Flying Tigers News

Flying Tigers Museum, the Flying Tigers Museum in Chongqing

2011-06-11T00:58:00.000+01:00

Beijing Xinhua International Tours Reviews
... General Joseph Warren Stilwell’s former residence in Chongqing has now been converted to the General Joseph W. Stilwell Museum in his honor. The museum began to be opened to the public in 1991. General Joseph W Stilwell contributed a lot to China’s successful flight against the Japanese aggression. On October 19, 1944, Stilwell was recalled from his command by President Franklin D. Roosevelt partly due to the power struggle over the China Theater that appeared between Stilwell, Chennault, and Chiang Kai-Shek. Especially his blunt confrontation with Chiang finally led to Chiang’s determination to have Stilwell recalled to the United States. ...

Edmonton aviation hero takes last high flight

2011-05-04T12:47:00.002+01:00

Edmonton aviation hero takes last high flight - iNews880.com | Cedric Mah will be remembered as an original member of the "Flying Tigers," a war hero, a northern bush pilot, and more recently, a dedicated supporter of Edmonton's Aviation Museum. He was 88. During WWII, Mah and his brother Albert broke the record ...

China's Film Industry Prepares for Big Leaps in the Year of the Rabbit

2011-03-22T02:08:00.001Z

Hollywood Reporter
Just after Filmart 2010, Beijing Galloping Horse Film & TV Production, backer of John Woo's upcoming Flying Tigers film, signed a strategic partnership with state-owned retail group China Resources Vanguard. The partners said they would develop 200 new ...

Chinese film crew here next week for story about Flying Tiger Glen Beneda

2011-03-22T02:08:00.000Z

McCook Daily Gazette
McCOOK, Nebraska -- A Chinese crew will be in McCook this weekend filming a story about a McCook man who defended China with the famous Flying Tigers. Madam Li Xiaolin, daughter of a former president of China, and crew plan to be in McCook Saturday and ...

CHARTER TEACHERS TO SHARE IN $100K GRANT

2011-03-16T10:06:00.000Z

redbankgreen

03.15 - Video and Vets at BCC: THE FLYING TIGERS Veterans of the China, Burma and India campaigns of the Second World War visit Brookdale Community College for a screening and discussion sponsored by the Center for World War II Studies and Conflict ...

Eight to remember during Women's History Month

2011-03-10T12:21:00.000Z

Seattle Times
Known affectionately as "Mom" and a strident supporter of the Allied cause, she used her fictive kinship network to recruit pilots for the Flying Tigers and lobby for the creation of WAVES, the US women's naval reserve. She also experimented with her ...

From Dueling Ironclads to Flying Tigers

2011-03-10T12:17:00.002Z

Family Security Matters
11, 1943: “The Flying Tigers” – the famous volunteer group of American fighter pilots contracted to the Chinese Air Force during World War II and ultimately brought under US Army Air Forces command as the China Air Task Force – is absorbed into the 14 ...

Two Flying Tigers movies in the works

2011-03-01T00:01:00.000Z

Two Flying Tigers movies in the works: "

Two movies about the Flying Tigers are in the works, according to Deadline.com, with John Woo and Terence Chang getting off the tarmac first with their saga. But New Regency, 20th Century Fox, and Tom Cruise are still fighting the good fight on a rival project that carries the identical title, the website reports. Both films are based on the story of the volunteer fighter squadron formed by General Claire Chennault to help the Chinese fight against the Empire of Japan before the United States entered World War II.

Development History Of The Curtiss P-40 Used By The Original AVG Flying Tigers

2011-02-23T09:45:00.002Z

Flying Tigers US
Curtiss knew that their radial engined P-36 couldn’t be developed any more, so to increase its life they decided in July 1937 to install an Allison V-1710 inline engine with integral supercharging. Curtiss gave it the designation of Model 75P and the USAAC gave it the designation of XP-40. ...

