CHINESE AIR FORCE

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 66, 20 March 1933, Page 8

CHINESE AIR FORCE

.INFERIOR EQUIPMENT

MUCH BEHIND JAPAN

AMERICAN'S COMMENT

During the past two years Colonel1 Vincent Schmidt, an American aviation instructor, who arrived from Sydney today by th-e Maunganui, has been stationed in the southern Chinese province of Yunnan, and in an interview with a "Post" reporter he made some interesting observations on conditions in. China at the present time. Colonel Schmidt left Yunnan a month ago on six months' leave, and he is going through to Tahiti for a spell before completing the trip to the United States.

Colonel Schmidt said! that he was sent to Yunnan at the. instigation of the American coinnier^al attache ■at Shanghai, and was attached to the 10th Chinese Eoute Attmy. • There was an. Australian airman acting in au advisory capacity at Canton, and an American school of flying in the north with about ten or fifteen military instructors. The Chinese were slow to learn aviation, but they made good flyers eventually. Their equipment •was good enough in its way, but it was much behind that of the Japanese. However, it was improving all tho time with the purchase of English, French, German, and Italian machines. "They are air-conscious now and are spending a lot of money on aviation," he- added, "and in four or five years they will have a strong air force.' ' With the different governments in China there was no real united front presented to the Japanese, said Colonel Schmidt, but a change was gradually coming about, and the common resistance to Japanese aggression was increasing. In two or three years the position would probably be consolidated to a great extent. It was unlikely that i!he Japanese would go south of the Great Wall, but there was no doubt that they would achieve their objective of establishing a buffer state in Manchukuo. Their forces were 4as good as any in Europe in equipment, staff work, and air corps. They were quite ruthless in warfare and did not hesitate to bomb from the air, even at the cost of many civilian lives, to achieve their objective. Life meant comparatively little to the Chinese or the Japanese, and they saw nothing wrong with their methods of warfare.

Colonel Schmidt said that he had seen a good deal of civil war in China. The people in the south were moTe or less indifferent to what was happening in the north. Foreigners were not welcomed in any part of China. It was felt that their only object was to exploit the country, which the Chinese wanted for themselves. The feeling of nationalism was growing, and foreigners found it hard to get a footing. There was, however, a difference in the ease1 of military experts who could teach the Chinese how to improve their methods of warfare.

One of the first questions Colonel Schmidt asked on arrival was whether Sir Charles Kingsford Smith was in Wellington, and, on receiving an answer in the affirmative, he said, that he had been stationed at Eoosevelt Field when the famous aviator concluded his flight across the Atlantic in the Southern Cross in 1930. He had met Sir Charles there, and hoped to tenew the acquaintance in Wellington.