The Panay Project

Research into the historical events surrounding the bombing of the U.S.S. Panay, December 12, 1937 on the Yangtze River near Nanking, China

Notations go from oldest to newest. (Scroll to bottom and that is most recent post!)

In this site are my research notes and gatherings of lore about the Panay. The following quote is from the "The Forrestal Diaries", edited by Walter Mills, The Viking Press 1951. Outside the Palomar College cafeteria today were tables of old books for sale and I picked this one up for three dollars. I had checked its index for anything about the Panay and found a pretty good passage, and so acquired it.

The Panay Project is two or three months old now, though my interest in the Panay goes back to 1988 or so when I first happened upon the story in the April 1967 issue of American Heritage magazine (the old hard backs). This semester at Palomar I thought to use the story for a project in GC105, an offset printing introductory class. So I've been using the web and the libraries and used bookstores to find things, so many things that I've thought to build a website for my Frontpage Web class! Anyway, I think that's how I got from there to here...

General discussion about the functions of the National Security Council--its relation to the President, the Cabinet, and to the Bureau of the Budget.

Norstad confirmed my impression that State under Acheson's leadership had been very dubious about the creation of the council and would undoubtedly try to castrate its effectiveness. It was his view, however, that it was an essential link because so many decisions that now had to be made were a composite of military and political questions. He did, however, express considerable misgivings about the extent of military participation in diplomatic decisions. This flowed, in his opinion, from the paucity of trained people in the State Department and the consequent necessity of drafting people from the military to fill in the gap. Continuance of this practice he regarded as not in the interests of the Military Establishment, which in due course would come to be attacked as exercising too powerful an influence upon our foreign policies. The actual facts of the matter, he said, were contrary to public impression--it was usually the military people who had to hold back the sporadic and truculent impulses of political people and diplomats who do not realize the consequences of aggressive action. He cited for example the incident of last September when Yugoslavs shot down American flyers. Acheson was all for an immediate and aggressive use of American Air fighter power over Yugoslavia. Norstead at that time had to point out to him that such a demonstration would inevitably mean war and we would be exposing relatively green and untrained pilots to a superior and competent enemy. I said this was an example of what I believed the Security Council should be for: To make a careful examination of situations and incidents and to avoid "stumbling into war". The opposite, I said, was the Panay incident [in 1937 , when Japanese airplanes sank the U.S.S. Panay, a river gunboat, in the Yangtze], where we should have seen to it that we went to war--if we had it would probably have avoided World War II.

Forrestal of course, has dubious fame as one of the founding members of Magic 12, the super secret cabal that manages the leftovers from the flying saucer crash at Roswell, New Mexico. My sister studies ufos and she would be much amused to see that my research of the Panay Incident has dovetailed with her's of the Roswell Incident. Both, by the way, can be seen in near proximity to one another by typing in the subject word "incident" on any of the web's major search engines--Yahoo, MSN, Netscape; and lately I like Chubba! Note above the use of the word "incident". It could be a few months ago...(4/6/00)

Actually, I went back and did this, punched in "incident" and they're not that close. But it was a thought. And "Dogpile" has become my favorite search engine. My apologies for misspellings, either that or some vandal keeps changing my Panay into Pansy!

A personal note: Military things are not in my purview. I pondered that word for a week. As time goes on I'll add links and so forth which I think the military folk will appreciate. There's some nice sites on the web, and I've found some good books. But I'm not a fountain of militaria! For now, just typing in the major nouns in one of the search engines like Dogpile will take you many of the places I've been to gather things.

Geahh! It's all such a tangle. I'm reading Chennault's "Way of the Warrior", (fighter) and just finished reading the biography of Stilwell by the authoress of "The Gun's of August", the "August" book being a book I read when I was eighteen. She was in China of the 1930's and I'll have to track that down too!

Stilwell and Chennault didn't get along, and they were near one another in China when the Panay was attacked. Chennault was near Nanking on the 11th, and Stilwell in Hankow. Stilwell was military attaché, and Chennault, well, I dont know for sure what he was...he was helping Madam Chiang Kai-Shek run the fledgling Chinese air force as a retired civilian from the U.S. Army Air Force. I gotta sort this out and restructure the whole presentation of Panay.

Perry in his book at the end lists ten or so things that may have motivated the Japanese to bomb the Panay, one was that it was carrying captured airplane parts from the Japanese. Perry must have got that from "Way of the Warrior" where Chennault fesses up to just such a scenario--they were parts he had crated up.

What I've had in mind is to use the text of the four page booklet and link it to all the web sites and make a reference page for the books and such I find "off" web. Having done that, I will stem off. At least that's the thought...

I happened upon Chennault standing beside his airplane near Nanking in "Ding Hao", a book about the Flying Tigers, but it just jumps away from that scene. It was taken from "Way of the Warrior" and Chennault jumps away from it too in his own book. This to say, he doesn't dwell on Nanking, though his description of the battle for it is the best I've found. He had a keen interest, as it was his fledglings that were fighting in the air against the Japanese.

Today, I found a marvelous scene of the communist victory parade in Shanghai, 1949. Oh, this would make Chennault twirl.

And today I read the current Scientific American articles about war in third world countries. Their depiction of how children are conscripted into fighting in these wars goes right together with a description of just how the Japanese military went about training its soldiers that I have from Alcott's "My War with the Japanese".

In Chennault and Alcott are two different descriptions of "Black Saturday" in Shanghai. Not descriptions, explanations, of how the Chinese errantly bombed their own citizens. This in August of '37, an event Admiral Yarnell had arrived just in time to witness on his flagship "Augusta" in Shanghai harbor .

Alcott is a curiosity too, I haven't been able to find anything about or by him except the one book. He worked for a Shanghai newspaper and radio station.

Alcott's book is a rant at times, as is Chennault's. Chennault is just plane gone in his forward. Alcott warns against the Japanese, Chennault against the communists, and Stilwell didn't like Chiang Kai-Shek.

Well, I've been thinking up a long post about the two different descriptions of Black Saturday, the errant bombs that landed in Shanghai. I've thought to quote Chennault's description, and set it aside Alcott's description. And there are others.

It presents a time problem, how much time can I spend comparing, and how much time a reader would give to it. The accounts of the Panay bombing have this different descriptions problem too. And, if you've been acquainted with the current Nanking controversies among scholars, you know what a tangle the different descriptions of the battle for Nanking have become.

If two authors have different descriptions, both can't be right. And the truthfulness of one, or the other, sometimes both, or all of them, becomes doubtful. It's the kind of thing that keeps historians employed, and self amused!

Chennault say the Chinese bombers just misjudged their bombing run, Alcott that flak damaged the bomb racks, and dislodged a bomb. It blew up on Nanking Road in Shanghai. In the harbor Admiral Yarnell aboard the Augusta saw the whole thing, and his ship got hit too by near misses of other bombs targeted at Japanese ships.

Researching another version that appears in The Japanese Imperial Conspiracy by David Bergamini, I actually found a mistake, not so much about Shanghai, but about Chennault. I think its a good example of what happens when historians write. What can go wrong. Their head is filled with sources, and sometimes the timeline gets confused...