A Flying Tiger's inscription mystery

2011-02-22T11:46:00.002Z

Writing in Books
Here is a 1991 reprint of the 1949 Flying Tiger history, Way of a Fighter: The Memoirs of Claire Lee Chennault, by Claire Lee Chennault, Major General, U.S. Army (Ret.); James Thorvardson & Sons, Tucson. Chennault was commander of the 1st American Volunteer Group (AVG) of the Chinese Air Force in 1941-42, otherwise known as The Flying Tigers. Hired by the Chinese government to defend China against the Japanese, their training actually began before America's entry into the war, and just days after the the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the Flying Tigers were flying combat missions. ...

Charles H. Older: P-51 Ace

2011-02-15T06:38:00.002Z

P51 Models
Joining the Marine Corps for flight training, Charles Herman (Chuck) Older received his wings and commission at Pensacola on 1 April 1940 and was assigned to VMF-I. In July 1941 he resigned his reserve commission to join Chennault’s American Volunteer Group (AVG), then forming in Burma. ...

Kenneth C. Carlson

2011-02-06T20:50:00.000Z

Sioux City Journal
Kenneth C. Carlson, 90, of Sioux Falls, S.D., formerly of Hawarden, passed away Friday, Feb. 4, 2011, at Sanford USD Medical Center in Sioux Falls. ... He served as a member of the 14th Air Force Flying Tigers in the China/Burma/India Theater. He achieved the rank of master sergeant and was discharged in ...

Cape May's vital part in World War II

2011-01-20T23:57:00.000Z

Shore News Today
Resident Bill Band, for instance, was a member of the Flying Tigers, a group of American airmen voluntarily fighting for the Chinese against the Japanese ...

Tom Cruise is Still Developing a Competing 'Flying Tigers' Film ...

2011-01-08T01:51:00.002Z

by Ethan Anderton
Though we once heard news that Tom Cruise was going to be working with director John Woo on his story about the WWII air fighting squadron Flying Tigers, that turned out to be a bit of a mix up. Instead, Woo and Cruise were each ...

John Woo's 'Flying Tigers' Will Be Soaring onto IMAX Screens ...

2011-01-06T23:42:00.000Z

by Ethan Anderton
Though he's taken the action genre to so many new levels of intensity, director John Woo is still venturing into uncharted territory. Deadline reports the filmmaker will see his World War II set story Flying Tigers digitally remastered ...

WWII pilot makes daring escape in China

2011-01-02T18:53:00.000Z

Loveland Reporter-Herald
... The Flying Tigers were initially part of the American Volunteer Group, serving with the Chinese army to drive the Japanese back. Later, the group became the Chinese American Task Force, which eventually became the 14th Air Force.” ...

Flying Tigers of WWII

2010-12-23T03:04:00.002Z

Cecom Historical Office
This day in history – the first battle of the WWII “Flying Tigers” on 20 December 2010
The Flying Tigers were officially called the American Volunteer Group, and were known for their planes with iconic shark faces on them. They were equipped and recruited in the spring and summer of 1941, with the express purposed of aiding the Chinese in theater against the ...

John Woo's FLYING TIGERS to Go IMAX; Wants Liam Neeson to Star

2010-12-22T03:03:00.002Z

John Woo's FLYING TIGERS to Go IMAX; Wants Liam Neeson to Star
John Woo is teaming with IMAX for his upcoming World War II drama, Flying Tigers. Woo would like Liam Neeson to star as Lt. Gen. Claire Lee Chennault. ...

Hobert Jones remembers World War II with Flying Tigers over China - Baxter Bulletin

2010-12-20T11:58:00.001Z

Hobert Jones remembers World War II with Flying Tigers over China - Baxter Bulletin: "

Hobert Jones remembers World War II with Flying Tigers over China
Baxter Bulletin
Jones returned to the homeland and was put in charge of a 5-man crew installing static hydraulic cylinders on B-17 bombers until the end of war. ...

and more »

Ted Stevens

2010-12-16T06:27:00.000Z

TIME
He risked his life as an airman in China, supporting the Flying Tigers in World War II. He served in the Senate from 1968 to 2008 — the longest term of any ...

