When the Chennault Flying Tigers were founded, the Pacific War had not yet broken out, and the United States was still maintaining the so-called neutrality, so Chennault organized the Flying Tigers in the form of volunteers to fight in the Chinese battlefield. Of course, this is tacitly approved and secretly supported by the United States, otherwise the trip would not have been possible.
With Japan in full superiority at the time, the Japanese were free to bomb all over China to match their ground forces. The Nationalist air force was weak and insufficient to counter the Japanese.
The appearance and continuous operation of the Flying Tigers formed some deterrents to the Japanese army to a certain extent, so that the Japanese Air Force did not dare to bomb the rear area of the Chinese War of Resistance too deeply, which played a great role.
But the Flying Tigers' more important role was the impact of the Later U.S. War on Japan.
After the outbreak of the Pacific War, the United States was passively involved in the war and had to devote all its strength to the war. But the United States believes that it must first defeat Germany in the European theater and then go back to solving Japan on the Asian battlefield.
During the U.S. war against Germany, U.S. policy in Asia was to give China a lot of military support and let China hold Japan back. To this end, the United States has increased its support for the Flying Tigers and has also sent a large number of soldiers to the battlefields of China and India and Burma to help the national army train.
When planning the Normandy landings, the U.S. army was prepared to carry out a first landing in Europe and then from Italy to open a second battlefield. But this solution should be used not only in Europe, but also in China in the future.
So the United States chose between Stilwell and Eisenhower at that time, one person responsible for going to Europe to prepare for the Normandy landings, and the other to Asia to serve as Chairman Chiang Kai-shek's chief of staff for the Chinese theater and prepare for future landings.
The United States once consulted the chairman of the committee, and the chairman asked the United States to send Eisenhower, but the result of the final comprehensive consideration of the United States was that Eisenhower went to Europe and Stilwell came to China.
After Stilwell arrived in China, he was very unhappy with the chairman of the committee, but after opening up the Indo-Burmese battlefield, Stilwell became the commander of the expeditionary force and left the chairman's side.
After that, after inspecting and understanding the Chinese battlefield, Stilwell proposed a future combat plan for the US military, that is, the US military and the newly formed Chinese Army, that is, the Expeditionary Force, cooperated to first land in Guangzhou and attack to the north, and at the same time, landed in Jiaozhou Bay, opened up a second battlefield, first annihilated the Japanese army in South China, and then attacked north.
To this end, Stilwell also asked the chairman of the committee to order both the Nationalist Army and the Eighth Route Army to prepare and train for landing operations, among which the Eighth Route Army in the Jiaodong area should be prepared to receive the landing of american troops. The Eighth Route Army in the Jiaodong area did begin in the second half of 1944, and the troops were drawn to carry out training and preparations in this regard.
Obviously, Stilwell's plan was basically based on the plan of the US army in the European battlefield, which was also to attack after landing in the front, and at the same time landing from the waist of the enemy's rear, dividing the enemy and attacking the encircled part of the enemy from both sides. Later, MacArthur did the same in the Korean War.
But Chennault believes that Stilwell's plan is too expensive, and he has a better plan, that is, relying on several airfields in southwest China, first regaining air supremacy, as long as the japanese supply line is bombed, the Japanese army can be defeated, and there is no need to send ground troops to fight in China.
Chennault's battle plan was very close to the later practice of the U.S. military in Vietnam, that is, to avoid the participation of ground forces in the war as much as possible, and to use only air bombardment to assist the Allied forces in combat, so as to reduce the casualties of the American troops, but at the same time to achieve the American war goals as close as possible.
According to this plan, the United States will invest a lot of weapons and equipment aided by the United States to arm more national troops, train by the US military, and provide some operational guidance suggestions when necessary.
From the point of view of ideas, Chennault's plan is somewhat overestimated the role of air strikes and bombing on the war. But this is not the most unreliable, the most unreliable part of his plan is that he marked the airports in a number of places where they did not exist, so that Roosevelt believed that there were enough airfields in southwest China to support the US bombing.
These two sets of plans were sent to Roosevelt's desk very early, and at first Roosevelt and the U.S. military high command were more inclined to Stilwell's plan, but with Chennault's continuous lobbying, Roosevelt eventually preferred Chennault's plan, that is, not to send ground troops to China, and to defeat Japan only by bombing.
However, before Stilwell could finally reach this conclusion, he was already in a very stiff fight with the chairman of the committee, and finally the U.S. government, at the request of the chairman, replaced Stilwell and sent Weidmeier to China to take over Stilwell's work. The United States has only one word for Weidmann, respecting the chairman as much as possible and not challenging the authority of the chairman. Therefore, after Wei Demai arrived in China, he was very low-key and cautious, and basically did not have any conflicts with the chairman of the committee.
But the situation developed completely beyond Stilwell and Chennault's expectations and analysis.
After the end of the war in the European theater, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to open the Chinese battlefield in three months. Three months after Germany's surrender, the Soviet Union gathered the Red Army into northeast China to wage war against the Kwantung Army, far faster than the United States had anticipated. Soon, the Soviets annihilated the Kwantung Army, occupied the northeast, and entered the Korean Peninsula.
Seeing that the Soviet Union was about to attack the Japanese mainland, the United States finally could not sit still, was in a hurry, and did not have time to land from Guangzhou first and then from the enemy's rear waist according to the previous plan, but directly dropped two atomic bombs on the Japanese mainland, and Japan could only surrender immediately.
That is to say, the United States finally forced Japan to surrender, and indeed used Chennault's plan, that is, direct bombing, but not the Japanese army on the Chinese battlefield, but the Japanese mainland, and the bombs used were not ordinary bombs, but atomic bombs.
If the previous agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union is followed, and the war continues to last for a period of time as in Europe, it is actually a very dangerous situation for China.
Because this means that the south of the Qinling-Huai River line is handed over to the United States, and the north of this line is handed over to the Soviet Union, and in the end, just as Germany was occupied by Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union, and split into two countries, China also had a situation of north-south division.
In this sense, although Chennault's plan for bombing and air strikes is very unreliable, it objectively avoids the ground forces of the two great powers of the United States and the Soviet Union from entering China, and directly turns China into two parts of the division and opposition between the north and the south. Without Chennault's unreliable spoiler plan, implemented exactly according to Stilwell's ideas, China would have fallen into a divisive situation and become the forefront of the Cold War.