How the USSR helped China in the war against Japan (PHOTOS)

In July 1937, a long and bloody war began between the Chinese Republic and the Japanese Empire.

In just a few months, the better trained and better equipped troops of the “land of the rising sun” inflicted a number of heavy defeats on the National Revolutionary Army and occupied significant Chinese territory with such important cities as Beiping (Beijing) and Tianjin.

Moscow watched Japan’s successes with apprehension, as they saw it as a potential threat to the Soviet Far East. Therefore, when Marshal Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the ruling Kuomintang party, appealed to the leading world powers for help, the USSR was the first to respond.

The Kremlin was not ready, however, to conclude a military alliance with China, as the Marshal wanted, and to enter into an open armed conflict against Tokyo. In order to support its southern neighbor, the Soviet Union concluded a non-aggression pact with it on August 21, 1937.

After this, the USSR began to carry out the so-called ‘Operation Z’ – providing China with comprehensive military assistance.

Moscow provided the Kuomintang with several soft loans, which were used to pay for military equipment and weapons. Over the course of several years, the USSR supplied the Chinese with almost 1,300 fighters, bombers and training aircraft, 1,600 artillery pieces, 82 T-26 tanks, 14,000 machine guns and 110,000 rifles and ammunition.

Supplies went through Soviet Central Asia to Xinjiang and, from there, into the interior of the country. For this, the USSR repaired old roads and built new ones in the Chinese border regions.

In 1939, a Soviet aircraft factory opened near the city of Urumqi, which, in just a few years, managed to produce over 100 I-16 fighters for the National Revolutionary Army.

To increase the combat capability of the Chinese troops, Moscow sent its military specialists and advisers to China. They held positions in infantry units, artillery, armored units of the Chinese army and also helped to establish the rear, set up communications and the work of military doctors.

The military advisers in the Kuomintang troops included future Marshal of Armored Troops Pavel Rybalko, future Marshal of Artillery Konstantin Kazakov and Andrei Vlasov, who went over to the side of the Nazis during World War II and became the leader of the Russian collaborationist movement.

Vasily Chuikov, commander of the 62nd Army, which defended Stalingrad in the toughest battles in 1942, at one time held the position of chief military adviser to Marshal Chiang Kai-shek, commander-in-chief of the Chinese army.

Of the 4,000 military specialists sent to China, the lion's share were pilots, aircraft engineers and technicians – about 3,500. While some of them trained their Chinese colleagues to fly Soviet aircraft, others volunteered to take part in the battles. Fourteen of them became Heroes of the Soviet Union, while, overall, 211 were killed.

With the overwhelming numerical superiority of the Imperial Army Air Force, Soviet fighter pilots had to take off 4-5 times a day to defend Chinese cities. The Japanese quickly realized that they were now facing a dangerous and skilled enemy in the sky.

Soviet I-15 and I-16 fighters (nicknamed ‘swallows’ by the Chinese) performed excellently during air raids on Nanjing and SB bombers made successful raids on enemy air bases near Shanghai and on Japanese ships on the Yangtze River.

“The Japanese became more cautious – the lessons, as they say, were useful. They no longer rushed headlong, relying on numerical superiority, but acted more sophisticatedly and cunningly. They abandoned the standard tactics and began to treat the enemy much more ‘respectfully’. They learned to recognize our ‘swallows’ in the air – they preferred not to come together one on one,” recalled Lieutenant Colonel Dmitry Kudymov.

On February 23, 1938, a group of SB bombers under the command of Captain Fyodor Polynin carried out a sensational air raid on the Mautsiyama air base on the island of Formosa (Taiwan). The Japanese were completely confident that it was out of reach for enemy aircraft.

For seven hours, 28 bombers flew 1,000 kilometers without fighter cover. To reduce fuel consumption, the air group flew at an altitude of about 5,000 km.

Without oxygen masks, the pilots were at the limit of their strength the entire flight, due to oxygen starvation. “The heart beats faster, the head spins, you feel sleepy… and you can only rely on your own physical endurance,” Polynin recalled. 

As a result of the raid, 40 enemy aircraft were destroyed, hangars and a three-year supply of fuel were burned. The governor of Formosa was removed, while the commandant of the Matsuyama air base committed suicide.

In the Spring of 1939, the troops of the Far Eastern Military District were instructed to secretly supply the Chinese partisans of Manchuria with weapons, ammunition, food and medicine. Often, partisan detachments defeated by the Japanese found refuge in the USSR.

The Chinese and Korean partisans who ended up on Soviet territory were included in the 88th separate rifle brigade under the command of Zhou Baozhong, formed in the event of a Soviet-Japanese war. One of the battalions in it was commanded by future North Korean leader Kim Il Sung.

Soviet weapons and military specialists provided enormous assistance to China in the initial, most difficult period of the war, increasing the combat capability of the Chinese army and its fighting spirit, while also allowing the rebuilding of its defeated Air Force.

In 1941, the USSR began to gradually curtail its assistance to the Kuomintang. This was due to the worsening relations between the government of Chiang Kai-shek and the communists of Mao Zedong, as well as the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact concluded in April.

When Nazi Germany invaded the USSR on June 22, the Kremlin no longer had time for China.