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China Burma India Theater (CBI) was the name used by the United States Army for its forces in China, Burma, and India during World War II . Well-known US units in this Theater included the Flying Tigers , transport and bomber units flying The Hump , the engineers who built Ledo Road , and Merrill's Marauders . COMMAND STRUCTURE U.S. Land forces The US forces in the CBI theater were grouped together for administrative purposes under the command of General Page 442, as the Supreme Allied Commander in China. However, Stilwell often broke the chain of command and communicated directly with the US Joint Chiefs Of Staff on operational matters. This continued after the formation of the South East Asia Command (SEAC) and the appointment of Admiral Lord Mountbatten as the Supreme Allied Commander of South East Asia in October 1943. When the joint allied command was agreed upon, it was decided that the senior position should be held by a member of the British military because the British dominated Allied operations on the South-East Asian Theatre by weight of numbers (in much the same way as the US did in the Pacific Theater Of Operations ). Stilwell, who also had operational command of the Northern Combat Area Command (NCAC), a US-Chinese formation, was supposed to report to General George Giffard — commander of Eleventh Army Group — so that NCAC and the British Fourteenth Army , under the command of General William Slim , could be co-ordinated. This is something Stilwell refused to do. Stilwell was able to do this because of his multiple positions within complex command structures, especially his simultaneous positions of Deputy Supreme Allied Commander South East Asia, and Chief of Staff to Chiang. As SEAC's deputy leader, he was Giffard's superior, but as operational commander of NCAC, Giffard was Stilwell's superior. As the two men did not get on, this inevitably lead to conflict and confusion. Stilwell, however bitterly resisted orders from Giffard ... To watch Stilwell, when hard pressed, shift his opposition from one of the several strong-points he held by virtue of his numerous Allied, American and Chinese offices, to another was a lesson in mobile offensive-defence. Eventually at a SEAC meeting to sort out the chain of command for NCAC, Stilwell astonished everyone by saying "''I am prepared to come under General Slim's operational control until I get to Kamaing ''". Although far from ideal, this compromise was accepted. It was not until late 1944, after Stilwell was recalled to Washington, that the chain of command was clarified. His overall role, and the CBI command was then split among three people: Lt Gen. Raymond Wheeler became Deputy Supreme Allied Commander South East Asia; Major-General Albert Wedemeyer became Chief of Staff to Chiang, and commander of US Forces, China Theater (USFCT). Lt Gen. Daniel Sultan was promoted, from deputy commander of CBI to commander of US Forces, India-Burma Theater (USFIBT) and commander of the NCAC. The 11th Army Group was redesignated Allied Land Forces South East Asia (ALFSEA), and NCAC was decisively placed under this formation. However, by the time the last phase of the Burma Campaign began in earnest, NCAC had become irrelevant, and it was dissolved in early 1945. U.S. Air forces , had been integrated with the RAF Third Tactical Air Force in India in December 1943 and was operating under Mountbatten's SEAC. Another part of it, the Fourteenth Air Force in China, was at least technically under the jurisdiction of Chiang as theater commander. And although the India-China wing of the Air Transport Command received its assignments of tonnage from Stratemeyer as Stilwell's deputy, control actually stemmed from Washington. By the spring of 1944, when the B-29's arrived in the theater, another complex air factor would be added to the potpourri. Although the Command of the Twentieth Air Force tasked with the strategic bombing of Japan under Operation Matterhorn reported directly to the JCS in Washington, they were totally dependent on Stratemeyer's command for supplies, bases, etc. The imposition of command upon command produced divided responsibilities and crisscrossing lines of authority that promoted confusion, especially in times of crisis when heavy demands poured in from all sides. Supposedly, Stilwell was the control and co-ordinating point for all activity, but with his assumption of personal direction of the advance of the Chinese Ledo forces into north Burma in late 1943, he was often out of touch both with his own headquarters and with the over-all situation. TIMELINE
airfield. Exhaustion and disease led to the early evacuation of many Chinese and allied troops before the coming assault on Myitkyina town .]]
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