Download Chennault and The Flying Tigers

General Claire Chennault & "The Flying Tigers"
During the 1930s, the United States took a position of neutrality in regard to
foreign aggression. When a civil war erupted in Spain in 1936, many Americans
formed volunteer corps which traveled to Europe to fight on the side of the
Spanish Loyalists opposing the Fascist Nationalists under Generalissimo
Francisco Franco. Meanwhile, armed conflict had erupted between China and
Japan a year earlier in 1935. As this war progressed in Asia, volunteers once
again became a focal point in the fight against armed aggression. The American
Volunteer Group--popularl y known as "the Fl ying Tigers"--assisted China in
the attempt to repel the Japanese invaders. Long before Pearl Harbor and the
United States' entry into World War II, Americans fought the Japanese in
Southeast Asia.
The story begins with General Claire Lee Chennault.
Born on September 06, 1893, in Commerce, Texas,
Chennault grew up on a small cotton farm near the
town of Waterproof in Franklin Parish, Louisiana. A
graduate of Louisiana State Universit y in Baton
Rouge, he volunteered for the Arm y when the
United States declared war on Germany in 1917. He
applied for flight training school but was rejected.
Instead, he was accepted for officer training and
commissioned a 1st Lieutenant in the infantry
reserve on October 27, 1917. Transferring to the
Signal Corps, Chennault worked in an observation
balloon section. His repeated applications for flight training were ignored until
October of 1918. He was accepted into flight training school and graduated on
April 09, 1919. However, by this time, World War I had ended. Chennault
served in the Arm y 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 capacit y
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 neutralit y. The AVG was
Chennault
1
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 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
reportedl y called the AVG the "Fei Hui," or
"Fl ying 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 l ying 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.
Chennault recognized the shortages of his unit
in both pilots and aircraft. Pilots were onl y to
engage the enem y on the most favorable terms.
Dogfights were strictl y forbidden. The P-40 could
not out-turn a Japanese fighter. Instead, the tactic
used was to gain altitude over the enem y and then
dive, making a firing pass as they passed through the enem y 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 consistentl y faced and outfought a numericall y
superior enem y force.
In less than one year, the Fl ying Tigers claimed 299 kills of Japanese aircraft;
impressive considering this was accomplished by some 60 pilots and nearl y 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 neutralit y. At midnight on Jul y 04, 1942, the Fl ying Tigers
were officiall y disbanded. Chennault returned to the Arm y 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.
Chennault
2