Airman, Attorney, Author: Bay area legend writes it all down ...

2010-12-03T10:07:00.000Z

Airman, Attorney, Author: Bay area legend writes it all down ...: "The 89-year-old has seen it all, including fighting with the Flying Tigers during World War II in China and later becoming the longest serving city attorney in U.S. history. The details are sorted out in Johnson's self-published book ..."

P-40 Warhawk departure

2010-11-14T21:23:00.000Z

P-40 Warhawk departure: "

P-40 Warhawk departure

Source: www.youtube.com

February 15, 2008 http://www.fighterfactory.com/airport/index.php

Veterans Day Parade brings out the colors - Albany Democrat Herald

2010-11-12T11:09:00.001Z

Veterans Day Parade brings out the colors - Albany Democrat Herald: "

Veterans Day Parade brings out the colors
Albany Democrat Herald
“I was stationed at Lu Li Lang China, near where the famous Flying Tigers were stationed. This is definitely something to be proud of,” Lindsay said of the ...

and more »

Thousands of American Flying Tigers relics are on display in ...

2010-11-10T16:46:00.000Z

Thousands of American Flying Tigers relics are on display in ...: "Thousands of American Flying Tigers relics are on display in Kunming &${body}amp;$ &$ &$ The exhibition of the Flying Tigers relics was held in Kunming, capital of southwest China's Yunnan Province, Nov. 9, 2010. (Chinanews/Liu Ranyang)&${body}amp;$ ..."

Warsaw couple's silk patch find in attic is rare WWII blood chit - The Daily News Online

2010-11-10T11:08:00.001Z

Warsaw couple's silk patch find in attic is rare WWII blood chit - The Daily News Online: "

Warsaw couple's silk patch find in attic is rare WWII blood chit
The Daily News Online
They came about after a downed Flying Tigers pilot was nearly killed by angry peasants. They knew only that he was a foreigner and assumed he was Japanese. ...

FRANK: Physician completes 100-mile challenge - North County Times

2010-11-09T11:23:00.001Z

FRANK: Physician completes 100-mile challenge - North County Times: "

FRANK: Physician completes 100-mile challenge
North County Times
John C. Vroman, a member of the Army Air Force's "Flying Tigers," has also contributed some of his war memorabilia and comes by the library regularly to ...

Flying Tigers (1942)

2010-11-08T09:02:00.000Z

Flying Tigers (1942): "It states: “Since the Flying Tigers first spread their wings in the skies above China, the enemy learned to fear the intrepid spirit they have displayed in face of his superior numbers. They have become the symbol of the invincible ..."

Foshee honored with dedication - Andalusia Star-News

2010-11-05T09:25:00.001Z

Foshee honored with dedication - Andalusia Star-News: "

Foshee honored with dedication
Andalusia Star-News
The “Flying Tigers” have been described as “the most colorful group of warriors in modern times” and “the world's most illustrious squadron” by the History ...

Aviation legend returns home

2010-10-29T02:12:00.000+01:00

Crossville Chronicle
... Richardson learned to fly in the Navy Air Corps. One day, he recalls receiving word of a beginning volunteer program forming in China to fight the Japanese. “Why not”? He obtained a release from the Navy and entered into an adventure that would mold the rest of his life. ...

TIFF Offers Its Own Look at Booming Chinese Film Industry - Hollywood Reporter

2010-10-25T01:44:00.001+01:00

TIFF Offers Its Own Look at Booming Chinese Film Industry - Hollywood Reporter: "

TIFF Offers Its Own Look at Booming Chinese Film Industry
Hollywood Reporter
But not every co-production can be a "Red Cliff" and Woo, who's about to start shooting his biggest picture yet, the Sino-US WWII buddy movie "Flying Tigers ...