In the first chapter Bergamini gives an account of Nanking, (and of the Panay--one of the weaker ones), and mentions Madam Chiang Kai-Shek as directing the Chinese air force. A few pages later Chennault's name shows up, and he is depicted as being sent, or loaned, to China to help with the air war. When I saw this my eyes lit up, this is 1937!, I didn't know the Flying Tigers were in China in 1937! Chennault is the famous general who put together the Flying Tigers. Now, just recently, I had watched the PBS show about the Flying Tigers. At their inception, there was a problem delivering 100 P-40's to China. And for awhile, the show stated, they were delayed in crates in San Diego. Now, Bergamini goes through the time line of the battle for Nanking, and says that on December 7 (the city falls on the twelfth) Chennault was fighting, but was hampered because his planes were delayed in San Diego. This is 1937. The P-40s were delayed in 1941, when the Flying Tigers, the AVG, were put together.

But, but, and this I didn't know, Chennault, himself, and all alone, was in China as an advisor to Madam Chiang Kai-Shek, who indeed was it seems in charge of the Chinese air force, though just what responsibilities were hers, and what the Generalissimo's, I dont know!

Chennault in China is a wonder! It may well be what set me off on this whole extension of Panay on the web. Anyway...

So, Bergamini must have known of two stories, Chennault and Madam Chiang Kai-Shek, a 1937 story, and Chennault and the Flying Tigers, a 1941 story, and mixed them up in his first chapter which centers on the fall of Nanking. The book Ding Hao has Chennault's early years in China, but its story is taken from Chennault, "Way of the Fighter". (Chang's "Nanking" book may explain Chennault's choice of title:she writes, "Bushido"warrior a Japanese word used by the samurai to depict their chosen path, translates as "Way of the Warrior".)

"The United States sent retired Air Force General Claire Chennault and a score of flying adventurers, but American planes, already bought and shipped, were being off loaded and held in California ports." p22

"A tiny Chinese air force, commanded by Madam Chiang Kai-shek, was doing its best to sink the Japanese fleet with ten- and twenty-pound bombs." p11

Is it a goof? Oh, it's slippery... Are the California ports, San Diego? Are the planes P-40s? Ten, twenty pound bombs! Yikes! Was Chennault "sent"? As a general no less? (He was made general in '41...I think,... certainly after Pearl Harbor when he was reinstated in the Army.) A score of flying adventurers? That's 20. (just write 20!)

I found some of these early pilots on the web: a nice story, one called, "Before the Flying Tigers"; another a baseball statistics like listing of the exploits of the Chinese pilots; and yesterday I was keyword searching, "Okumiya". Okumiya is one of the Japanese pilots who bombed the Panay, and later become officer in charge of the Japanese air force at the end of the war--a kinda of Japanese Chennault. All this is new to me, and a marvel! I had first come across Okumiya in a Chinese News Digest web account where he describes Nanking. After the twelfth, he rode around the country side looking for downed planes. Yes, he says, he saw some of the atrocities. I even found his book about it listed on the web, but it's in Japanese. I shouldn't say that was the first time, I believe his comments and story of the Panay are in Perry's "The Panay Incident", the first source I read. But it didn't impress... That happens in a study, you have to go back and forth.

It's possible Chennault and Okumaiya flew by one another--Chennault in his Curtis, Okumiya in his Susie, and while aloft they both could have looked down on the Yangtze and seen the Panay, 27 miles upriver from Nanking, December 12, 1937!

Goofs like these, and worse, outright plagiarisms, stealings, borrowings, etc., run rife in histories, but to nail them down is so time consuming, that the story tellers get away with them.

I know I can find them. And maybe that is what is important, to know they are there, that they creep into everyone's stories. You know, "with a grain of salt..." the historian's path.

Maybe the "bought and shipped" refers to some Curtis fighter planes, that could be...gotta go to the library and check...

Iris Chang's book about Nanking, the recent account at the center of the discussions of Nanking currently going on (I found two sites where instructors had assigned the book) uses the pejorative title of the event. Many authors do, but I dont. Her repetitive use of the pejorative makes the book stand out certainly, along with the pictures. Many, I think, like myself, see a war propaganda like drum beat in it.

Anyway, her two maps of Nanking are taken right out of Bergamini's "Japan's Imperial Conspiracy". A little retouching has been done with a computer drawing program. As near as I can tell the source of the maps isn't credited. She doesn't have a bibliography, source books are imbedded in the notes to pages, or in the book's text. Bergamini is sourced, but not specifically for the maps. Much of the text looks to be out of other authors' books, with a little computer word processing retouching.

I've seen this text alteration in a lot of books. Authors building their books on other books just sort of do it. My Panay booklet at places looks lifted, though I wrote it off the top of my head. Maybe I'll get around to showing that, it's interesting, and goes back to what my poetry teacher warned me about writing poems, and why no one should read T.S.Eliot if they intend to write poems!

In Chang's book the photographs will make you cringe. They're right up there with "War against War" a book of shock photos of WWI. One, the beheaded Chinese soldier on a barb wire barricade fence pole, sourced to "Alliance for the Preserving the Truth of Sino-Japanese War" appears in Life Magazine, January 10 issue, 1937. The caption there explains freezing weather has preserved it outside the walls of Nanking.

I dont know if Chang realizes the photo is from Life magazine, or if Life magazine knows she used it! Maybe it's not important...

This particular magazine has the story of the Panay in it too. It has the famous photos, and it tells a good story. It also gives a good account of the fall of Nanking. I went to the library today and reread it, it was one of the first stories I'd read in my research. But I hadn't gone to the library today explicitly looking for it, I had remembered seeing that beheaded Chinese soldier somewhere, and that's why I went.

While I was sitting at a table reading the Life magazine (bound with the whole year in red binders) I looked up, and on a table shelf in front of my nose was the index for American Heritage Magazine. I had looked for this earlier, and hadn't been able to find it. So I finished with the Life, and opened the index, and looked for more about Panay, Nanking, Shanghai, Chennault, Stilwell, China....

This is where my Panay interest started. In the late 1980's, in fact around the time of the Persian Gulf War, I was reading these old hardback magazines almost daily at work during lunch. I dont know where they came from, but no sooner than I'd read a few, than a few more would show up in the lunch room. They are really nice stories. At the time, the guided missile attack on the USS Stark seemed similar to the story of the Panay I was reading. Much, I suppose, as the capture of the Pueblo by the North Koreans reminded Perry, the author, of the Panay Incident. He dedicates his book, The Panay Incident, to the Pueblo.

I read a lot of these American Heritages, and without knowing it, I had squirreled away a lot of knowledge of the "events surrounding" the Panay Incident.

I had read about Stilwell, and forgotten all about it. In this recent effort to research the Panay, I got interested in Captain Roberts, an army officer on board the Panay, and thought to search out what the army was doing in China, along with the Marines, and Chennault! I spotted a book about Stilwell, saw the author was the one who wrote "The Gun's of August", and checked it out.

