New | Former Flying Tiger base in China given new cloud seeding role to fight drought
An airfield in southern China from which the famed Flying Tigers took off to fight Japanese warplanes is being converted to battle a new enemy: drought.
An airfield in southern China from which the famed Flying Tigers took off to fight Japanese warplanes is being converted to battle a new enemy: drought.
Aircraft equipped for cloud seeding operations began using second world war-era Zhijiang Airport in Hunan province last month as part of a trial operation, Xinhua said on Tuesday.
Known as China’s rice basket, Hunan suffered its worst drought in decades last year, causing more than 12 billion yuan (HK$15.5 billion) in losses to farmers.
China has experimented heavily with cloud seeding to combat declining rainfall across large parts of the country, using both planes and ground artillery.
Built in 1936 and also known as Chih Chiang, the airfield once hosted volunteer American pilots recruited to aid China’s war efforts against the invading Japanese army from 1941 to 1942.
The Flying Tigers were later incorporated into the US military, but retained their planes’ distinctive shark-mouth nose art.
The unit remains a potent symbol of US-China wartime cooperation in the years before the 1949 Communist takeover of power that brought on more than two decades of hostility and estrangement between the sides.
A veritable arsenal of cloud-seeding cannon, rockets and a fleet of a dozen planes were used to bring total precipitation in April to 46mm – twice the norm.
The additional rainfall was welcome relief for more than 480,000 sq km of arable land and significantly reduced the number of forest fires.
Cloud seeding was also used ahead of the Beijing Olympics in 2008 to create rain to clear pollution.