Gary Sinise narrates Missions That Changed The War for Military Channel - Monsters and Critics.com

2010-10-23T03:14:00.001+01:00

Gary Sinise narrates Missions That Changed The War for Military Channel - Monsters and Critics.com: "

Monsters and Critics.com

Gary Sinise narrates Missions That Changed The War for Military Channel
Monsters and Critics.com
... he describes the misguided Nazi strategy on the eastern front; and “The Flying Tigers,” a series of bombing missions that prevented the fall of China. ...

Finally, the death of a Flying Tigers in China has shot down five ...

2010-10-20T16:06:00.000+01:00

Finally, the death of a Flying Tigers in China has shot down five ;: "... China Foreign Friendship Association, Chinese National Federation of UNESCO jointly sent to the WU light carriage invitation, invited him to the survivors as the Flying Tigers in China to participate in commemorative activities, ..."

Flying Tiger newsreels | Tailspin

2010-10-17T15:39:00.000+01:00

Flying Tiger newsreels Tailspin: "While the Zero was a much more agile plane the tactics used by the Flying Tigers were adapted to overcome the Zero's advantages. Until they were inducted into the US Army in 1941 they had shot down almost five hundred Japanese planes ..."

GETA Blog » Visit the United States eighty veterans seeking ...

2010-10-16T16:50:00.000+01:00

GETA Blog » Visit the United States eighty veterans seeking ...: "Since then, an American Flying Tigers in China to find the savior and the legend of lost aircraft and began writing a new chapter after 66 years.Flying Tigers heaven sent Xiannian hats to send the gun to send knivesMay 7, 1944, ..."

Robert Clark Gerber - Stockton Record

2010-10-15T20:13:00.001+01:00

Robert Clark Gerber - Stockton Record: "

Robert Clark Gerber
Stockton Record
After serving his country with the Flying Tigers in Kunming, China. Robert settled in Stockton, CA in 1945. He went to work for EB MUD in 1950 where he ...

Shangri-la, or somewhere just like it - Toronto Star

2010-10-15T09:57:00.000+01:00

Shangri-la, or somewhere just like it - Toronto Star: "

Shangri-la, or somewhere just like it
Toronto Star
Just outside of town is what's left of the airfield the American Flying Tigers used when fighting the Japanese. Lijiang is exquisite. ...

Tom Cruise is Still Developing a Competing 'Flying Tigers' Film

2010-10-09T01:47:00.002+01:00

FirstShowing.net
Though we once heard news that Tom Cruise was going to be working with director John Woo on his story
about the WWII air fighting squadron Flying Tigers, that turned out to be a bit of a mix up. Instead, Woo and Cruise were each independently developing their own separate takes on the infamous fighter squadron formed by General Claire Chennault to help the Chinese fight against the Empire of Japan before the United States entered WWII. While you would think Woo's seemingly faster development would've stopped Cruise from continuing his project with New Regency, Deadline reports they're still pushing forward with the film. ...

WWII’s Flying Tigers Reunite

2010-10-07T00:59:00.000+01:00

International Examiner
Veterans share how the community and Chinatowns across the country changed forever after their return home — including them.
Back in 1943, Joe Young, a Chinese American living in New York, was a photography buff when he saw an advertisement looking for young men to join a new unit in the air force. Young, who was 18 years-old at the time, volunteered to join the air force as a chance to work in aerial mapping and photo reconnaissance to further his photography career.
Young joined the 14th Air Force and 87th Signal Company, the only all Chinese American units that served in the U.S. Army in World War II. They were also known as the “Flying Tigers,” referencing the era of P40 airplanes with the snarling jaws of a shark.
From September 14 through 17, the veterans came to Seattle to celebrate their 67th anniversary reunion. The group is the largest Chinese American veterans group in the U.S. to hold a regular reunion and the only part of the 14th Air Force that still has reunions to ...

John Yee honored by Denver for Sister Cities work

2010-09-23T02:46:00.000+01:00

By ADAM GOLDSTEIN
The Aurora Sentinel

AURORA | A retired Aurora Central High School teacher’s efforts to strengthen bonds with foreign countries has been recognized by the Denver City Council.

