“… I judge the operations of the 14th Air Force to have constituted between 60 percent and 75 percent of our effective opposition in China. Without the Air Force, we could have gone anywhere we wished.”
– Lt. Gen. Takahashi, Japanese Chief of Staff in China
The United States government organized the American Volunteer Groups to aid the Nationalist government of China against Japan in the Second Sino-Japanese War. The only unit to actually see combat was the 1st AVG, popularly known as the Flying Tigers. Air Force TWS to date lists thirteen remembrances for deceased members of this unit.
The Early Operations of the American Volunteer Group
The group consisted of three fighter squadrons of around 30 aircraft, each of whom had trained in Burma before the American entry into World War II to defend the Republic of China against Japanese forces. The Flying Tigers were recruited starting on 15 Apr 1941 when President Franklin Roosevelt signed an unpublished executive order and began to arrive in China at that time. One hundred Curtiss P-40Bs were obtained from Curtiss-Wright by convincing the British Government to take a later, more advanced batch of P-40s in exchange. While it accepted some civilian volunteers for its headquarters and ground crew, the AVG recruited most of its staff from the U.S. The AVG were officially members of the Republic of China Air Force military. They had contracts with salaries ranging from $250 a month for a mechanic to $750 for a squadron commander, roughly three times what they had been making in the U.S. forces. The group assembled at RAF Mingaladon in Burma by November 1941 for training, where it was organized into three squadrons and established a headquarters. After the Japanese invasion of Burma, the AVG fought alongside the Royal Air Force to defend Rangoon. Under Chennault’s command, the Flying Tigers became famous for defending Burma and China.
The Tactical Achievements of the AVG
The group first saw combat on 20 Dec, 1941, 12 days after Pearl Harbor. It demonstrated innovative tactical victories when the news in the U.S. was filled with little more than stories of defeat at the hands of the Japanese forces and achieved such notable success during the lowest period of the war for both the U.S. and the Allied Forces as to give hope to America that it might eventually defeat Japan. AVG pilots earned official credit and received combat bonuses for destroying 296 enemy aircraft while losing only 14 pilots in combat. The combat records of the AVG still exist, and researchers have found them credible. On 4 Jul 1942, the AVG was disbanded and replaced by the United States Army Air Forces’ (AAF) 23rd Fighter Group in July 1942, which was later absorbed into the U.S. 14th Air Force with General Chennault as commander. Only five AVG pilots chose to continue with the AAF. The 23rd FG achieved similar combat success while retaining the nose art on the left-over P-40s.
AVG fighter aircraft were painted with a large shark face on the front of the aircraft. This was done after pilots saw a photograph of a P-40 of No. 112 Squadron RAF in North Africa, which had adopted the shark face from German pilots of the Luftwaffe’s ZG 76 heavy fighter wing, flying Messerschmitt Bf 110 fighters in Crete. (The AVG nose art is variously credited to Charles Bond and Erik Shilling.) At about the same time, the AVG was dubbed “The Flying Tigers” by its Washington support group, called China Defense Supplies. The P-40’s good qualities included pilot armor, self-sealing fuel tanks, sturdy construction, heavy armament, and a higher diving speed than most Japanese aircraft – qualities that Chennault’s combat tactics were devised to exploit. To gain full advantage, Chennault created an early warning network of spotters that would give his fighters time to take off and climb to a superior altitude before engaging the Japanese. The AVG’s military chaplain described the volunteers’ background in his memoir, “Most men were escaping from frustrations or disappointments, as perhaps I was. They hoped an unknown future in unknown places would somehow give them a second chance. One of the oldest was a tough former sergeant major about forty-three, irreconcilably divorced. One of the youngest was a boy of nineteen who had enlisted in the army, then got right out again for this junket; he longed for adventures with lots of shooting, perhaps because he was small for his age. A majority came from the South and West, and Texans were the largest group from any state.” The AVG credited nineteen pilots with five or more air-to-air victories.
The American Volunteer Group (AVG) and Royal Air Force (RAF) fought side-by-side over Rangoon with comparable numbers, equipment, and courage against the same odds. The RAF broke even against the Japanese, while the Americans rolled up a 15-to-1 score. In February 1942, the Japanese threw heavy raids against Rangoon and Port Darwin, Australia, in the same week. Over Rangoon, five AVG P-40s shot down 17 out of 70 enemy raiders without loss. Over Darwin, 11 out of 12 USAAF P-40s were shot down by a similar Japanese force. A few weeks later, a crack RAF Spitfire squadron was rushed to Australia from Europe and lost 17 out of 27 pilots over Darwin in two raids. The Spitfire was far superior to the P-40 as a combat plane. It was simply a matter of tactics. RAF pilots were trained in methods that were excellent against German and Italian equipment but suicide against the acrobatic Japs. The only American outfit in China that the Japanese ever liked to fight was a P-38 squadron that had fought in North Africa and refused to change its tactics against the Japanese.
