General Claire Lee Chennault
Chennault served in the Army Air Corps throughout the next eighteen years. On February 25, 1937, the Air Corps Retirement Board recommended that he leave the service. Now age 43, Chennault had been offered a job training fighter pilots in China earlier in December of '36. As such, he retired on April 30, 1937, and sailed for China eight days later. The air war between China and Japan became more of an even match under his tutelage to the Chinese. Japanese bombers no longer assaulted targets beyond the range of their fighter escorts once Chennault's Chinese fighter pilots took to the air. But by the end of 1938, most of China's air force had been destroyed.
In August of 1941, the first recruits of the American Volunteer Corps, a group of trained and commissioned pilots recruited from the U.S. Armed Forces, arrived in Rangoon, Burma. These men were not serving in an official capacity for the United States. Rather, they had left the service and were--so far as international law was concerned--simply mercenaries and soldiers of fortune. This allowed the United States to maintain its state of neutrality. The AVG was equipped with P-40B Warhawk fighters. Chennault divided the group into three squadrons: 1st Pursuit Squadron (nicknamed the "Adams & Eves"), 2nd Pursuit Squadron (the "Panda Bears"), and 3rd Pursuit Squadron (the "Hell's Angels").
The 3rd Pursuit Squadron emblem: "Hells Angels"
The story of the origin of the AVG's nickname is somewhat varied. The Chinese Republic's national animal was the tiger. There was also the story that the shark's teeth painted on the nose of the planes represented the tiger shark, a creature deemed unlucky by Japanese fishermen. Some sources attributed the name as an homage to Chennault's old alma mater, LSU's "Fighting Tigers." The Chinese newspapers reportedly called the AVG the "Fei Hui," or "Flying Tigers," and the world press adopted it as a more colorful moniker than "American Volunteer Group." Whatever the case, Walt Disney studios designed the badge used by the group: a 'V' for Victory lying on its side with a winged tiger racing out of it. Of course, the AVG kept a tiger cub as a mascot along with a leopard.
A variation of the badge designed by Walt Disney studios for the Flying Tigers.
Chennault recognized the shortages of his unit in both pilots and aircraft. Pilots were only to engage the enemy on the most favorable terms. Dogfights were strictly forbidden. The P-40 could not out-turn a Japanese fighter. Instead, the tactic used was to gain altitude over the enemy and then dive, making a firing pass as they passed through the enemy formation and then continuing onward. Lighter Japanese planes could never accelerate fast enough to catch a Warhawk. Chennault's tactics of high speed hit-and-run paid off during a time when the AVG consistently faced and outfought a numerically superior enemy force.
A Chinese soldier guards a line of American P-40 fighter planes, painted with the shark-face emblem of the "Flying Tigers," at a flying field somewhere in China, cira 1942. Photo courtesy of National Archives.
In less than one year, the Flying Tigers claimed 299 kills of Japanese aircraft; impressive considering this was accomplished by some 60 pilots and nearly 200 ground crew. However, with Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 07, 1941, the context of the war changed. The United States no longer needed to maintain neutrality. At midnight on July 04, 1942, the Flying Tigers were officially disbanded. Chennault returned to the Army Air Corps as a Brigadier General. Five pilots and 25 ground crew followed him back into the Air Corps into what became the 14th Air Force. The remaining members of the Tigers returned to their original branches of service.
In the United States, all of the 47 old planes would have been scrapped or sold immediately for salvage. All had been patched and repatched. Engine oil had been filtered and re-used until even the rugged Allison engines in the battered P-40s choked on it. Lack of plane tires was a serious problem. The rocky Chinese air strips cut the four-ply tires to ribbons. Many of the pilots went into combat with their tail-wheel tire casings stuffed with rags.
All of the P-40 engines were long overdue on major overhauls. Some engines had run-in air combat missions-as long as three hundred hours without adequate repair.
Throughout the sticky heat of the East China summer, Chennault's pilots and mechanics had worked and flown around the clock on occasion to keep the enemy off balance and the tiny force of planes in flying condition. Very few of the mechanics had coveralls. They worked in shorts and shoes to save their only change of clothing, blistered by the sun, chilled by the sudden cold rain storms. They worked from before sunrise until long after dark, by the light of kerosene lamp or hand flashlight, bitten raw by insects attracted by their lights.
"A Thousand Springs"
Ms. Anna Chennault.