Earlier this month, Denver City Councilman Doug Linkhart presented John Yee with the city’s Friendship Award, a recognition that’s part of the Denver Sister Cities program. Yee, a former teacher at Central, received the award for his longtime efforts to build ties between Denver and Kunming, China. Linkhart presented the award on behalf of Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper during a ceremony at the Wings Over the Rockies Museum on Sept. 16.

Yee, a native of Kumming, served with the Flying Tigers, an American Volunteer Group, during World War II. In addition to his work in the Aurora Public Schools District, Yee has taught at the University of Denver, the Metropolitan State College of Denver and has been an active member of the Aurora Asian/Pacific Community Partnership.

The Friendship Award is the latest in a string of honors for Yee. He’s also received the Martin Luther King, Jr. Humanitarian Award, the Minoru Yasui Volunteer Award and served as the Honorary Chair of the Dragon Boat Festival in Denver.

Stories from the Hump Route

2010-09-19T13:17:00.000+01:00

from xinhuanet

An exhibition in Sichuan honors American pilots who helped China during World War II, and showcases the aid they got in return from the ethnic Yi tribe. Mei Jia and Song Ming tell us more.

Searching for the wrecks of US airplanes that crashed into Southwest China during the early 1940s was not an easy task. Some of the debris had already been reincarnated as pots, pans and knives.

But what researchers did uncover were the touching stories of how the Yi people helped the pilots after their planes were downed.

The heroics of US General Claire Lee Chennault and his Flying Tigers are well- documented in history, but this current exhibition turns the limelight on some other American pilots who had risked their lives to help China.

"The rare items and photos of the exhibition show the Yi people's contributions in World War II when they joined hands with the US Air Force to combat the invasion," says Deng Haichun, office director of the Liangshan Yi Slavery Society Museum in Xichang, Liangshan Yi autonomous prefecture, Sichuan province.

In 1944, four bombers of the US 20th Air Force and two cargo planes of the Air Transport Command crashed in the mountainous Liangshan region along the Hump Route.

More than 30 American pilots had parachuted and landed in areas where the Yi people lived. ...

WWII pilot returns to China

2010-09-10T08:58:00.000+01:00

http://www.lompocrecord.com/news/local/article_03bf4d12-bca4-11df-859a-001cc4c002e0.html

By Amanda Brooks/Staff Writer Amanda.Brooks@Lee.net

The first time Harry Schlueter went to China, he flew over the Himalayas, aka “the Hump,” to reach Kunming in the southwest.

That was during World War II, when Schlueter was a pilot for the Army Air Forces’ Air Transport Command in the China-Burma-India Theater, supplying Chinese and U.S. ground forces in the Yunnan Province. China, a U.S. ally, had been cut off by invading Japanese forces.

“I flew from India to China, flying in supplies,” said Schlueter. “China was completely isolated then. The only way in was by air.”

Between December 1944 and V-J Day, when Japan surrendered on Sept. 2, 1945, Schlueter accumulated about 500 hours flying time.

It would be 37 years before he returned to China.

Schlueter said that prior to 1982, China had closed the southwest provinces to visitors.

“In 1982, the Beijing government decided to open the area for visitation — I won’t call it tourism,” Schlueter said. “Various organizations in China put together a tour and we were invited. That included any vets who served in that part of China.”

Starting in 1995, the 50th anniversary of V-J Day, the memorial tours were held every five years. The tours are sponsored by the Overseas and Foreign Affairs Committee of Hunan, ZhiJiang City Government, Beijing Aviators Association and the Chinese American Culture Exchange Association.

Schlueter said he missed the tour in 1995, but has gone on the last three, including the Victory-65 Memorial event in July.

