The Liberty Gazette
April 5, 2022
Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely
Tucked away in China’s port city Qingdao, the capital of Kiaochow, you’ll find German-style villas built in the aftermath of the “Juye incident.” This “incident” was the murder of two Catholic missionaries in 1897 believed to be carried out by a Chinese gang called “The Big Sword.” Germany saw an opportunity to convince the waning Qing Dynasty to give them Qingdao (then called Tsingtao), oust their own Chinese government officials, build the Germans three churches and seven fortified homes, and hand over a bunch of silver.
Fast-forward 17 years to the little German village and a young Bavarian named Gunther Plüschow who arrived on orders of the Imperial German Navy. Gunther loved the area and described it in his memoir:
…the loveliest weather, most radiant sunshine, and the bluest of skies. The bathing season was at its height. There were many charming ladies, mostly from the European and American settlements in China and Japan, visiting the “Ostend of the Far East” and enjoying the beauty of Kiaochow.
Amusement was the order of the day. Motor drives, riding-parties, polo, and tennis filled the free hours, and in the evenings, dancing held undisputed sway. There were many Englishwomen amongst the women, and our relations were most pleasant and cordial. We had challenged the English Polo Club at Shanghai to a match when, on the 30th of July — like a bolt from the blue — came the order warning us of “Danger of war!”
The siege of Tsingtao was the only battle fought in East Asia during World War I. The Japanese had four seaplanes they flew off a carrier, part of their superior Navy. And there was Gunther, alone, flying an obsolete monoplane, the Taube. It had no ailerons, only a system of pulleys and cables to pull the trailing edges of the wings, a movement called wing warping. A one-man air force, he staved off Japanese and British with only a pistol.
When their situation looked grim, the local German governor told Gunther to fly the Taube deeper into China (neutral at the time) and get back to Germany. He tried, but he ran out of fuel and crash-landed into a manure pile on a farm. Witnesses thought a dragon had landed.
He continued on foot, then by boat bound for San Francisco. He crossed the U.S. to New York, and with his fake Swiss passport, boarded a ship for Italy. The British caught him at an unscheduled stop in Gibraltar and took him to a POW camp in Leicestershire. Two months later, he escaped, found a boat headed for Holland, then took a train home. The Kaiser awarded him the Iron Cross. He went back into service until the end of the war, but as Germany’s Fascism movement grew, Gunther wanted no part of it and moved to South America, where he would fly aerial surveys for Argentina and Chile until his untimely death from a crash.
His memoir, “The Aviator of Tsingtao,” has been republished in English by Camphor Press.
ElyAirLines.blogspot.com
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