With the United States entry into World War II against the Empire of Japan in December 1941, Claire Chennault, the commander of the American Volunteer Group (AVG) (known as the Flying Tigers) of the Chinese Air Force was called to Chongqing, China, on 29 March 1942, for a conference to decide the fate of the AVG.

Present at the conference were Chiang Kai-shek; his wife, Soong Mei-ling; Lt. Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell, commander of all U.S. forces in the China Burma India Theater; and Colonel Clayton L. Bissell, who had arrived in early March.

[citation needed] As early as 30 December 1941, the U.S. War Department in Washington, D.C., had authorized the induction of the Flying Tigers into the U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF).

Stilwell and Bissell made it clear to both Chennault and Chiang that unless the AVG became part of the U.S. Army Air Force, its supplies would be cut off.

Chennault, wanting to keep the Flying Tigers going as long as possible, proposed the group disband on 4 July, when the AVG's contracts with the Nationalist Chinese government expired.

Its mission was to defend the aerial supply operation over the Himalayan mountains between India and China – nicknamed the Hump – and to provide air support for Chinese ground forces.

Four were lost on a bombing mission en route and a fifth developed mechanical problems such that it was grounded and used for spare parts.

An example was Fritz Wolf who returned to the Navy with the rank of Lieutenant, senior grade and assigned as fighter pilot instructor at the Jacksonville Naval Air Station in Florida.

In June and July 1942, Chennault got the Tenth Air Force to relocate the 51st FG's 16th Fighter Squadron, commanded by Major John Alison, to his main base in Kunming, China, to gain combat experience.

On 19 March 1943, the CATF was disbanded and its units made part of the newly activated Fourteenth Air Force, with Chennault, now a major general, still in command.

In the nine months of its existence, the China Air Task Force shot down 149 Japanese planes, plus 85 probables, with a loss of only 16 P-40s.

The Fourteenth Air Force official web site[6] says: In addition to the core Fourteenth Air Force (14AF) structure, a second group, the Chinese-American Composite Wing (CACW), existed as a combined 1st Bomber, 3rd Fighter, and 5th Fighter Group with pilots from both the United States and the Republic of China.

Aircraft assigned to the CACW included later series P-40 Warhawks (with the Nationalist Chinese Air Force blue sky and 12-pointed white sun national insignia, rudder markings, and squadron/aircraft numbering) and B-25 Mitchell medium bombers.

One of the known Chinese pilots is Captain Ho Weng Toh of Singapore, the last known surviving Flying Tigers' member in Asia.

Specific field locations included Hanzhong, Ankang, Xi'an, Laohekou, Enshi, Liangshan, Baishiyi, Zhijiang, Hengyang, Guilin, Liuzhou, Zhanyi, Suichwan, and Lingling.

Today, the 1st, 3rd and 5th Groups of CACW are still operating in Taiwan, reorganized as 443rd, 427th and 401st Tactical Fighter Wings of the Republic of China Air Force.

Inducted into the Fourteenth on its formation, and later seconded to the OSS, he built a formidable network of Chinese informants to provide the Flying Tigers with intelligence on Japanese land and sea military positions and the disposition of shipping and railways.

He was killed by Chinese communists when he attempted to see a downed plane they had been assigned to guard ten days after the war ended, which led to him being chosen as the namesake of the John Birch Society.

The incident is recounted in the memoir of Paul Frillmann, China: The Remembered Life, who had started the war as the chaplain for the Flying Tigers.

It was originally assigned to provide air defense over a wide region of the Southeast United States along the border of North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas and Oklahoma, including Texas south to the Rio Grande.

As the 14th Aerospace Force, the command supervised the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) network of Radars along the Arctic Circle.

Additional radars came under the command's control for the sole purpose of detecting, identifying, tracking and sending back to NORAD data on any SLBM.