“Each time we see something different that relates to our wartime experience, and (the Chinese), in turn, in many areas, still want to say thank you,” he said.
Banquets were held to honor the visiting veterans.
“The banquets are well done,” Schlueter said. “All the hierarchy, both local and visiting, are in attendance.
“There is a lot of ‘gan bei,’” he said, explaining that “gan bei” means toasting.
At some locations, the visiting veterans were met by welcome banners and local officials and dignitaries who couldn’t say thank-you enough, he said.
The tours generally include visits to significant places such as the Hump Flight Monument, the Flying Tigers Museum and the Japanese Surrender Museum, and to more traditional tourist sights such as the Great Wall and the Forbidden City.
Of particular interest to Schlueter this year was the Hump Flight Monument, built in 1993.
“We made our first visit to it in 2000; it is rather impressive,” Schlueter said. “We went back to see a friendship tree I planted in 2005 at the monument — it’s still growing, handsomely.”
Though he didn’t get to do more than see the building, Schlueter was interesting in seeing the Hump Pilot School, which members of the Hump Pilot Association donated to in 2000.
“A bunch of us, about 60, chipped in for a school to train selected Chinese kids to learn English to become people involved in international activities.”
Another highlight was going to the airport he landed at in Kunming after his flights over the Hump.
“Of course it’s all overbuilt,” Schlueter said. “Where once it was all bamboo, now it’s all modern buildings, but in the same place, so I could reminisce.
“We were able to go down to one spot to look at the hills at the end of the valley where if on take-off you didn’t get air born and turn fast enough, you’d buy the mountain.”
At the Japanese Surrender Museum in Zhijiang, Schlueter was one of four vets invited to meet the mayor and the head of the province.
“There were an infinite number of TV and news people — click, click, click,” Schlueter said.
“We had a chance for 45 minutes for discussion — there were a lot of thank yous on their part,” said Schlueter. “That was a real nice thing for me to get to do in the place where peace was signed.”
Over his years of visiting China, Schlueter said he has noticed many changes, especially this year because he returned to places he had not visited since 1982.
In Guilin, they cruised down the Li River.
“When we went in 1982, it was primitive,” Schlueter said. “The facilities were over the edge of the boat. Today there are modern luxury cruisers. They hold 50 to 60 people and there is food and drinks, everything, just like here.”
Schlueter praised Guilin for maintaining its trees while putting in freeways and neon lights.
“It’s not like in the old days,” Schlueter said. “But it’s a beautiful city. It was home to the 14th Air Force group.”
Also in Guilin, they revisited the Reed Flute Cave, where people hid during WWII while the Japanese bombed the area.
“These are really impressive caves; they can get a lot of people in there,” Schlueter said. “In ’82, there were single light bulbs tacked on the walls. This time, it was all neon lighting in different colors — all for the tourists.”
“The Great Wall is a tourist trap now,” Schlueter said. “Tourism is just booming. They’re not messing around.”
From his first visit to China to his most recent, Schlueter said, he saw changes such as the way people dress (Mau suits in 1982, modern dress today), how they farm (water buffalo and motorbikes converted to tractor-like devices in 1982, greater use of tractors today) and how they travel (mostly by bicycle in 1982, mostly cars and motorcycles today).
Airplanes, airports, freeways and hotels are all bigger and more modern.
“In 1982, little kids came up to us on the streets and thanked us,” Schlueter said. “Now, walking down the street, only one or two people will stop to talk to you.”
Schlueter said that, just like here, everyone is busy doing their own thing today — mesmerized by their cell phones and lap-top computers.
“The main reason we went was to visit the military sites that are in that part of Southwest China that we never got to see during the war,” Schlueter said. “We were feeding them but never got to see it.”

Former U.S. President James Carter Military attends peace festival ...

2010-09-08T09:26:00.000+01:00

Former U.S. President James Carter Military attends peace festival ...: "The American Volunteer Group, nicknamed the Flying Tigers by the Chinese for their courage, was formed in 1941 under the leadership of U.S. General Chenault to help China drive out invading Japanese troops. ..."

Flying Tigers revisit China after decades

2010-09-08T00:44:00.000+01:00

Source: People Daily

"This is our fighter we used to pilot in combat," said a Flying Tigers member when visiting the China Space Museum Monday.

These veterans, who were once members of a volunteer group of the Chinese Air Force in the Second World War, all took taken part in Flying Tigers or flew the Hump.

