China National Aviation Corporation

The China National Aviation Corporation was a Chinese airline, it was nationalized after the Communist Party of China took control in 1949 (as Civil Aviation Administration of China). It was a major airline in the Republic of China.

As of 1938 it was headquartered in Shanghai.[1]

History

Roundel of CNAC (1929-1949).

In 1929, it was established as China Airways by Curtiss-Wright, under the leadership of U.S. airline magnate Clement Melville Keys. In 1933, after a series of disastrous accidents and disagreements with Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek, Keys sold the company to Pan American Airways, under the control of Keys' arch-rival Juan Trippe. Pan Am placed the company under the control of banker and aviator Harold Bixby. When the Japanese invasion of China in 1937 overran all of China's maritime access, its Chinese Air Company was merged with China Airways into the China National Aviation Company (CNAC), with Pan Am owning 45% of the operation and the government the remaining 55%.

Between 1937 and December 1941, CNAC flew many internal routes with Douglas Dolphin amphibians (Route No. 3, from Shanghai – Canton, via Wenchow, Foo-chow, Amoy & Swatow), and Douglas DC-2s and DC-3s. In addition, three examples of the Vultee V-1A single-engine transport that "missed the boat" to Republican Spain ended up in China. Initially, the Nationalists maintained contact with the outside world through the port of Hanoi in French Indo-China, but the Japanese put pressure on the new pro-Vichy regime there to cut off relations with them in 1940–41. Flying in mainland China during the war with Japan was dangerous. A CNAC aircraft was the first passenger aircraft in history to be destroyed by enemy forces, in the Kweilin Incident in August 1938.

By fall 1940, CNAC operated service from Chungking (via Kunming and Lashio) to Rangoon, Chengdu, Kiating (via Luchow and Suifu) and Hong Kong (via Kweilin).[2]

During World War II, CNAC was headquartered in India, and flew supplies from Assam, India, into Yunnan, southwestern China through the Hump Route over the Himalayas, after the Japanese blocked the Burma Road. Despite the large casualties inflicted by the Japanese and more significantly, the ever-changing weather over the Himalayas, the logistics flights operated daily, year round, from April 1942 until the end of the war. The CNAC was a smaller part of the overall re-supply operations which included the USAAF's India-China Division of Air Transport Command.

On 8, 9 and 10 December 1941, eight American pilots of the China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC) and their crews made a total of 16 trips between Kai Tak Airport in the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong, then under attack from Japanese forces, and Chungking, the wartime capital of the Republic of China.[3] Together they made 16 sorties and evacuated 275 persons including Soong Ching-ling (the widow of Sun Yat-sen), and the Chinese Finance Minister H.H. Kung.

After World War II, in 1946, CNAC moved from India to Shanghai, specifically Longhua Airport, located on the western shore of the Huangpu River, 10 km from the center of Shanghai. The company was a huge organization, with departments for transportation, mechanics, medicine, food, finance, etc. The employees who numbered in the thousands were housed in dormitories located in the Shanghai French Concession. Every morning, the company took the employees by a car convoy from the dormitories to the airport.[4]

CNAC eventually operated routes from Shanghai to Beiping (now Beijing), Chungking and Guangzhou (Canton), using Douglas DC-2 and DC-3 aircraft. Apart from purchasing war surplus planes, CNAC had also acquired brand new Douglas DC-4s, to serve the route between Shanghai and San Francisco.

The downfall of CNAC's operations came on 9 November 1949, when managing director of CNAC, Colonel CY Liu, and general manager of CATC (Central Aviation Transport Corporation), Colonel CL Chen with a skeleton crew defected - by unauthorised take- offs of 12 aircraft, from Hong Kong Kai Tak Airport to Communist-controlled China. The lead aircraft ( Convair 240) was welcomed with pomp and ceremony in Beijing, while the other 11 landed safely in Tianjin. All aeroplanes were being pursued by KMT fighter planes - but on the day were shielded by heavy cloud cover. The remaining airline staff with their families ( a total of 3,400 ) sneaked into China by land or sea later. The ideology behind the defection was nationalism- as they believed there should only be : one, strong China. Today the original Convair 240 ( with one engine missing) is on display at a Military Aviation Museum in Beijing.

The remaining 71 aircraft in Hong Kong were sold by the Nationalists to the Delaware-registered Civil Air Transport Inc ( CAT) in an effort to save the aircraft from the Communists. After a lengthy legal battle ( which went on appeal from Hong Kong to Privy Council in UK - as reported in 1951 Appeal Cases ) the planes were delivered by the Hong Kong government to CATI in 1952.


Accidents and incidents

See also

References

  1. ↑ Flight International. 28 April 1938. p. 416 (Archive). "CHINA NATIONAL AVIATION CORP., 51, Canton Road, Shanghai."
  2. ↑ October 1940 timetable
  3. ↑ According to articles in the New York Times and the Chicago Daily of 15 December 1941, the pilot's names were Charles L. Sharp, Hugh L. Woods, Harold A. Sweet, William McDonald, Frank L. Higgs, Robert S. Angle, P.W. Kessler and S.E. Scott.
  4. ↑ Rebecca Chan Chung, Deborah Chung and Cecilia Ng Wong, "Piloted to Serve", 2012

Further reading

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