 His duties also included organizing the "International Squadron" of mercenary pilots.Soviet bomber and fighter squadrons increasingly took over from China's battered units, and in the summer of 1938, Chennault went to Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province in western China, to train and organize a new Chinese Air Force along the American model.On October 21, 1939, Chennault, accompanied by four Chinese officials, boarded the Pan American Airways Boeing B-314 "California Clipper " in Hong Kong, arriving at San Francisco on October 26, on a special mission for Chiang Kai-shek.