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September 29, 2011 Tom, My dad's Chinese name is 鄧重煌. In CNAC, his English name was C.H. Tang (Chong Huang Tang). After he returned to China in November 1949, his name spelled in Chinese Pinyin is Chonghuang Deng and Zhouhuang Deng. Both my parents currently live in Houston. My dad joined the 12th class of the Chinese Air Force Academy in 1937. He later joined CNAC as a co-pilot in November 1943. One month later, he started flying the Hump until the end of WWII. He completed about 600 Hump flights. He was a co-pilot to Erik Shilling, Gordon Poon (潘國定), T.L. Chan (陳達禮) and a few other captains. He flew with Erik Shilling over the Hump for about 50 times. One time, when they were flying a C-47 from Kunming to Dinjan, they lost an engine. With only one engine, they got to the Dinjan airfield, just as soon as they were about to touchdown, the lights on the ground were shut off, and they were forced to pull up. Fortunately, they were back from Kunming and there was not much cargo and fuel in the airplane. Otherwise, they would not be able to pull up and may have possibly crashed. After pulling up the airplane, they called the control tower and it took a while before they finally realized that the IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) device was malfunctioned and the people on the ground thought the Japanese airplanes were coming, so they tuned off all of the lights. After they identified themselves, all of the lights were tuned back on, and they successfully landed the plane with only one engine. I will write more about my dad when I have more time. I will send you some photos of my dad when I get them ready. Best regards, YoungChi ytang777@gmail.com  or would like to be added to the CNAC e-mail distribution list, please let the CNAC Web Editor, Tom Moore, know. |