The Sage in the Cathedral of Books. Yang Sun Yang
decided to go to the Youth Air Force Academy.
In 1939, General Pai Chung-Hsi, deputy chief of staff of the Nationalist Military Commission, proposed the founding of the Youth Air Force Academy in order to train more pilots. Having received its name in early 1940, the academy selected—through strict physical and academic tests—primary and junior high school graduates between the ages of twelve and fifteen.
Students admitted to the academy were taught a variety of classes in aviation in addition to the general junior and senior high school courses. The academy placed special emphasis on good nutrition and physical education. Students, after their graduation from the academy, were sent directly to the Air Force Officers School for pilot training.2
According to Shih-Cheng Lou’s memoir, We Are the Anti-Japanese Air Force Reserves, the Youth Air Force Academy had eight recruitment centers in late 1940. These recruitment centers were in Chengdu, Chongqin, Guiyang, Kunming, Guilin, Zhijiang, Hengyang, and Nanzheng. There were nearly two thousand primary and junior high school graduates admitted to the academy in six groups. Hwa-Hsin was admitted in 1943 as a second-year senior high school student.
Similar to the general junior and senior high schools in content and length of education, the Youth Air Force Academy had, however, a different focus in curriculum. Students were given comprehensive Boy Scout training in the first three junior high years, and regular military training, aviation theory, and simulator instruction during the later three senior high years. Only those who were able to pass both the aviation-knowledge test and the physical examination could move up to the Air Force Officers School to receive real flight training. Those who met the standard of aviation knowledge, but failed in the physical examination, were sent either to the Air Force Mechanics School or the Air Force Communication School for further training. The Youth Air Force Academy was, in a way, a preparatory school for a variety of air force personnel.
Having graduated from the Youth Air Force Academy, Hwa-Hsin advanced to the Air Force Officers School in the fall of 1944. It was at that time he changed his name to Min Lee, as a statement of his commitment, following the example set by his father. The meaning of Min is described in the Chinese Classic of History (Shujing) as Min bu wei si, meaning intrepid and unafraid of death.
Taking the new given name of Min was Hwa-Hsin’s particular and determined way of declaring his pledge of fighting to the death against the Japanese invaders as an air force officer. A family archive photo captured the young and proud Min with his fellow cadets at their training base in India. On the gate behind these young airmen, a Chinese banner proclaims this motto: “Don’t enter this gate if you fear to die; and find another path if your goal is for promotion and wealth.” From the very beginning, Min knew his commitment to become a professional air force pilot meant he could not be afraid to die for his country.
Min graduated from the twenty-third class of the U.S. Air Training Command, completing his advanced pilot training at Barksdale Field, Louisiana, December 10, 1946. His officer training had started with a three-month-long program in Kunming; he was then sent to the training base in India. His years at the Air Command and Staff College were spent at Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas.
Regretfully for Min, it was too late for him to join the fight against the Japanese upon his return from the United States at the end of 1946, as World War II was already over, and the Japanese invaders had already surrendered in disgrace. Min was sent off to northeast China to be stationed there. His first combat mission turned out to be—after the outbreak of the civil war on May 21, 1947—to fight against the Chinese Communist army, a goal counter to his original objective for joining the air force. At that point, his dream and destiny were taken by history to an unforeseeable end.
Min was an outstanding air force officer. Already a major at the age of twenty-nine, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel at thirty-one. Throughout his thirteen-year military career, he participated in many significant battles. Owing to his distinctive military performance, Min was the first student from his class to be promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel.
For a time after the Nationalist Government retreated from mainland China, the United States drifted away from an alliance with Chiang’s government. The estrangement did not last long. Soon after the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, the U.S. government realized its lack of intelligence information about the Peoples’ Republic of China and started to work on rebuilding the bilateral relationship with Taiwan. Two years later, a joint effort was made between Taiwan’s Air Force Combat Department and Western Enterprises, Inc., a CIA-affiliated company, to establish a Special Mission Unit. A mutual agreement was reached for the U.S. to equip the unit with B-17 bombers, which Chiang’s air force pilots would fly over the mainland on reconnaissance missions. Information gathered during these missions was shared by those two parties. Western Enterprises, Inc., was housed in an ash-gray, western-style building on 102 East Avenue, Hsinchu 102, Taiwan.
After the Korean War, Communist China became the potential enemy of the United States. In 1955, the headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Air Forces signed an agreement with the Taiwan Air Force Intelligence Department on an Electronic Countermeasure Mission (ECM), under which the Eighth Air Force Battalion located at the Hsinchu Air Base was sent off to conduct electronic reconnaissance.
As this mission proved effective, authority over future missions was transferred to Western Enterprises, Inc., the following year by order of the CIA. The Special Mission Unit was regrouped under the Air Force Intelligence Department and changed its name in 1957 to the Technical Research Group, formally known as the Thirty-fourth Squadron. A more popular name of this group was the Black Bat Squadron, as almost all the surveillance missions were conducted in China during the night. The squadron’s emblem featured seven stars beneath a black bat with its wings outstretched. Owing to his outstanding piloting skills and bravery, Min was assigned to the squadron in early 1958. His assignment was top secret, unknown even to Min’s parents and siblings.
As the leading aircraft of the Thirty-fourth Squadron, the American B-17 bombers, known as Flying Fortresses during World War II, were four-engine, heavy bombers of potent, long-range and high-load capacity. Under its core mission, intelligence gathering, the squadron’s bombers were modified to be reconnaissance aircrafts with original armaments removed and replaced by high-precision, electronic detection devices. The re-equipped (R) B-17 had no combat capacity at all and could board a maximum of fourteen crew members.3
To aid in the defense of China from the Japanese invasion, Hwa-Wei’s brother, Min (Hwa-Hsin), joined the Chinese air force. He received his training in both India and in the United States.
Min Lee completed his advanced pilot training at Barksdale Field U.S. Air Training Command in Louisiana, December 10, 1946.
The task of intelligence gathering was formidable for the squadron members who flew these RB-17s, usually leaving Hsinchu Air Base around 4:00 p.m. and entering the mainland’s air space after dusk. Flight duration varied from time to time and could last more than ten hours for each flight. Relying on the most advanced electronic detection devices and superior piloting skills, Black Bat Squadron crews were able to fly as low as one hundred to two hundred meters—the minimum safe-altitude zone—in the dark. In some cases, a crew had to break out of the safety zone and fly the aircraft as low as thirty meters off the ground in order to avoid radar detection.
On the other side of the Taiwan Strait, the Communist air force received a counter-reconnaissance order from Mao Zedong attached with a special award to whomever shot down a reconnaissance aircraft from Taiwan. Under the order, a network of anti-aircraft guns and searchlights were deployed in strategic locations waiting for planes, their targets, to fly over. This increased the risk to the Black Bat Squadron’s RB-17 bombers and their crews. Every mission was a battle against death. General Kuang-Yue Ko, former vice chief of the air force of Taiwan, said: “Each mission was targeted by more than ten missiles, more than ten attacks by fighter planes, and more than ten attacks of artillery fire.”4
Min, a highly