Chapter 147 The reality of the military

In fact, very few Americans participated in SACO's guerrilla warfare, because military officials had warned them that they would stand out like big men in the occupied areas of China to attract attention.As a result, SACO had no real field unit of its own, but had to rely on the military command's action teams.The command of these grass-roots local troops should be in charge of the "military combat team" within the China-US Cooperation Institute, which is jointly formed by the United States and China, and fully controlled by the regular special agents of the military. All combat plans drawn up by this group must be discussed with the military command before they can be issued.Even so, the leaders of the armed secret service in various places still did not accept it, and they still asked the military commander directly for instructions according to their own methods.However, in order to obtain the weapons and ammunition and American equipment of the American imperialists, they had to report the casualties and achievements of each battle against Japan to the Sino-US Institute for supplementation.Most of these figures are things that have been repeatedly exaggerated or even fabricated, and they are often different from what they reported to the military commander.However, the U.S. attaches great importance to these statistics and often replenishes weapons and ammunition for these units. Based on these falsely reported "results", they can ask the U.S. government for things.

As for simple intelligence gathering (which should be the main mission of Sino-US cooperation in China after all), the official record is even worse than that.Mellas began to be very disappointed with the quality of the information that the Office of Naval Intelligence was gathering from the military command, which may have been one of the reasons why he was reluctant to share this information with the subordinates of Generals Stilwell and Chennault in the Office of Military Intelligence.However, after he complained verbally and in writing to Dai Li, the Juntong took advantage of its connections with the "traitors" in the occupied areas to arrange special operations units in Shanghai, Nanjing, and other parts of East China, enabling SACO agents to Local radio transmitters were set up to supplement the military command's communications system with their own reports of Japanese military activity.By 1944, the number of intelligence officials at SACO had doubled to 40, so Dai Li felt that it was necessary to appoint Wang Yixin, a station chief of the military command, to take charge of the joint intelligence work.

The People's Republic of China later claimed that SACO had produced high-quality intelligence, especially on the activities of the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communist Party.But in the immediate aftermath of the war, Communist literati belittled Dai Li's achievements in this area and described Melles as a fatuous chief of the "bad navy" who mistook Japan's No. 1 Battle north of Honan as a Another "heist" or a "drill battle" for an army of recruits. Dai Li himself spoke highly of SACO's contribution, partly because he admired Melos for providing spy equipment alongside carbines, pistols, and submachine guns.Stanley Lovell, a genius inventor of the US Office of Strategic Intelligence, remembers that Dai Li and Melles asked him to create a poison that Chinese prostitutes could use on top Japanese generals.Later, he and OSS bacteriologists created capsules about the size of an ordinary pin, filled with botulinum toxin, that could be opened to poison drinks or food.The poison pills were brought back to Chongqing by Navy medic Cecil Coggins to be supplied to "China's schools of murder and destruction under Dai Li's leadership".Melles also provided other disguised weapons, such as explosives similar to the flour used to make pancakes, guns disguised as cameras, etc. The gifts he provided also included the watches he personally presented to the Chinese staff of SACO, Clothes, chocolates and cigarettes etc.

Dai Li was also pleased with the strengthening of the military's communication system capabilities by the Sino-US Cooperation Institute.When Melles arrived in China, Dai Li's fascination with electrical equipment reached new heights.The head of China's secret agents has set up a top-secret laboratory in a dilapidated farmhouse surrounded by rice fields just outside Chongqing's Shili Road.A whole section of the lab was devoted to steganography: writing in fruit juice on a small roll of film that, once developed, was a normal photograph.There are also devices designed entirely to convert ordinary commercial radio receivers into transmitters: telegrapher's send keys hidden in fountain pens, antennas designed as umbrellas made in Shanghai, and so on.The lab also replicated miniature Minox cameras for military field agents, and disguised arson as soap and medicine.Melos personnel provided more powerful radio transmitters and the latest in radio detection technology.Soon after they arrived at Geleshan, they set up a field portable transceiver, which required a steady 120-volt power supply, either from a generator or from the notoriously unstable power supply of the Chongqing Power Plant. After May 1943, the radio detection work was directly led by Lieutenant Colonel BT Holcomb of the US Marine Corps. He taught the technicians of the Sino-American Cooperation Institute how to use the radio direction finder to detect the radio station of the traitor, the traitor They used these stations to report to the Japanese the flight target of Chennault's plane after it took off from Kunming.

Chiang Kai-shek's military headquarters also set up direction finders to find enemy transmitting stations.These goniometers were operated by graduates of Wei Daming's Shanghai training group "Sanji Radio School".Of course, as we have seen, Dai Li already had a group of excellent communicators, and the warnings issued by the Juntong decipherers about the Japanese air raid on Chongqing were almost without exception accurate and reliable.The British admired the early warning system of the Chinese Nationalist Party so much that they wanted to ask Chiang Kai-shek's permission to set up a special intelligence agency with joint participation of British and Chinese secret agents.The result was the establishment of the Sino-British Special Technology Cooperation Institute, headed by Zhou Weilong.