What engineers chose the locations and oversaw runway construction for the airfields that the Flying Tigers used?
Upvote:4
The journal Army History has a fairly lengthy article, The Construction of US Army Airfields in China during World War 2, by Raymond E. Bell Jr. It mentions the airbase at Kunming your article discusses, as well as several individuals involved in the airbase engineering throughout the war:
The construction of the Kunming air base as at all other American and Chinese airfields in Nationalist Chinese territory was done by Chinese civilian contractors and peasants under US Army engineer supervision While most of the laborers were local Chinese many others came from far away At Kunming for example workers who came from remote highlands a long distance from the work sites were identified as not being local by their Mongolian features and dark skin
No specific individuals mentioned there, however, and Kunming may have been before some of the following individuals got involved. This mention definitely concerned Kunming though:
On 4 July 1942 1st Lt Francis C. Card established the engineer section of the Army's Advance Section Service of Supply SOS in China the section's sole member Card set work to have the Chinese improve Kunming airfield while at the time he planned for new fields near the city
later on...
...At the same time the involvement of US Army engineers in the actual business of construction was minimal They performed no manual labor but rather designed the fields and provided overall supervision of the work It was not until early in 1944 however before there was the beginning of a comprehensive Army engineer design and supervisory framework to oversee construction During this time frame SOS Advance Sections 3 and 4 were transferred to Chennault's control The work fell to the 5308th Air Service Area Command with Col Henry A Byroade assigned as project engineer The area command organized three districts one encompassing the many airfields around Kunming one constructing B 29 airfields for the Twentieth Air Force at Cheng tu and the third constructing fields for the Fourteenth Air Force in eastern China
Another officer is also mentioned:
One of the few US Army officers involved in supervising the construction of air bases in eastern China was Capt Robert Belknap. Initially involved petroleum delivery construction India he was one of the officers out of Burma with Stilwell in March 1942 Eventually was charged with fuel resource distribution to the Chinese under the lend lease program As an Army engineer however he helped with the some thirteen airfields in China all of which but one eventually fell to the Japanese in their 1944 1945 ground offensive
The article goes on for several pages and even has a grainy image of the laborers working on one of the airfields.
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