Birthplace of Maj. Gen. Claire L. Chennault

Claire Lee Chennault was a month old when his family left Commerce for Gilbert, Louisiana, and his mother died when he was five. The Handbook of Texas gives his birth as September 6, 1893, where the plaque's heading says 1890. He taught school, instructed pilots in World War I and led the Air Corps exhibition team until deafness and quarrels over tactics ended his service in 1937. He commanded the Fourteenth Air Force from 1943, was retired against his will in 1945, then chaired Civil Air Transport. A 2015 marker beside this one is Texas's first in Chinese.

What the plaque says

Birthplace of Maj. Gen. Claire L. Chennault (1890-1958) Organizer-commander of the famous "Flying Tigers" of the China-Burma-India theater in World War II. An outstanding air strategist, Chennault had retired from a pioneer flying career when, in 1937, he was asked by Gen. Chaing Kai-Shek to help China develop an air force to combat threatening raids by Japan. Four years later, with World War II spreading, he received permission from the U. S. to seek a corps of American airmen to help train the Chinese. A total of 252 men-- 87 pilots and 165 ground personnel-- joined the "American volunteer group." Its popular name resulted from a misunderstanding of the sharks' teeth painted on the noses of the aircraft. The Tigers formed three squadrons-- "Adam and Eve," "Panda Bears," and "Hell's Angels"-- supported by the expert pilots of the China National Aviation Corps, a daring supply transport group. So effectively had Chennault studied Japanese air tactics that his tiny band officially destroyed 539 enemy aircraft while losing only 90 itself. During 1941-1942, they checked Japan's invasion of China, then joined regular units. Jack Cornelius, also a native of Commerce and a close friend of Chennault's, was a member of the first pursuit squadron of the Tigers. (1968)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Audie Murphy / American Cotton Museum — 14 mi
  A Greenville museum of Hunt County's military heroes, including Audie Murphy, and of cotton, which keeps the engine of what it says was the world's largest inland cotton compress.
• Cooper Lake State Park — 15 mi
  Two units on Jim Chapman Lake, a Corps reservoir proposed in the late 1930s, stalled by a lawsuit until 1984 and dedicated in 1991, with a 10.5-mile equestrian trail and wildlife land around it.
• Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site — 29 mi
  The two-story farmhouse west of Bonham that the longtime Speaker of the House built in 1916 and kept as his home, left as he lived in it and open as a museum since 1975.

More markers nearby

• Incorporation of Commerce — 0.2 mi
• East Texas State University — 0.5 mi
• Scatter Branch Church — 4.0 mi
• Mt. Zion Churches and Cemetery — 5.1 mi