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News Mark
Dayton Daily
Monday, May 26, 1941

Chinese Aviatrix, Member of "Caterpillars," Here

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MISS LA-CHING LEE

China's best known girl aviatrix, Miss Ya-ching Lee, was in Dayton Monday to aid local committees with their work in connection with the United China Relief campaign.  While here she was the guest of Mrs. Anthony Haswell, 525 Maysfield rd.

Miss Lee for the past two and one-half years has been touring all the important cities in America in an effort to help raise $5,000,000 war relief funds for China's refugees and war needs.  She flies her own plane, a Beechcraft, and has flown more than 35,000 miles in this country.

The only Chinese member of the famous "Caterpillar club" an organization formed by pilots whose lives have been saved by parachutes, Miss Lee won her membership in the exclusive club in 1935 when she leaped from a failing stunt plane into San Francisco Bay.

She learned to fly in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1933 and took her advanced flight training at the Boeing school in Oakland, Cal.  From there she returned to China and flew for exhibition purposes there in an effort to help Chiang Kai-Shek's armies.

"There is no private flying in China," she explained, "there anyone is forbidden to fly or to own an airplane unless for government business.

She said that aviation in China, however, was on the upswing and that American fighter planes and bombers were being used almost exclusively by the Chinese air force.

"At first there were some European planes used," she said, "but these proved inferior to the American fighting planes and Chiang Kai-Shek's air force in now using all American types. Commercial airliners are also American planes very similar to the ones you are using here."

Miss Lee pointed out that it was still safe to fly the airliners in China, but that the Japanese sometimes shoot at the planes and some of them have been lost.

Her last visit to her home in China, at Hong Kong, was in 1938 and that year she returned to San Francisco by the China Clipper and began preparations for her extended air "goodwill" tour of the United States.

She started on March 20 this year from Floyd Bennett airport on a tour of cities in connection with the United China relief drive.

Monday at 4 p.m. Miss Lee will be interviewed over station WHIO on the needs of China.  She will leave Dayton Monday evening.

John T. Hawk is chairman of the local committee in charge of the United China Relief drive in Dayton.