Tea for Bombers

From Hankow headquarters of Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek last week correspondents received information which threw a revealing light upon Soviet aid to China in the past ten months. At one time a "majority" of all pilots flying for China were Soviet pilots, flying mostly Soviet planes. The Chinese claimed last week that they have been bartering tea with Moscow in exchange for bombers, that the transaction has been "completed."

No further Soviet planes were being delivered now, according to Hankow officials. China's fighting pilots are now about half Chinese, half Russian, with more Chinese pilots rapidly training under Soviet instructors.

The always nondescript Chinese air force, consisting chiefly of planes built in the Soviet Union, the U. S., Italy and Britain, was further unstandardized last week by the addition of several German light bombers and a squadron of French pursuit planes. The Generalissimo has disbanded, dismissed the U. S., French and other foreign free-lance pilots of the famed Chinese Fourteenth Bombardment Squadron, today has enough Chinese and Russian airmen to fly it.

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