As tensions mounted between China and Imperial Japan in the 1930s, air units from the Chinese warlords, including those from the Guangdong Provincial Air Force, and overseas Chinese aviators, became integrated into the centralized command of the ROCAF and coordinating with the Second United Front to counter the Imperial Japanese invasion and occupation.

Of all the Chinese warlord air force units to join the centralized Nationalist Chinese Air Force command, the Guangxi Clique was the last to unite, in November 1937; under the continued leadership of generals Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi, now serving in the KMT, they and their airmen would earn honorable recognition at the Battle of Taierzhuang.

[5][6] It was a war of attrition for the Chinese pilots, as many of their most experienced ace fighter pilots, such as Lieutenant Liu Tsui-kang [zh], Colonel Kao Chih-hang, Yue Yiqin, among others, were lost; six months into the war, the Chinese Air Force inventory of frontline American Hawk IIs and IIIs and P-26Cs, and various others, were mostly superseded by faster and better armed Polikarpov I-15s and I-16s provided under the Sino-Soviet Treaty of 1937, including Soviet volunteer combat aviators.

But as China was not an aviation-industrial power at the time, losses continued to mount, while the Japanese forces enjoyed a highly developed aviation industry that saw constantly improving cutting-edge technological advancements giving Japanese aircraft distinct performance advantages in speed, agility, altitude/climbing rate and firepower that greatly placed the increasingly underpowered and underarmed Chinese fighter aircraft hampered with low-grade fuel at tremendous disadvantage.

The ROCAF was eventually supplemented with the establishment of the American Volunteer Group (known as the "Flying Tigers") with fast and heavily armed and armored Curtiss P-40 Warhawks, employing dissimilar hit and run tactics in defense of the primary wartime Allied supply-line into China known as "The Hump", between Kunming in Yunnan province and British bases in India, while the remains of the Chinese Air Force modernized and rebuilt its strength each year following Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, with new commitment and support from the United States.

From 1937 to the beginning of 1941, the Soviet Union served as the primary supplier to the ROCAF, and from October 1937 to January 1941, a total of 848 aircraft in 13 batches were ordered by the Chinese government and were supplied on credit, worth roughly 200 million dollars.

As early as the end of 1941 Chinese pilots, mainly recently graduated from flight schools, began to be sent to the US for longer training and mastery of American aircraft.

In February 1943, preparing for transition to the new American air equipment, the Chinese transferred to India the primary training groups from their flight schools.

It was planned to assemble the Hawk in a factory operated by the Central Aircraft Manufacturing Company, which had been evacuated from Hankou to Loiwing.

Following the failure of Hawk 75 production, the CAMCO factory planned to organize assembly of the export version of the Curtiss-Wright CW-21 "Demon" interceptor.

The factory at Loiwing worked until April 1942 when, due to Japanese attacks, it had to be evacuated to Kunming and its American personnel set up shop in India.

Japanese advances in Burma in late-1942 forced the 1st Air Force Aircraft Manufacturing Factory (1st AFAMF) to move hinterland to Guiyang, Guizhou province, where the Chinese government was attempting an innovative and ambitious indigenously designed swept-forward gull-winged fighter plane called the XP-1, in hopes to reduce reliance on foreign sources.

[31] From 1943 to 1946 the CAMCO factory, which was dispersed in the ravines neighboring Kunming, assembled an experimental series of nine fighter monoplanes, probably from Hawk 75M, 75A-5, and CW-21 components.