Now, today, looking at the old Heritage magazines, I realized I had read Tuchman's story of Stilwell back when I read about the Panay. It was published about the same time in the magazine in three parts. It's a fine story, with photos. And when I'm reading her Stilwell story today, I see a photo I know I'd seen somewhere else. It shows a Japanese man, with his pants rolled up, wading in Pearl Harbor, a model Pearl Harbor, with all the battleships, and harbor buildings, miniaturized. The caption says the model was made by the Japanese after the bombing of Pearl Harbor for a propaganda film. It's a stage set!

Where I had seen it before was in MHQ The Quarterly Journal of Military History, Spring 2000. When I found the Naval History Magazine, Feb. 2000 in the bookstore, with the story of the Tutuila, a sister gunboat of the Panay, I had thumbed through MHQ and seen this picture. I bought it too.

The article the picture is in is about the Japanese pre- planning the attack on Pearl Harbor. I was reading Bergamini's Japan's Imperial Conspiracy, and thought, Whoah! There's Bergamini's proof, Hirohito in bowler hat wading in Pearl Harbor model.

"To ensure dominance in the Pacific, the Japanese had to cripple the U.S.Pacific Fleet. Among the preparation was a scale model (above) of Pearl Harbor's Battleship Row. ..."

I know I read somewhere that Hirohito loved a bowler hat, so maybe that is Hirohito in the picture, though MHQ doesn't state that. Tuchman's story just says it was a civilian.

In the photo the ships are lined up in two rows side by side, just like they were on December 7, which argues against the photo being taken before Pearl Harbor. How would the Japanese know exactly how the ships would be anchored? Oh, spies of course, but there is another way.

They could have read about it in an article written years earlier by Admiral Stark when he was a young man. He wrote up a scenario warning against parking ships in neat rows, nose to nose. I've lost this, it was a web page, but I'll keep looking for it. It was a "Proceedings..." story.

The USS Stark, hit by exocet missiles in the Persian Gulf, fired by Iraq, was named after Admiral Stark.

The Stark being attacked, and then later Iraq invading Kuwait, is self similar to the Panay bombing, and then later Pearl Harbor. The comparison isn't one of scale, but of kind. The events are kinda alike. At the very least, they've exasperated me!

I gotta back track here to Chennault and the Curtiss fighters. Aviation buffs can clear this up in a second. It takes me a little longer.

The P-40s were made by Curtiss, and sometimes called warhawks. A Curtiss bi-wing called a Curtiss Hawk, was what the Chinese were flying over Nanking and Shanghai. Their fighters that is...I'm not sure what kinda plane dropped the Black Saturday bombs.

A Curtiss monplane fighter had reached Chennault in 1937. It was kinda his personal plane. I'll study this out and get it all exact. The sources are in the library and the web, I just have to go back to them...

So, today, I pretty much finished up pondering the beheaded Chinese soldier (the medieval Japanese had a formal ceremony for viewing decapitated enemies) but thumbing through the American Heritage I find story of The Rainbow War Plan being leaked to the press, and published in a Chicago newspaper on December 4, 1941.

What! Plan Orange (see The Lonely Ships) morphed into the Rainbow Plan. Was Plan Orange published in the daily newspapers, December 4, 1941??

Geeah!!! The Orange Plan took shape in 1911. The war gamers foresaw war with Japan, and basically conceded that an aggressive Japan would easily defeat our forces present in the Pacific. That they would be lost (why you see titles like The Lonely Ships, The Fleet God Forgot, in reference to the Asiatic Fleet). That the Philippines would be taken, maybe even Hawaii. That all we could do in such a circumstance was take the punches and ride them out, and regroup. And then win the war. The Orange Plan is the strategy used in the Pacific Campaign. And it explains things like why the Asiatic Fleet was lost, and why the Philippines were lost.

When Germany became an aggressor, more plans were made, each given a color--eventually they were called Rainbow.

Who leaked the plans to the papers? (I wont even address the boneheads who printed it.) And why? Those are the questions the article goes into... So, next time more about Plan Orange, about Chennault's Cutiss's, and some of his buddies, Marshall, Wedeymeyer, Arnold... And another visit to Shanghai. I gotta regroup myownself!

"sent"Was Chennault...

(T.V.Soong was Chiang Kai-Shek's main man, (at least most of the time), and brother of Madam Chiang Kai-Shek)

It was through Soong's perseverance that the United States finally sent an unofficial American mission to China in 1932 to establish the flying school in Hangchow, which was based upon sound American military precepts of pilot training. It was this mission led by Col. Jack Jouett that laid the foundation for the modern Chinese air force. Roy Holbrook and some twenty other U.S. Air Corps reserve officers turned out some excellent Chinese pilots during the next two years." p60

Ding Hao America's Air War in China 1937-1945, Wanda Cornelius and Thayne Short, Pelican, 1980

Well, there's Bergamini's "sent", and "score", in a book written ten years later. But it's not Chennault. It's 1932, he doesn't arrive until 1937. And the tigers in '41! Jouet's a curiosity too!

The Curtiss planes:about Chennault's... Curtiss Hawk 3, Curtiss Hawk 2, (both biplane fighters), Curtiss Hawk "Special" (P-36, the one Chennault flew), and the Curtiss P-40s.

Okumiya and the other Japanese pilots of the fighter dive bombers attacking the Panay flew Aichi D1A "Susies", another biplane.

"There were three fighter groups supposedly ready for combat stationed at Nanchang. The first group was equipped with Curtiss Hawk 3 biplane dive bombers and the second with Hawk-2 biplanes. The third group consisted of two squadrons of Fiats and one squadron of Boeing P-26s. p62

On one web site I found was an old China snap shot photo with a Curtiss in the foreground, and another different plane behind. Beneath the photo was a question--"Does anyone know what the plane is in the background?" It was a Fiat. They even look like a Fiat.

You know, I have a post in the works about calendars, part of the effort to tie this all together at a future date!

Last night I keyworded Orange War Plan, and Rainbow War Plan, and, well, the U.S. Army web site has a whole big page about the the Orange/Rainbow Plan. And Rainbow search located the "Round Table". Aakkk! It's too early to bring in the Warlords of Atlantis. But this morning search of Orange War Plan, actually I was searching Parades, came up with the Protestant Orange Men, or Orange Order, organization in 1795, so the Warlords are knocking at the gate!

I was searching Parades because of the victory parade in Shanghia, and the thought was percolating that just a post on victory parades, Chiang Kai-Shek's, Mao's, Matsui's, would be cool. The first site I visited had a march song, and little animations, and was really heart lifting. Ah, but I put in "shanghai parades" and found a site that indeed has film of the Shanghai Parade, among many other films of early China. One mentions "American gunboat" so I might get that, or ask, they offered "free research".

Then I trundled off to Barnes and Noble bookstore in Temecula, and I found a magazine all about Cutiss biwings.