Legacy and Recognition of the American Volunteer Group (AVG) / Flying Tigers
There are several museum displays in the United States honoring the Flying Tigers. The National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, has an extensive display dedicated to the AVG, including an A-2 jacket worn by an AVG pilot in China, a banner presented to the AAF by the Chinese government, and a P-40E. The National Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola, Florida, also has a Flying Tiger display. The Chennault Aviation Museum in Monroe, Louisiana, has an extensive collection of Flying Tigers and AVG memorabilia. The AVG monument in the National Museum of the United States Air Force Memorial Garden features a marble sculpture of a pagoda crowned with a brass model of a P-40; the monument stands nearly 14 feet tall. The Palm Springs Air Museum displays memorabilia inside a mockup of AVG ground facilities, with a P-40N painted in AVG markings. Finally, a memorial to the AVG and 14th AF is located at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, depicting a P-40 in AVG markings with a bronze plaque describing the unit’s history and Vandenberg’s role as headquarters for the 14th AF.
There are also several memorials to the AVG in Asia. In Chiang Mai, Thailand, a marble obelisk was dedicated on 11 Nov 2003, inscribed to Chennault; to Jack Newkirk, who was killed in North Thailand on 24 Mar 1942; and to Charles Mott and William McGarry, who were shot down and captured in Thailand. In Taiwan, Madame Chiang Kai-Shek requested a statue of Chennault in the New Park of Taipei to commemorate this wartime friend after his death (the statue has since been relocated to Hualian AFB). A Flying Tigers Memorial is located in the village of Zhejiang, Hunan Province, China, and a museum is dedicated exclusively to the Flying Tigers. The building is a steel and marble structure, with wide sweeping steps leading up to a platform with columns holding up the memorial’s sweeping roof; on its back wall, etched in black marble, are the names of all members of the AVG, 75th Fighter Squadron, and 14th Air Force who died in China. In 2005, the city of Kunming held a ceremony memorializing the history of the Flying Tigers in China, and on 20 Dec 2012, the Flying Tigers Museum opened in Kunming. The date is the 71st anniversary of the first combat from Kunming of the Flying Tigers. The Memorial Cemetery to Anti-Japanese Aviator Martyrs in Nanjing, China, features a wall listing the names of Flying Tiger pilots and other pilots who defended China in World War II and has several unmarked graves for such American pilots.
The largest private museum in China, Jianchuan Museum Cluster, devotes a wing in its military section to the history of the Flying Tigers, including a tribute wall featuring a thousand porcelain photos of members of the Flying Tigers as well as many historical artifacts from the era. In March 2015, the Flying Tiger Heritage Park was opened in Guilin in collaboration with the Flying Tiger Historical Organization. The park is built on the site of Yangtang Airfield and includes a museum, aircraft shelters, and relics of a command post located in a cave. Just before their 50th reunion in 1992, the AVG veterans were retroactively recognized as members of the U.S. military services during the seven months the group was in combat against the Japanese. The AVG was then awarded a Presidential Unit Citation for “professionalism, dedication to duty, and extraordinary heroism.” In 1996, the U.S. Air Force awarded the pilots the Distinguished Flying Cross, and the ground crew was awarded the Bronze Star.
The great value of the American Volunteer Group (AVG or Flying Tigers) was psychological and diplomatic: Americans and Chinese hailed them as heroes during the early period of World War II when Japan had the upper hand. The Flying Tigers raised public hopes for eventual victory while Allied forces, reeling from Pearl Harbor and other Japanese victories, organized for war. “Japan can be defeated in China. It can be defeated by an Air Force so small that in other theaters, it would be called ridiculous. I am confident that, given real authority in command of such an Air Force, I can cause the collapse of Japan.” – Brig. Gen. Claire Chennault Despite supply problems, the 14th Air Force grew from fewer than 200 aircraft to more than 700 planes by the end of the war. American airmen in China destroyed and damaged more than 4,000 Japanese aircraft during the war. They also sank more than a million tons of shipping and destroyed hundreds of locomotives, trucks, and bridges while helping to defeat the Japanese in China.
Ten American Volunteer Group pilots and one crew chief had been killed in action (four in air combat, six were hit by ground fire); nine pilots were lost in accidents. The remaining Flying Tigers, with the exception of Chennault and five others (John Bright, Dave Hill, Ed Rector, Charles Sawyer, and Frank Schiel) returned to the United States where most of them later rejoined their Navy, Marine and Army Air Force units. “Pappy” Boyington and Jim Howard went on to fly their way to more victories, command positions, and Congressional Medals of Honor. The remaining five men formed the nucleus of the 23rd Pursuit Group under Colonel Scott. With probable exceptions of the 8th Air Force itself or WWI Lafayette Escadrille, the Flying Tigers have undoubtedly garnered more articles, books, films, documentaries, monuments, memorials, insignia variants, and general historical accounts than most other Air Force units since 1917. To this day, headquartered at Vandenberg AFB, the 14th Air Force SSI emblem depicts a flying tiger with a 5-pointed star above on the traditional Air Force blue background and shield.
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