Introduction

Canton1933.org is a collection of photographs, letters, and ephemera created and collected by Stuart D. Baird and Jeannette G. Baird during their year long stay in Canton (Guangzhou), China in 1933. Lieutenant Stuart D. Baird, an Army trained pilot, along with two other Americans Captain Edward Deeds and Lieutenant Clarence Terrill were part of a mission arranged by the Chinese Nationalist Party and the U.S. Department of Commerce. The purpose of this mission was to reform and bolster the current Air Force in Canton while creating a much needed market for American aircraft manufacturers who were suffering from the Great Depression. This mission was a duplicate of the Jouett Mission, which took place in Shanghai.

Stuart's job, as well as Deeds' and Terrill's, was to train the Chinese pilots various forms of aerial combat. Stuart's focus was aerial gunnery and bombing. He taught a class of six Flight Commanders, along with a class of 150 cadets.

The collection is comprised of letters from Stuart and his wife Jeanette to their parents, Stuart's weekly reports submitted to the Chief of Staff General Lym and Commanding Officer General Huang Kuang Jui (Freddy Wong), photographs both on and off the airfield, and various scraps such as receipts, telegrams, invitations, etc.

This project is still in progress, as I still have much more items to digitize.

    Mission

To catalog and record the collection the information and make it available to those interested in this little known period of Chinese aviation and Chinese-American relations, while simultaneously learning about and reliving this period.

    Input

Input is greatly appreciated and encouraged, especially from those with knowledge of Chinese aviation of the time, people familiar with or live in Guangzhou, and people who can translate the Cantonese to English.

    Thanks

I would like to thank the following people for offering their knowledge, expertise, and help:

Lennart Anderson
Chung Wing Lam
Waikong Chung

    About Me

Stuart and Jeannette were my Grandparents. Prior to this project I had no knowledge of this trip, other than simply "my grandfather once flew for the Chinese", and that we had a couple photo albums of this trip. While he was alive, it never piqued my interest so I never asked him about it. But even if I had asked, I would not have learned much as my oldest sister Jessica tells me he was characteristically tight-lipped. It was just his way.

One day while digging through the family chest I came across a folder containing Stuart's letters home. A few years later I came across the photographs (which were then in a loose pile as the albums began to deteriorate) along with Stuart's weekly reports and Jeannette's letters home.

Since then I have learned an incredible amount, yet I still have so much more to learn.