And then, this is really really neat, insomuch as I'm on a roll finding paired photos, I go hunt for the web site I lost with the "What's this plane?" question (yesterday's post tail). I find it, search MSN,China Pilot, and I find the picture with the question. The plane that looks like a Fiat (the Italian biplane) is actually behind a pilot. Looking at it again it dont look like a Fiat... Then I notice two other, What's this plane? photos. And one I look at, a Curtiss Hawk II, seen from the side, is the same plane that is in the magazine I just bought! I mean, it's the same plane, but in the magazine its seen from three quarters front! The number on the plane on the web is 39, the one in the magazine is obscured by the front lower wing, but it looks like 33, or 39. I emailed the site, invited a look at mine, but how anyone can drill down to here is beyond me! I'm a little shy anyway, and feel it might be just as well!

I thought I was gonna have to tell how Chennault morphed into the CIA, but it's been done--"China Pilot" by Felix Smith. I haven't read it, but the reviews scope it out. Lucky me.

I'm not off the hook though, I'm working on the Shanghai bombing...a new book out about Shanghai has it in it...another version!

And I found too the "China Pilot" that flew over the pyramids of China (1945)--that's part of the calendar post! It's a monster--Thomas Jefferson, The Great Pyramid of Egypt, the omphalos stone at Delphi, pigeons, and a double headed eagle from Eyeuk? Turkey- each foot on a rabbit?- engraved on a stone bull, Delos, the Delian League,...and Yamashita's gold!

And I found a student essay, a Japanese student in America, google, sino-japanese war, and it compares our text books with theirs. It's very good by a kind heart.

I went to ebay and yahoo auctions...I like auctions! Every Wednesday in Santa Ana they have one that I used to go to.

I look for Panay memorabilia...anything. Earlier I have found a Thanksgiving Day Menu, and mail postcard "cachets" and some other things. (for my digital scrapbook!)

I widen the search with keywords, and I've kind of drifted into Shanghai. The Panay has been my ground zero, but I think the bombing in Shanghai might be a better source for the ripples. I view the Panay bombing like its a stone thrown in a time-pool. Ripples go out, into the future, into the past (actually, I guess, from the past!).

I've bought one book from ebay, "Give me back my rivers and hills", an account by a Chinese soldier, and Baum's "Shanghai '37" from Yahoo.

I think up different ways to search, as I get different things with what would seem to be the same keywords. "china" doesn't bring up some things I found with "china 1937" (I track through a couple decades: china 1936, china 1935, etc.). I guess much of the indexing is done "robotically" but I'm amazed at the efforts to put things on the web.

I drifted off to Google and I put in "shanghai 1937" and scrolled through 500 hits out of over 5,000. I must have visited 30, and book marked 20, and copied 15 things. No telling what all is there in the rest of the 5,000.

It's strange, but the search engines have actually made a hypermedia story of the whole era. And this keyword may be the best entry. It's too vast for any one web site, or book, or person, to tell, --or any one assessment, or opinion, or viewpoint to hold sway. And the story is constantly changing.

Oh, and I looked up "china pyramid". They showed up in aerial photos in 1944. I dont know if its old or new, but one from the air at a site shows all the pyramids. You know, a real "water on mars" photo!"

Well, Cassandra woofed at me about my lifestyle, so to cool off I went for a drive. I thought to get up to the mountains, but between daydreaming and missed freeways I ended up in the Palm Spring's Air Museum.

It's a cool place, literally, on June 26 in Palm Springs two big warehouse with old planes is cool--air conditioned.

I took in the sites, along the walls are Quonset hut like displays, and while peering at the Chennault and the Flying Tigers (some of the same things I've seen on ebay) a docent came by and pointed to a picture of a Bob Hope sitting in the cockpit of a P-38--"That's my plane!"

He explained he became a docent after his wife expressed dismay with him being about the house 24 hours a day!

Aaak! I find deja.com and its discussion group search engine, and put in some keywords. All and around about everything I'm posting is there. Fortunately, I didn't find any discussions of the Panay, or Nanking, sooner. It's a little intimidating. One long post about the P-40s for Chennault is longer than my whole site! The following puts a different spin on the Panay Incident!

Up until the Panay incident the US was not all that favorably disposed toward the Chinese, and not all that hostile to the Japanese. The US had generally been favorably disposed to Japan since the days of Adm Perry and the USN in particular loved Japan--and loathed China. Admiral Tolly Kemp, who served in the US Asiatic Fleet pre-Pearl Harbor says in his memoir, "It is clear from the correspondence of the times and the operating schedules of the ships that there was little question as to the Navy's preference [for Japan over China]. The land of cherry blossoms, geisha and orderly people was the choice on every count."
Officers of the two nation's navies were quite friendly, with many Japanese naval officers having attended the US Naval Academy, including Rear Admiral (then Captain) Teisaburo Fukuda, ranking Japanese naval officer at the Hankow station, where he dealt with matters relating to US and other Western gunboats on the Yangtze. When Fukuda was promoted to Rear Admiral in Oct. 1941 a blowout party was held for him and his staff by the officers of the USS Wake, sister ship of the Panay. A month or so later, when the Wake got word to leave her post at Hankow and sail down the Yantze to Shanghai, the Japanese high command had ordered no foreign shipping, civilian or military could transit the river. However, the local Japanese naval authorities not only allowed the Wake to leave but actually sent their own gunboats along to escort it all the way to Shanghai to ensure no harm befell it. The Wake subsequently was seized by Japanese marines on Dec. 8 while at Shanghai, but the regard and friendship of the Japanese and Americans was such that while the HMS Peterel, a British gunboat similar to the Wake was fired on and sunk with survivors being shot as they swam for their lives, the Wake was simply occupied and Japanese troops, who knew the commander, let him pass and go to the US consulate. He was later arrested there but the Japanese allowed the American enlisted sailors to leave unmolested and disappear into the crowds. All in all very curious times, with the Japanese being quite put out at having to turn on their American friends while apparently being quite glad of the chance to kick the British in the ass. The Panay incident itslef had been sparked by a Japanese order to fire on all **British** ships on the Yangtze--not American.
During the attack, by the way--which does appear to have been
accidental--Japanese Army units along the river banks tried to wave off the attacking Japanese navy planes until they were taken under fire by strafing Japanese planes and were forced to take cover.

An interesting what-if might be: What if the US and Japan struck a firm alliance sometime post Adm Perry and acted in concert to drive the European powers from Asia?

The "what if...?" posters often find the Panay a starting point. I think the source is Kemp Tolley's books and some garbeling of Perry's book. I'm reading a book that has a brief account of the HMS Peterel and the USS Wake. It doesn't suggest the Wake crew were given special treatment by the Japanese. They were all ashore on leave I think, the boat itself having become a radio station. The other gunboats of the Yangtze Patrol had already left for the Phillipines (the Tutuila stuck in Chunking, waiting for Hemingway's visit!)-- among them the twin sister ship of the Panay, the USS Oahu which has a story of her own to tell!

After December 7, the British police force was left in place by the Japanese, and continued to function in Shanghai. Shanghai was one strange place.

