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Early Chinese Aviation Education

Training aviation engineering personnel in old China started at the end of the Qing dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, when a small number of Chinese students were studying aviation technology abroad. More and more students went abroad to study aviation after the 1930s, by the 1940s the total reached about one thousand. Among them there were some best ones such as Wang Zhu who was the aircraft designer at Boeing Company of the United States in the early days of the Company and later returned to China to develop Chinese aviation industry; Qian Xuesen, co-inventor of Karman-Tsien Formula used in the aerodynamic design of high subsonic aircraft, and Wu Zhonghua, the inventor of the theory of three dimensional flow for machines with blades.

China stressed on the training of pilots initially and the earliest pilot training school was established in 1918 in Mawei, Fujian province, which was called Naval Aircraft and Submarine School. Starting from the 1930s, many colleges in China began to set up aviation courses and the Beiyang University, Central University, Qinghua University, Jiaotong University, Zhejiang University, Xiamen University, Yunnan University, Sichuan University and Northwest Polytechnic College all set up departments of aviation engineering one after another. Aviation and mechanical major was set up in Central Industrial College and Qinghua University even educated some graduates in aviation engineering. Accord¬ing to incomplete statistics the total number of undergraduates who graduated from the aviation engineering in all Chinese universities was about one thousand by the end of 1949.

Kuomintang government virtually paid no attention to science and research of aviation and only relied on one or two universities to do some development. Low speed wind tunnels were built in the 1930s by the Central University and the Aviation Research Institute of Qinghua University. Although a larger wind tunnel was built in Nanchang in 1939, it was destroyed by Japanese invaders in the following year.

During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Invasion the Aviation Research Institute of Qinghua University was moved to Kunming and continued their scientific research with a small wind tunnel there. In 1939 Aviation Committee of Kuomintang government established an aviation institute in Chengdu, which was expanded to an aviation research centre in 1941. It constructed two single-flow, wooden structure and open test section wind tunnels. Technical personnel under the very difficult conditions concentrated on the development and trial production of aviation materials and created aircraft skin of " Bamboo Layer" instead of metal, with which tens of thousands of drop tanks were produced. The research center also designed and trial-manufactured wooden Trainer-1 and bamboo and wood composite structured Trainer-2 and Trainer-3.

There were some aviation societies in old China. China Aviation Engineering Society was formed in 1934 with Qian Changzuo as its Chairman and, in 1947 Aviation Engineers Society was formed in Nanjing. These societies only had limited number of members, did not last very long and did not conduct any academic activities.

Looking back over 40 years of the history of old China starting from producing aircraft in Beijing's Nanyuan factory in 1910 by the Qing dynasty to the year of 1949 it can be seen that the old China had never established an independent aviation industry. The reasons of the saying are follows: first, the aircraft, both military and civil, used in old China were mostly bought from abroad; second, China did not have basic industry to support the aircraft development. Even if a small number of aircraft were produced, it was only limited to airframe production and assembly due to the fact that important components, airborne equipment and finished parts such as engine, metal propeller, landing gear, instruments and important raw materials were not available in China and had to rely on foreign suppliers; third, aviation research and test facilities were too simple, lacking fundamental ways and means of research and test. Old China, therefore, was not capable of research, design and test for high performance aircraft; and fourth, old China was corrupt in politics and with frequent wars.

Although there were certain number of people experienced and educated in aviation engineering, their talent could not be fully utilized under that conditions. In one word, old China had only a very weak foundation for manufacturing aero products and was dominated by the imperialists, by whom China was turned into a market place for selling their commodities. This was the inevitable result after China was turned into a semi-feudal and semi-colonial society. Because the years of bombing by the Japanese during the War of Resistance caused frequent moves of the factories, and the destruction by the Kuomintang in the War of Liberation, aviation factories and their facilities were destroyed and the already weakened foundation of aviation was almost vanished. Old China only left us a limited number of professional persons.