerizing journey to a time and place that reshaped the modern world.

Red Wings Over the Yalu

Red Wings Over the Yalu PDF Author: Xiaoming Zhang
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 9781585443406
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
The Korean conflict was a pivotal event in China's modern military history. The fighting in Korea constituted an important experience for the newly formed People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF), not only as a test case for this fledgling service but also in the later development of Chinese air power. Xiaoming Zhang fills the gaps in the history of this conflict by basing his research in recently declassified Chinese and Russian archival materials. He also relies on interviews with Chinese participants in the air war over Korea. Zhang's findings challenge conventional wisdom as he compares kill ratios and performance by all sides involved in the war. Zhang also addresses the broader issues of the Korean War, such as how air power affected Beijing's decision to intervene. He touches on ground operations and truce negotiations during the conflict. Chinese leaders placed great emphasis on the supremacy of human will over modern weaponry, but they were far from oblivious to the advantages of the latter and to China's technological limitations. Developments in China's own air power were critical during this era. Zhang offers considerable materials on the training of Chinese aviators and the Soviet role in that training, on Soviet and Chinese air operations in Korea, and on diplomatic exchanges over Soviet military assistance to China. He probes the impact of the war on China's conception of the role of air power, arguing that it was not until the Gulf War of the early 1990s that Chinese leaders engaged in a broad reassessment of the strategy they adopted during the Korean War. Military historians and scholars interested in aviation and foreign affairs will find this volume of special interest. As a unique work that presents the Chinese point of view, it stands as both a complement and a corrective to previous accounts of the conflict. Xiaoming Zhang earned his Ph.D. in history at the University of Iowa in 1994. He has had works published in various journals, including the Journal of Military History, which has twice selected him to receive the Moncado Prize for excellence in the writing of military history. Zhang currently resides in Montgomery, Alabama, where he teaches at the Air War College. Zhang's study is masterful in placing the Chinese air war in Korea in the context of China's development in the twentieth century. In addition to providing important new evidence on China's role in the Korean War, Zhang offers a particularly noteworthy analysis of Sino-Soviet relations during the early 1950s. William Stueck, Distinguished Research Professor of History, University of Georgia; author of The Korean War: An International History (1995) and Rethinking the Korean War: A New Diplomatic and Strategic History (2002)

The Golden Wing

The Golden Wing PDF Author: Yueh-Hwa Lin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136248021
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
First published in 1998. This is Volume X of the fifteen in the Sociology of Gender and the Family series and offers a sociological study of Chinese familism. The Golden Wing written in 1948 is a sociological study written in the form of a novel. Its theme is refreshingly simple in conception but like the painting of a bamboo leaf, its austere form conceals a high degree of art. The story sets out to examine why, of two families living side by side in a Fukien village in South China, and related by kinship and business interests, one should continue to prosper through adversity and the other should first flourish and then decline.

War Wings

War Wings PDF Author: Guangqiu Xu
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN: 9780313320040
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Based on extensive research in China, the United States, and Great Britain, this book is the first comprehensive survey of the aviation aspect of Sino-American relations during the Chinese republican period. Xu reveals new information about the important U.S. role in assisting the birth and development of both military and civil aviation in China. Analyzing the significance of air power in both its military and political contexts, Xu argues that the Nationalist Air Force considerably strengthened the Nationalist government's political and military positions without changing its existent power structure and temperament. The study also examines the role air power played in the violent partisan and patriotic power struggles within China, which illustrates how deeply China's military modernization became intertwined with competing foreign interests. Xu's discussion of the arms trading policies of various foreign powers prior to the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War of the 1930s is particularly insightful and revealing. Although America's contribution to the establishment of Chinese aviation was at times undertaken with hesitation, U.S. assistance would ultimately change the balance of power in East Asia.

Dragon's Wings

Dragon's Wings PDF Author: Andreas Rupprecht
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781906537364
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
As China continues its rise as a world power, there is growing interest in its military aviation. Very little has been published in the past on the subject because of the difficulty of obtaining information, but aviation authors Tony Buttler and Andreas Rupprecht have been researching this subject together for a number of years, both from the perspective of their interest in the Chinese aircraft and also through an interest in Chinese secret aviation projects. They have now amassed enough material to put together a book on Chinese fighter and bomber aircraft development since Mao’s Communist Party took control of the country in 1949. The book examines the design and development of the country’s major military combat aircraft (fighters, bombers, attack aircraft, antisubmarine) since the industry became established after the Second World War, plus a good number of design proposals which, for whatever reason, were rejected or abandoned. The text is supplemented with photographs, line drawings, and color artwork of the aircraft.

Wings for an Embattled China

Wings for an Embattled China PDF Author: W. Langhorne Bond
Publisher: Lehigh University Press
ISBN: 9780934223652
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
"This is the story of an aviation pioneer who developed a major airline in China in the 1930s and 1940s. W. Langhorne Bond was a Pan American executive in the days when Pam Am was achieving mastery of the skies. The book tells the story of Bond's efforts to set up and operate a fledgling airline, the China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC), while overcoming Chinese political machinations, attacks by invading Japanese forces, and changing and erratic American management and government policies."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

The Dragon's Wings

The Dragon's Wings PDF Author: William M. Leary
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780820332567
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
William M. Leary Jr.'s study combines history with personal drama to reconstruct an important chapter in the early years of aviation. He has conducted intensive research in American governmental archives, the Hoover Institution, and numerous libraries throughout the United States, in addition to obtaining access to the records of Pan American Airways (who bought out CNAC in 1933). His history of CNAC offers insights into the history of modern China and sheds light on several key aspects of Sino-American diplomatic and business relations.

Broken Wings

Broken Wings PDF Author: Jia Pingwa
Publisher: ACA Publishing Limited
ISBN: 1910760552
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
Broken Wings tells the story of Butterfly, who is kidnapped and taken to a remote mountain village devoid of young women. There, she is imprisoned and, later, raped in the cave home of the wifeless farmer who has bought her. Butterfly's fading hopes of escape are described in her own voice, revealing the struggles of a spirited young woman.

Wings Over Asia

Wings Over Asia PDF Author: China National China National Aviation Association Foundation
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781514171493
Category : World War, 1939-1945
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Wings Over Asia: A Brief History of the Chinese National Aviation Corporation is a sometimes moving, sometimes rollicking, sometimes heart-stopping, account of a critical part of the history of WWII. Told in their own words by the daring pilots who flew over The Hump to keep China fighting the invading Japanese, these stories bring that era alive in a way no technical history book could.

The Dragon's Hidden Wings

The Dragon's Hidden Wings PDF Author: Sheng Ding
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 9780739123935
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
The Dragon's Hidden Wings is the first comprehensive study on China's use of soft power. Sheng Ding provides the reader with an insightful empirical study that details China's economic and political rise on the global scene over the course of the last three decades. This book not only endeavors to examine the connections between the ongoing rise of China and what Joseph Nye defines as soft power, but also attempts to give readers a more complete understanding of China's national power and modernization process. The main questions addressed are: What are the theoretical and empirical connections between the soft power concept and the rise of China? What are China's own soft power resources? How has Beijing used soft power to become a major player in the world? What opportunities and challenges does the use of soft power present to China? This study is essential reading for scholars of Chinese politics and foreign policy, and for scholars of international relation interested in the concept and application of soft power.