An "order" to fire on all British ships is a curiosity, perhaps it refers to December 7, 1941.

(1)?On page 62, she stated that Malco Pole visited Nanking and saw Drum Tower.?However, according to The Travels of Malco Pole, he ( 1254 - 1324 ) did not take a trip to Nanking.?It was in 1382 that the drum tolling the hour was set on Drum Tower located in the heart of Nanking as we know it today.

I just read a magazine that lays it out that Marco Polo didn't even go to China, his famous story being culled from extant sources. (And the Drum Tower itself was destroyed in '27, I think, or sometime earlier--Nanking was overrun many times--during the Taiping insurrection five or six times--each time massacres and atrocities.)

I tend not to believe that a significant dash number revision would be nothing more than a "bookkeeping entry". Dash number changes are made for a reason relating to aircraft design and configuration. In every other instance, Curtiss did not institute a dash number change without significant changes to the aircraft. Let's look at the Hawk 75 as an example. The H75A-1 was very much like the P-36A. However, this fighter was built for the French. It incorporated an export version of the R-1830, as well as a different armament and cockpit arrangement. Curtiss' H75A-2 was manufactured for France too. However, two wing guns were added, which required changes to the outer wing configuration and generated 26 Engineering Change Orders. The H75A-3 was made to another French contract, but differed with a later, more powerful Pratt & Whitney engine. One last order was placed by the French for the H75A-4. This fighter was fitted with a Wright R-1820 engine. Again, this

required a substantial number of engineering changes. So here we have 4 dash numbers and every one of them denoted a change to the aircraft. Now, the H75A-5 was built as the prototype for those to be manufactured by CAMCO. It differed in several major subassemblies as well as in the armament and cockpit layout. Norway ordered the H75A-6. This was based upon the French -3, but incorporated a different gun installation as well as instrumentation and cockpit modifications. When the Dutch ordered the H75A-7, it was also based upon the -4. However, this small batch required 4 major, and 137 minor engineering changes to meet the contract requirements. Norway later ordered the H75A-8, which was identical to the -6 except that it was fitted with the R-1820, which was a major change. Finally we get to the H75A-9. These were ordered by Iran and incorporated many of the of the changes of the -8 with the exception of cockpit layout, gun caliber and instruments. These were taken by the RAF and redesignated as Mohawk IVs. However, they had many detail differences from the French -4 (of which Britain obtained several and also designated as Mohawks IVs).

Every different dash number change was accompanied by a significant series of engineering changes. Curtiss did not assign a dash number change because the purchasing agency was different. It assigned dash number changes if the there were changes required to the aircraft as stipulated in the contract. Futhermore, I can find no other instance where any Curtiss aircraft received a dash number/letter designation change without actual modifications to the aircraft. That includes the C-46, XP-60, CW-21, SOC, and SB2C.

Therefore, I find it to be highly unlikely that the H81A-3 designation was assigned simply because they were sold to China. There were almost certainly notable changes to the aircraft. Which leads us back around to the externally sealed fuel tanks and the lack of external shackles and drop tank plumbing which were incorporated on every Tomahawk IIb delivered to the RAF.

I tend to believe that when Chennault walked into Curtiss' Buffalo factory, he brought along a list of specific requirements. Since the AVG fighters do not conform exactly to the either the Tomahawk IIa or IIb configuration, the H81A-3 designation makes sense. These 100 fighters were probably manufactured to specific contractural requirements/agreements that required Curtiss to bump up the dash number to a -3 to annotate the changes properly. If that is the case (and it makes good sense), then the Chinese fighters were a model unto themselves, which would (should) solve all disagreements on this issue.

Deja.com is inteteresting, as they use my colored type idea. I dont know exactly how to reference the quotes, and have put the author's email addresses I found with the posts, and the keyword I used to locate, so that should help finding them.

deja.com Keyword: "Nanking" brought up 14 pages, so it gets a little out of hand, and a little insoluable!

In one book I'm reading it explains how the writers in revolutionary China/Shanghai around about the time of Sun Yat Sen's efforts begen writing their works in vernacular Chinese. Kinda like authors in medeival times leaving off writing in Latin and using common English.

THAT kinda thing is what the calendar post is about. I'm casting about for an entryway into the calendar post. The entry into the "events surrounding December 12, 1937" is the bombing of the USS Panay.

In the same book is the mention of a famous Chinese book about "108 Beggars, or 108 Thieves..."

Now, 108 caught my eye, as it's a number that shows up in different cultures. And sports--108 stitches on a baseball, all of them. It's a rule!

So I punched it into Yahoo, and Dogpile, and "108" brings up millions...anyway, there was the Buddhist connotations. It's part of Buddhist lore. Just exactly what I dont know. But I found a rosary made of 108 double headed skull beads. Just what I need... And yoga instructions that if you can take just 108 breaths in 24 hours you will have succeeded to Nirvana. I think that's one breath every 13 minutes or so...

But I could see no connection between 108 stitches on a baseball with Buddhism, though the story of the thieves likely is connected--Buddhism being a major religion in China.

So I look up baseball lore...and find that eighty percent of our baseballs are made in China! Sheesh. There is something special about 108, I suspect, and I continued pondering...

And I think it might be an angle. A bond angle of 108 degrees. The bond angle of a water molecule, the two hydrogens to the oxygen, is 105 degrees--Disney fancies that their Micky Mouse logo represent on another plane the water molecule--anything to further ubiquity of the Mouse! So what has 108 degree bond angle?

Well, the only thing I can figure is the pentagon, the angle of the legs of a five pointed star is 108. Five fold symmetry is the symmetry of life. What molecule or element has a pentagonal symmetry?

The Chinese authors changed the stitching of their writing. Instead of writing in Classical Chinese, they wrote in the current spoken Chinese.

In 1911 they also changed their calendar, and ended over two thousand years of Imperial rule... They adopted the calendar of the West.

Well, maybe the octupus has managed to put a pebble in the clams lips...we'll see. The calendar post will take awhile...

It wasn't Stark who wrote up the problem with parking battleships in ordered rows, it was another fellow. My bad.

I had most of it right. I'd lost the web source, but it came back how I found it. It was on Chubba using keyword: Chennault. And, here it is...

Although the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor caught us off guard, not all American military planners were surprised. As far back as the 1920s some officers warned that the Japanese were to be our next enemy and that an attack on our Navy at a place like Pearl Harbor was inevitable. In 1924, Army Brig. Gen. William Mitchell reported his opinions concerning the Pacific Ocean area.
In his report he suggested how the Japanese might attack Pearl Harbor by air at 7:30 a.m. and that battleships would be particularly vulnerable to aerial attack. A 1927 Navy photograph of the U.S. fleet in Guantanamo Bay showed how the orderly formation of battleships was "good hunting" for airplanes.

