fighter escorts of P-38s and P-51s from the 23rd Fighter Group of the 14th Air Force to attack Japan's largest air base in Taiwan, hitting a parking area, hangars, barracks, and buildings. The formation crossed the Taiwan Strait, flying at low altitude and caught the Japanese unprepared. 32 Japanese planes were destroyed in the air and on the ground while the Chinese did not lose a single plane. Seeing no opposing interceptors and only minimum anti-aircraft gun fire, Lieutenant Colonel Irving Branch of the CACW led his flight of bombers on a sweep down low strafing the airfield. The raid was the most successful thus far in the history of the 14th Air Force. Branch was awarded a Distinguish Flying Cross. 1944 From late 1943 to the end of the war in August 1945, operations of the combined forces of the American and Chinese air units began to shift increasingly from defensive to offensive, and they eventually achieved air supremacy in China over Japanese air forces. It was made possible by the Americans' continuous supply of the latest war planes, fuel and material to China, and more importantly, the activation of the CACW as a unique Chinese component of the U.S. 14th Air Force, which was deployed in the China-Burma-India theatre, as well as the training by Americans of young Chinese pilots in the United States. From 1944 onward, the CACW and other units of the Fourteenth Air Force were able to mount attacks against Japanese forces on all fronts in China, military installations, airbase in Taiwan, vital terminals of Japanese supply lines, which included Japanese-occupied river ports along the lower Yangtze River and Yellow River, seaports in southern China including Hong Kong and Hainan. Separate missions were often flown daily by the CACW and other units of the 14th Air Force from different airbases with B-25 and B-24 bombers, P-40, P-38 and P-51 fighters. The following are some of the notable bombing missions and air combat on records during 1944. On 11 February, six B-25 bombers escorted by 20 P-40 and P-51 fighters from the 14th Air Force including Chinese P-40s from the 32nd Fighter Squadron of the CACW bombed the storage area at Kai Tak Airfield, Hong Kong. The incoming formation encountered Japanese fighters from the 85th Sentai patrolling the area. In the ensuing air engagement the P-40s shot down five Japanese fighters and one probable, while the