CHINESE AVIATION is a detailed study of aviation in China. More than 400 different types of aircraft from many of the world's aircraft manufacturing countries were used in China during the period before 1949! In addition a number of types were developed and produced inside China. Chinese aviation was in fact much more extensive and diversified than has previoualy been generally understood. The main scope of the book is aircraft and aviation in China during the period prior to 1937. Chinese Air Force operations. especially during the war with Japen. have been treated elsewhere and are normally not detailed here. For the 1937-1949 period the focus is mainly on aircraft acquisition, organistation and the general development of aviation in China.
In 1937, the swath of the globe east from India to the Pacific Ocean encompassed half the world's population. Japan's onslaught into China that year unleashed a tidal wave of events that fundamentally