In 1937, Navy Lt. Comdr. Logan Ramsey published an article that was the basis for a news editorial. He stated that battleships anchored in neat lines were ideal targets for attack by aircraft. He also concluded that our fleet would be attacked first in order to leave us defenseless against further attacks. Lieutenant Commander Ramsey gained fame later at Pearl Harbor when he broadcast the first alert on December 7:

People at War: Prelude to War National Archives and Records Administration. PRELUDE TO WAR. Although the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor caught us off guard, not all American...
http://www.nara.gov/exhall/people/prelude.html ( AltaVista )

It's probably wrong I guess somehow to post another's posts with imbedded bookmarks and such. Conceivably, one could make a presentation entirely out of other web pages! At times I've thought to make up a kinda walking self guided tour of the "events surrounding the Panay" that are on the web.

Here's the location of another very very good one about "Before the flying tigers..." I found it looking on Chubba with keyword: northrop bombers china. One book I just read said it was Northrop bombers in the Chinese airforce that dropped the bombs on Shanghai (I'm still working up the Black Saturday bombing), and they were 2,000 pounders no less. So I try to track that out...

Chinas Air Forces in the Struggle Against Japan - Before the Tigers: Chinas Air Forces in the Struggle Against Japan Most popular accounts make it sound as if WW2 erupted suddenly in the fall of But, one can easily argue that the war began seve
http://worldatwar.net/chandelle/v2/v2n2/china30s.html ( Lycos

The site is a page from a magazine article, or adapted. It's too long, and outside the bounds of "scholarly discussion", to post here, but it has all the airplanes, and a well written history. And it's for model airplane builders...they have the best stuff.

And I re-found Okumiya riding about Nanking. His account seems objective, but it appears at this site abbreviated and cut to emphasis the sites bias (it's trying to keep Japan out of the UN security council). I read part 2 of his story at another site I've lost, and he attributes the abuses of the soldiers to a simply not knowing what to do with all the prisoners. In my little "Give me back my rivers and hills" book I got from the ebay auction is just such a problem for the Chinese army. They capture some Japanese but can't take them with as they are on the move. They can't let them go, so they shoot them. And too in China, all through this era, no quarter was given. Where this Okumiya quote shows up is particularly grim as it is in context of Unit 731, the notorius Japanese biowarfare group. The Panay seems to have been steaming on the Styx...

Masatake Okumiya, now 89 was a former Imperial navy pilot. After having taken part in the Dec. 12 bombing and sinking of the USS Panay in the Yangtze River, Okumiya traveled in a chauffeur driven car for several days with an interpreter and a bodyguard to search for downed Japanese aircraft and the bodies and belongings of pilots killed during air raids over the city. "I believe that no other people went around inside and outside the walled city, combing the area like me at that time," Okumiya said. He remembers a scene at Lake Xuanwu on Dec. 25. "There I saw numerous bodies in the lake and on its shore. They were so many that I could not count them. They were both young and old, and both men and women," Okumiya told The Japan Times. "The Chinese were bound with their hands behind their backs. About 20 soldiers were beheading the Chinese with their Japanese swords, the beheading task successively taken over by other groups of soldiers. The Chinese were forced to sit on the square so their heads would drop into the river..... The execution was like assembly line work. Some people say that in Nanjing, there were no organized or systematic killings by the Japanese army. But what I saw was nothing other than organized and systematic killings."

I'm not certain Okumiya's story is in the Japan Times. Where I saw it it was dated only a year or so ago, maybe less...

Another thread I'm trying to track is the arms dealing in China. At first I thought I might be dismayed to find that the United States was arms providing/selling to Japan while Japan was warring against China. Specifically airplanes. I find suggestion that aviation parts were sold. That oil and scrap iron was sold is often mentioned,-- e. e. cummings famous poem 'bout pieces of the Chicago L comes to mind. I dont know... No planes, but the Japanese went to school on our technologies, and by the outbreak of WW2 had planes equal or better than ours.

We did sell planes to China. And there were American mercenary pilots flying for China. And what all else is at present still a mystery...

Germany was providing arms to China, and training too. The "Before the tigers" site I just mentioned has that, and when I read about this the famous names of Siemens and Krupp show up.

One book I have says there was a "military mission" at Nanking. John Rabe worked for Siemens. Another book I have has it that Siemen's was selling arms to China. It's not too much of a stretch I feel to speculate that Rabe was arms dealing--a slanderous thought to those trying to portray him as the "the good Nazi of Nanking". Did Krupp and Siemen deal arms to Japan too?!

I've had my own notion of the Warlords. It goes all the way back to my Panay posts to the roundtables on GEnie. That's 10-12 years ago! And how in the world the Panay gets linked up with the Warlords is...well...in the terms of the searchengine Dogpile...FARFETCHED!

bytheby, Yahoo has adobted Google which was inside Dogpile...which was why I liked Dogpile. I still like Dogpile, y'know, the old hound gets off the porch...but my searches now on Yahoo are going better.

To review, back then I read about the Panay at lunch, then about the Stark in the newspapers, so for me the Panay Incident, and the Stark Incident, are linked. Other folk on the web link them all the time too.

I was off and about, and saw the Panay/Stark conundrum in a discussion on deja.com, not too far from where I found the P-40 posts. And I stuck my nose in it... Geeahh, I haven't done that since GEnie, (except by accident, I e-mailed The Sand Pebbles site, and got added to the forum!)

I misspelled aluminuim, infact I dont know how to spell aluminum. I like a l u m i n u m. but I guess that aint it. Anyway, the digressions went to the HIndenberg, and this is my latest (of three) small posts there.

I was reaching around lately for the warlords. There were actual warlords in China. Chiang Kai-Shek was kidnapped by one. And the "Before the tigers" site had that really well done. And I've read the kidnapping story in other books. Filled out, I thought, the kidnapping was an entry to the Generalissimio, and he would be my first Warlord by way of the warlord who kidnapped him. (While kidnapped he meets with Mao, so there's the two major Chinese warlords to begin with).

That's still in the works. But behind the warlord notion is the movie "The Warlords of Atlantis", and maybe behind that is a debate topic I had in sophmor high school English class. The topic was "does might make right" and I can't remember all that I studied or said, but my subject was the ancient Egyptians fighting the invading Hyskos. I've always liked Egyptian stuff...

Hang on to to "does might make right". Seeing that on a web site today reminded me of my debate so many years ago!

I latched on to the film "The Warlords of Atlantis" when posting to GEnie as an articulation of the notion that wars have been the stimulus to technological, and maybe human, evolution. The movie has the idea that ancients from Atlantis have made wars happen in order to make technology go forward. Technology improves our lot in life (???) and if wars make that happen, then wars are justified.

The Atlantians show this to Doug McClure, the star of the movie, (it's a B movie!) as they are trying to persuade him to join with them (he's an alpha male). It's a disgusting scene. All the wars parade across a large screen as he watches, and the Atlantians bask in their handiwork.

Atlantis in the movie is under the sea, and undergound too I think. McClure is part of a group of adventureres looking for treasure. It's a Jules Verne sorta movie...

So when I see "warlords" that movie is in my thoughts... China was rife with warlords.

