Editing Claire Lee Chennault (section)

===China-Burma-India theater===
Throughout the war Chennault was engaged in a bitter dispute with the American ground commander, General [[Joseph Stilwell]].

Chennault believed that the Fourteenth Air Force, operating out of bases in China, could attack Japanese forces in concert with Nationalist troops. For his part, Stilwell wanted air assets diverted to his command to support the opening of a ground supply route through northern Burma to China. The route would provide supplies and new equipment for a greatly expanded Nationalist force of twenty to thirty modernized divisions.

Chiang Kai-shek favored Chennault's plans, since he was suspicious of British colonial interests in Burma. He was also concerned about alliances with semi-independent generals supporting the Nationalist government, and was concerned that a major loss of military forces would enable his Communist Chinese adversaries to gain the upper hand.{{citation needed|date=September 2014}}

The sharply differing assessments held by Stillwell and Chennault came out in a meeting in 1943 with President Roosevelt, who asked both commanders for their opinion of Chiang.<ref name="Fenby, Jonathan page 400">Fenby, Jonathan ''Chiang Kai-Shek China's .Generalissimo and the Nation He Lost'', New York: Carrol & Graf, 2004 p. 400.</ref> Stillwell stated: "He's a vacillating, tricky, undependable old scoundrel who never keeps his word."<ref name="Fenby, Jonathan page 400"/> Chennault by contrast told Roosevelt: "Sir, I think the Generalissimo is one of the two or three greatest military and political leaders in the world today. He has never broken a commitment or promise to me."<ref name="Fenby, Jonathan page 400"/> Chennault was supported in his disputes by [[Soong Mei-ling]], Chiang's politically powerful wife, who was one of the richest women in 1930s China<ref name="Peterson">Peterson, Barbara Bennett (ed.). (2000). ''Notable Women of China: Shang Dynasty to the Early 20th century''. M.E. Sharp publishing. {{ISBN|0-7656-0504-X}}.</ref> and, unlike her husband, fluent in English.<ref name="Fenby, Jonathan page 383"/>

Stilwell and Chennault loathed each other partly because of their very different personalities, which were described by the British journalist Jonathan Fenby as a clash between Stilwell, the New England Puritan and proud "Yankee" who "prized moral courage" above all else, and Chennault, the Southern gentleman and "Good Ole Boy", who accepted "human foibles" as natural.<ref name="Fenby, Jonathan page 383">Fenby, Jonathan ''Chiang Kai-Shek China's Generalissimo and the Nation He Lost'', New York: Carrol & Graf, 2004 p. 383.</ref> For example, Chennault opened up a brothel in [[Guilin]] for his pilots and recruited English-speaking prostitutes from Hong Kong who fled to the inland of China to escape the Japanese. He argued that his men needed sex and it was better to have his "boys" visit a brothel that was regularly inspected to reduce venereal diseases.<ref name="Fenby, Jonathan page 383"/> Chennault felt his men were going to visit brothels, regardless of what the rules said, and that was better to have them visit a brothel whose women were inspected for venereal diseases than one that was not since a man in the hospital for a venereal disease was one less man who could participate in the war. Stilwell was enraged when he heard about Chennault's brothel and promptly had it shut down by saying it was disgraceful that an officer of the US Army Air Force would open such an establishment.<ref name="Fenby, Jonathan page 383"/> British Field Marshal [[Alan Brooke]], who met both Stillwell and Chennault in late 1943, wrote that Stillwell was a "hopeless crank with no vision" and Chennault was "a very gallant airman with a limited brain."<ref name="Fenby, Jonathan page 383"/>

In November 1943 the Japanese Army air forces were ready to challenge Allied forces again, and they began night and day raids on Calcutta and [[the Hump]] bases while their fighters contested Allied air intrusions over Burma. In April 1944, the Japanese launched [[Operation Ichi-Go]]—the largest Japanese offensive of all time—that committed 1 million Japanese soldiers to action.<ref name="Fenby, Jonathan page 416">Fenby, Jonathan p. 416.</ref> The 14th Air Force was involved in strafing and bombing attacks against the Japanese advancing on the city of Changsha, which Japanese had tried and failed to take three previous times since 1938, making the city into a symbol of Chinese defiance.<ref name="Fenby, Jonathan page 417">Fenby, Jonathan ''Chiang Kai-shek China's Generalissimo and the Nation He Lost'', New York: Carroll & Graf, 2004 p. 417.</ref> Relations between Stilwell and Chennault reached their low point in 1944.<ref name="Fenby, Jonathan page 383"/> Stilwell used the success of Operation Ichi-Go as proof the fallacy of Chennault's claim that air power alone could defeat Japan while Chennault accused of Stilwell of deliberately taking a defeatist attitude as a gambit to force Chiang to cede more powers of command to him.<ref name="Fenby, Jonathan page 417-418">Fenby, Jonathan pp. 417–418.</ref> As the Japanese took Changsha in June 1944, Chennault criticized Stilwell for trying to command the Chinese armies from Burma, sending a message to Washington saying no-one had seen Stilwell in southern China recently.<ref name="Fenby, Jonathan page 419">Fenby, Jonathan p. 419.</ref>

