Craig Watson
speaker
4,699 appearances
13 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 17 Aug
Craig Watson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 13 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 5.
Appearances
But political convictions proved immaterial to these professional aviators.
They got on well enough with each other, mercenaries of the twentieth century united by their expertise and willingness to fight.
When American traffic on the Burma Road swelled in volume and became chaotic, with cargo lost to pilfering and trucks breaking down from mishandling.
The air freight service into Chongqing became increasingly vital to maintaining Chinese military capabilities.
The backbone of this organization was America.
It had been in operation for months before the Japanese attack.
Halfway down the Burma Road, over the border in Burma, was a plane factory backed by American and Chinese capital, providing some degree of repair and maintenance capacity for the aircraft operating out of China.
Recognizing the strategic value of these experienced aviators and the need to formalize and expand their operations, American and Chinese officials moved quickly to incorporate this volunteer group, formerly known as the American Volunteer Group or the Flying Tigers, into the US Army Air Force.
This transformation of volunteer aviators into official American military personnel represented a commitment to providing air support to Chinese operations, recognizing that air power could compensate to some degree for Chinese numerical disadvantages in ground combat.
In Chongqing, it was clear that among the United Nations fighting Japan, America was the only one taking China seriously, the only one prepared to invest significant resources in Chinese military capabilities and the Chinese war effort.
Yet Pearl Harbor brought consequences that extended far beyond the strategic and diplomatic spheres.
For Western civilians living in China, missionaries, teachers, doctors, businessmen, journalists, and such, the attack represented a catastrophic change in their status and their fate.
Until december eighth, Westerners residing in China had maintained a curious protected status as foreign neutrals, even in areas nominally controlled by the Japanese.
Well this status provided them with a measure of distance from and protection against the grinding reality of the war that devastated the Chinese populations.
For a century, Americans have been part of an imperial presence in China, sometimes benevolent, sometimes violent, but always ultimately under Western control.
Well, that ended on December the eighth.
All across eastern China Americans and British were rounded up in turn.
The international settlement of Shanghai, that remarkable oasis of neutrality that had persisted in the midst of a war torn city, was now reunified under Japanese control.
Thousands of foreigners with allied nationality were sent into holding camps scattered throughout occupied China.
Some, like the eleven year old British boy, Jim Ballard, would remain imprisoned for the remainder of the war, enduring hunger, cold, and disease in camps like Long Hui, which housed approximately two thousand detainees.
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