In the post to deja I asked about the movie Walter Cronkite narrated. I saw this movie about the same time 10-12 years ago that I first read about the Panay. I was taking a journalism class and the instructor regaled us with two films, "Atomic Cafe" (it's elephantitis), and another about the Persian Gulf. The later was a made up documentary about an attack on a US navy ship in the Gulf that perpetrates WW3.

I dont know if Atlantis really existed. Maybe Santorini was it... And I dont know if Atlantians existed in the distant past, or have somehow survived to this day hidden in our midst, or residents still of a hidden away Atlantis underground, undertheocean, on the darksideofthemoon... It could be, I'm always open to fantastic possiblities.

So I go to the web looking for Cronkite Persian Gulf. This I think will give me the name of the made up movie about an unprovoked attack on an American ship in the Persian Gulf that he narrated. It was a corny movie, the acting amateurish. I couldn't find it, and can't answer my own rhetorical question to the deja.com discussion. Should be a law against rhetorical questions--poetry teacher warned me on those too!

Anyway, I found a site that lambasts Walter Cronkite for touting a world government, a government that the US will have to submit to. All the nations wiil be in concordence, with a world parliament, and a judicial branch based on the precedents of Nuremburg (and I would guess the war crime trials of the Japanese). Apparently Cronkite puts forth the notions in a recent book he authored.

This is real warlord of Atlantis stuff, so I copy and paste to word, save to folder, and, and, at the bottom I notice Hoaglands name in blue--a link of some sort. The link explains that Hoagland was assistant to Cronkite. I verify this with Cassandra. Yep.

Hoagland is the UFO fellow. He could regale an audience with Roswell and the UFO crash and magic 12 and the mysteries of Forresstal. But that's not what I was looking up Cronkite for! So I continue...

Sometimes you can't get away from the UFO stuff, and I find a long site with mention of Cronkite embedded in it. The search engines do that...they find keywords embeded in disparate and unrelated web sites.

This site was about "The Serpent Cult", a long warning against...I'm not sure how to describe it...alien lizard warlords. And it goes after George Bush and the Persian Gulf War, among many other things. Among the things was mention of China...

Brunnell alleged that some within the Illuminati were so heartless as to believe that their socialist "World Order" must be brought about even if the orchestrating of wars, etc., had to be accomplished in order to create the conditions necessary for establishing it... or, in other words, that the end justified the means. These lost souls were and are apparently convinced that they have the divine right to decide the fate of nations, and that the masses of humanity exist for no other reason than to serve their cause. They consider themselves "gods" and the rest of humanity as "mere mortals". So much for the end-result of the false promise that was given to man by the serpent race as revealed in Genesis chapter 3, which was that men could be as gods, and that the creature could be independent from or equal to the Creator. The serpent race knew full well that the dis-connection of man from their trust and reliance in the Godhead would result in lost power and dominion over the earth and the beasts, including the serpent race, and as a result the reptilians could take control of that which mankind forfeited, including man himself! Since that ancient time the saurians have been able to find those among humanity who would be willing to believe their false promises in exchange for temporary physical gains.

"What has this to do with Bush policy towards China--or for that matter, Bush's "War on Drugs"? (Note: the last television news reporter to ask Bush a critical question concerning the many narcotics agents who are complaining about how bad the "drug war" was going, was promptly fired from his job shortly after the press conference - Branton)

"George Bush, the first U.S. diplomatic representative to the People's Republic of China back in 1973, was a member of Skull and Bones. So were his father, brother, son, uncle, nephew, and several cousins. Winston Lord, the Reagan-Bush administration Ambassador to China was a member; so were his father and several other relatives. James Lilley, the current Ambassador to China, was a member of Skull and Bones, as was his brother. Except during the Carter administration, every U.S. Ambassador to Beijing since Kissinger's deal with Mao Zedong was
a member of the same tiny Yale cult. A mere coincidence?

"MAO WAS A YALIE - Back in 1903, Yale Divinity School established a number of schools and hospitals throughout China that were collectively known as 'Yale in China.' It has since been shown that 'Yale in China' was an intelligence network whose purpose was to destroy the republican movement of Sun Yat-sen on behalf of the Anglo-American Establishment. The Anglo-American "Establishment" hated Sun, because he wanted to develop China. On the other hand, they loved the Chinese communists because they intended to keep China backward, and were committed to growing dope. One of 'Yale in China's' most important students was Mao Zedong.

"During World War II, 'Yale in China' was a primary instrument used by the U.S. Establishment and its Office of Strategic Services (OSS) to install the Maoists into power. 'Yale in China' was run by OSS operative Reuben Holden, the husband of Bush's cousin, and also a member of Skull and Bones.

"The Maoists made China into the world's largest opium producer.

"'Yale in China' was also closely associated with the New York-based Union Theological Seminary, which has been a center for U.S. subversion of Asia (literal wolves in sheeps clothing - Branton). Every prominent radical leader operating in Korea today, for example, was trained at Union Theological. Union Theological was dominated for twenty years by Henry Sloane Coffin, a U.S. intelligence executive from the Sloane and Coffin families. He was a Skull and Bones member as were a dozen of his relatives.

There have also been various fictionalized movies and TV serials which have in recent years hinted at the reality of the human-saurian conflict. Some of these productions reveal a rather distorted view of alien reality, both human and/or reptilian, yet others are very close to the fact. We will list a few of these here:

WHAT WAITS BELOW - (Movie: A military unit discovers huge underground caverns in which they encounter an ancient tribe of subterranean human troglodytes).

ALIEN(S) - (Movie: Astronauts from earth come in contact with a race of highly-intelligent, egg-laying, reptilian creatures which prove to be an extreme threat to the explorers. Part II is probably closest to actual reality according to
certain reports).

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST - (Series - A human, born deformed yet possessed with great knowledge, becomes the philosophical leader of an underground community within a subterranean realm below a major city).

THX 1138 - (Movie: An underground community, having lost almost all knowledge of the surface world, degenerates into an entranced society of human slaves).

HANGER 18 - (Movie: Based on actual events, although in a fictionalized format. U.S. Government teams discover a crashed disk-like spacecraft containing human occupants and hieroglyphic-like writings identical to those found in ancient Meso-American ruins, which they attempt to decipher for scientific use).

A JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH - (Movie: A classic adventure about a group of explorers who discover a path through an ancient volcano which leads to an underground realm inhabited by saurians and ancient ruins of a human civilization).

"V" - (Mini-series: A race of human-appearing aliens claiming to be benevolent space brothers are found by a resistance group to be humanoid reptilians beneath a human disguise).

THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN - (Movie: An underground biological research lab-base becomes caught-up in a fight to save the world from a deadly, runaway virus).

THEY LIVE - (Movie: A Christian resistance group fight a race of alien beings who have infiltrated most aspects of human society through their chameleon-like ability to appear outwardly human).

THE ENEMY WITHIN - (Movie: An off-shore oil platform looses a horrifying alien being from the depths of the earth).