Following their victory in the Fourth Battle of Changsha, the Japanese began to advance on the city of [[Hengyang]] held by the 10th Chinese Army commanded by General [[Xue Yue]].<ref name="Fenby, Jonathan page 419"/> The 14th Air Force bombed the supply lines of the advancing Japanese and Chennault reported to Washington that his "boys" had shot down 210 Japanese planes in the aerial battles over Hengyang.<ref name="Fenby, Jonathan page 420">Fenby, Jonathan p. 420.</ref> However, the Chinese soldiers holding Hengyang were ill-equipped, with the American journalist Teddy White reporting that only a third of the Chinese infantrymen had rifles, their artillery consisted of just two French artillery guns from World War I, and the majority lived on starvation rations of one bowl of rice per day.<ref name="Fenby, Jonathan page 420"/> Despite their bravery in resisting Japanese assaults on Hengyang all through July and August 1944, the Chinese weaknesses in regards to weapons and food began to tell with Xue reporting his men badly needed supplies to hold Hengyang.<ref name="Fenby, Jonathan page 420"/> Channault wanted to airdrop food, weapons and ammunition to the 10th Army but was vetoed by Stilwell on the grounds that to air drop supplies would "set a precedent for further demands that could not be met."<ref name="Fenby, Jonathan page 421">Fenby, Jonathan p. 421</ref> Chennault did have the pilots of the 14th Air Force brave Japanese anti-aircraft fire to fly in as low as 300 feet to drop supplies of food, ammunition and medical supplies, but Xue stated he needed far more.<ref name="Fenby, Jonathan page 421"/> A request from Chennault to air drop 500 tons of weapons to the 10th Army was rejected by Stilwell as a "waste of effort."<ref name="Fenby, Jonathan page 421"/> On 7 August 1944, Xue reported the Imperial Japanese Army had broken his defense lines and entered Hengyang and the next day, Hengyang fell with Xue ordering his men to abandon the city.<ref name="Fenby, Jonathan page 421"/> Fenby wrote that Hengyang would have probably fallen as the Japanese had committed overwhelming force, but the city could have held out far longer than the seven weeks that it did if only Xue and his 10th Army had received more supplies, stating that Stilwell was remiss in attempting to command Sino-American forces fighting in Burma and in China at the same time.<ref name="Fenby, Jonathan page 421"/>

The Japanese ground forces advanced and seized Chennault's forward bases. Slowly, however, the greater numbers and greater skill of the Allied air forces began to assert themselves. By mid-1944, Major General [[George Stratemeyer]]'s [[China Burma India Theater|Eastern Air Command]] dominated the skies over Burma, a superiority that was never to be relinquished. At the same time, logistical support reaching India and China via the Hump finally reached levels permitting an Allied offensive into northern Burma. Chennault had long argued for expansion of the airlift, doubting that any ground supply network through Burma could provide the tonnage needed to re-equip Chiang's divisions. However, work on the [[Ledo Road]] overland route continued throughout 1944 and was completed in January 1945. Training of the new Chinese divisions commenced; however, predictions of monthly tonnage (65,000 per month) over the road were never achieved. By the time Nationalist armies began to receive large amounts of supplies via the Ledo Road, the war had ended. Instead, the airlift continued to expand until the end of the war, after delivering 650,000 tons of supplies, gasoline, and military equipment.{{citation needed|date=September 2014}} Chennault was replaced as commander of the U.S. 14th Air Force by Lt. Gen. [[George E. Stratemeyer]] in June 1945.  Following the surrender of Japan in August 1945, Chennault retired from the Army Air Forces on October 31, 1945.