MOONTRAP - (Movie: Explorers from earth discover a race of ancient human astronauts, prehistoric cousins of humanity, who were forced into cryogenic freeze on the moon after losing an ancient battle with a race of deadly self-perpetuating android beings).

STRANDED - (Movie: A race of human refugees from another planet, fleeing an interplanetary war with a reptilian race, land on earth only to discover new dangers from confused and frightened eartheans).

PREDATOR - (Movie: After the CIA tricks a multi-national special forces unit into fighting a suicide mission in the jungles of South America, the soldiers battle for their lives against a green-blooded chameleon-like alien being which they discover is responsible for many unexplained mutilations).

The Cult of The Serpent
...political convention by the duo of Walter Cronkite and Henry...
...of the Kuwait oil fields and Persian Gulf waters? Do these two...
http://www.newage.com.au/ufo/serpent.html

Subject: Cronkite on the New World Order

CRONKITE ON NWO

If we are to avoid a nuclear World War II, "a system of world order - preferably a system of world government - is mandatory," declares Walter Cronkite in his recent book A Reporter's Life. "The proud nations someday will see the light and, for the common good and their own survival, yield up their precious sovereignty, just as America's thirteen colonies did two centuries ago. When we finally come to our senses and establish a world executive and parliament of nations, thanks to the Nuremberg precedent we will already have in place the fundamentals for the third branch of government, the judiciary."

Commenting on this paean to world government, the Media Research Center suggests that Cronkite has proven "Trilateral Commission paranoids correct."

Subject: Cronkite on the New World Order

Source: The New American
Insider Report, p.11
May 12, 1997

It is not insignificant that Richard C. Hoagland was once Walter Cronkite's associate. Hoagland's Cydonia Monuments on Mars research will be instrumental in implementing the global religion, the Mystery Religion of the Beast Rev. 13 - the End Time Delusion.

Walter Cronkite on New World Order
...is mandatory," declares Walter Cronkite in his recent book A...
...Richard C. Hoagland was once Walter Cronkite's associate....
http://www.crossfields.com/~watcher/nwocronkite.html

I dont know what to make of the "Yale in China" part, but the life of the missionaries, and the schools and churches built in China is part of the Panay events. A missionary drove up in an old Buick and rescued the Panay crew...

The Serpent Cult quote, for all its looseygooseyness, I valued because of the articulation of how wars ratchet upwards mankind's developement. At least to the thinking of some...

Oddly, I once found a counter web site to the notions that we baited Iraq. It suggested that the Russians baited us, and still do...the Kosovo adventure being a trap of some sort.

Is it possible that leaders that fancy themselves atlantian warlords will use armies, and populations, like pieces on a chess board??? All the wargamers are bobbing their heads...

But cons are as much of war planning, and fighting, as they were of the move The Sting.

I dont know how the The Serpent Cult author missed The Warlords of Atlantis movie...or Conan the Barbarian. "Do you expect to live forever!" The web site printed out to 25 10pt pages!

"Skull and Bones is a secret fraternity at Yale University which is restricted to a mere fifteen student members per year. The society was formed in 1832 by General William Russell, whose shipping firm later dominated the U.S. side of the China opium trade. Yale University was founded by Eli Yale, who made his fortune working for the opium smuggling British East India Company.

I dont know if that is true...but the opium trade is an essential part of the events, and the names Russell and Yale get added to the keyword search.

Next on deck: Herman the German, the Atomic Plane, and the little aliens with the cd disks...

Well, I went to the Temecula library thinking about...I'm not sure...it's all gotten to be a little daunting. In the mail came a photocopy of Our Navy magazine article about the Panay. Actually, an editorial. I tried to get the magazine on ebay auction, but couldn't keep up with bids, so asked if I could get copy of article. It's sorta what I expected, but more confusing in a way. The editor covers a lot of the same ground I've covered here...even the warlords.

Today is William of Orange day over in Ireland, and they're rioting. The Orange Order got started in 1795, and I'm going to have to research it...it has something to do with the Panay editorial. (Along with the Saint Simonians) The editor tracks the current (January 1938) troubles in the world back to "secret" societies started up in 1772, but he doesn't name them. This editorial is gonna get the full treatment! But for now, Herman the German...this is pretty cool.

At the library I spot "Cracking the Zero Mystery" by Jim Rearden. It's about the capture of a Japanese Zero that crashed in the Alutions near Alaska. From this Zero we discovered how to defeat them in air combat. Okumiya, who was part of the fighting there, says this information being in our hands was devastating.

I had found this story on the web just the other day while keywording Okumiya. The web page was a quote from this book! So, I brought it home and I've just started to read it... And I check it to see if it mentions Chennault's Zero. In Way of the Fighter he mentions they caught a Zero and studied it. But it's not in this Alaska story. The Alaska story is "the first Zero flown on American soil"...so maybe the author is hedging against Chennault's on Chinese soil... I dunno...it's a nitpick...but the story of the Chinese Zero is Herman the German's...and a great many other things besides.

NAHF Inductee
...Chennault, who had been called to China in 1937 by Madame Chiang...
...Gerhard learned that Nationalist China needed mechanical engineers....
http://www.nationalaviation.org/enshrinee/neumann.html

Gerhard Neumann was sent by Germany to China to help the German advisors to the Chinese army there, but through delays and whatnot, ended up as Chennault's mechanic. He put together a downed Zero. And, later later on, he worked on the Atomic Plane.

Now, the Atomic Plane has been a thoughtHobby of mine ever since I read Feynman say "Woooshhh!" So it's a smile to find the fellow who worked on it surfing China 1937 on Yahoo!

Also, in Yahoo China 1937 I find the story of an archaeological find in China during 1927-38. Graves with little people in them with big heads, and gravegoods of 31 inch disks grooved like CDs. Oh, it's the the little Chinese aliens...I've seen 'm before in Cassandra's UFO stuff. The web page is well done. The author has the same frustration with photographs that I'm encountering!

He mentions that the disks are made of granite, and floats the notion that they could be imprinted. And you know that's got me thinking...if just bare stone can be imprinted...

During an expedition into a remote, isolated region of Tibet in 1937, an archeologist by the name of Chu Pu Tei made an amazing discovery. 700 discs were allegedly recovered from some caves that tunneled deep into the mountainside. Also found were numerous graves, which contained the remains of humanoid-like beings that were very short with disproportionately large heads. On the walls of one cave was found some cave drawings, replete with what appeared to be star maps and a sketch of what those beings might have looked like.

I've been working on my nephew's computer, and since it's moving north soon, and I'm not, I've been cleaning house. For the last four months I've been posting things to a weblog I've made researching the Panay here. That continues, but it's gotten too cumbersome here on the web, plus I find myself latching onto other folks webstuff and reposting it, that I've...taken it off! Heck.

I was using Front Page, and in using it I found answers to how to gather things from the web, and normal medias too, and save them. So I'll just keep adding to the long scroll. Or likely break it into pages.

Well, it's all too interesting just to hide away, so I'll continue to post on Yahoo at my website!

The Panay Project (Weblog 1)

6/4/00--7/15/00

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