During the visit ...

Re: United States - Pennsylvania - World War II Weekend 2010 - Reading - 06/04/10

2010-09-02T11:11:00.000+01:00

Re: United States - Pennsylvania - World War II Weekend 2010 - Reading - 06/04/10: "And Dameo in the American Airpower Museum's P-40 "The Jacky C"
"

A Flying Tiger never dies - Xinhua

2010-08-28T21:47:00.001+01:00

A Flying Tiger never dies - Xinhua: "

A Flying Tiger never dies
Xinhua
Distinguished Flying Cross at the age of 24, his legacy will be the memories he shared of a near-mythical group of warriors called the Flying Tigers. ...

Aviation and Military Museum to be expanded in Louisiana - Paul Fraser Collectibles

2010-08-27T11:13:00.001+01:00

Aviation and Military Museum to be expanded in Louisiana - Paul Fraser Collectibles: "

Paul Fraser Collectibles

Aviation and Military Museum to be expanded in Louisiana
Paul Fraser Collectibles
The hangar will hold historic aircraft used by Lieutenant General Claire Lee Chennault's Flying Tigers. Chennault was a fierce advocate of pursuit or ...

Flying Tigers' bones found among weeds

2010-08-27T04:11:00.000+01:00

Global Times

The graves of fallen Chinese and foreign Flying Tigers under the command of legendary US airman Claire Chenault, who defended Chinese territory in Southwest China against Japan in World War II, were raided in the late 1980s in a village of Southwestern Yunnan Province. The robbers left their bones exposed, sparking a recent call for a dignified reburial in the Flying Tigers Cemetery site.

As the first American volunteer air force to assist China in fighting against Japan in 1941, the Flying Tigers had both American and Chinese pilots. 3,360 died in China, 800 of whom were buried in Yunnan Province, Yang Fengming, deputy secretary general of the Yunnan Flying Tigers Research Institute, told the Global Times.

The reason for the nearly 10-year delay between the desecration of the graves and the recent announcement was not revealed.

"Scattered in the weeds, the coffins of the soldiers were dug up and some of the bones can been seen on the ground," Yang recalled of the scene he saw three years ago when he first sought the whereabouts of the graves, adding that the situation has not changed much since then.

After the war, about 300 graves of American pilots were brought back to the US, he said, urging that those remaining here, about 500 pilots, to be respected and at least be given a final resting place.

The graves of the soldiers were relocated in 1954 from Xiao Maqie village to Changchun Hill after the previous graveyard was reclaimed to build a warehouse, Yang said.

Gravestones of the martyrs were stolen to help build the Chayedi reservoir during the ...
. . .

P-40 Tomahawk on Airfield at Kunming, China

2010-08-27T04:07:00.000+01:00

Flickr - by happyshooter

P-40 Tomahawk on Airfield at Kunming, China during WW II / George Rodger photographer I had to take a shot at this ad found at Sacramento Antique Fair. . . .

United States - California - Wings Over Wine Country Air Show 2010 - Santa Rosa - 08/20/10

2010-08-24T21:23:00.000+01:00

United States - California - Wings Over Wine Country Air Show 2010 - Santa Rosa - 08/20/10: "

[img]http://www.flyphotoguy.com/Airshows/Santa-Rosa-Wings-Over-the-Wine/Wings-Over-the-Wine-CountrySPK/SPK19..."

Flying Tigers Pilot Dies in Beijing

2010-08-24T03:19:00.000+01:00

by CriEnglish

Peng Jiaheng, a 90-year-old former pilot who flew with the American Volunteer Group (AVG), known as the Flying Tigers, died from acute myelogenous leukemia Sunday afternoon in Beijing, family members said Monday.

Peng is the only pilot from the Chinese mainland who was awarded the "Distinguished Flying Cross" by the U.S. government in 1945.

The Distinguished Flying Cross, authorized by an Act of Congress in 1926, is a medal awarded to officers or enlisted members of the U.S. armed forces who distinguish themselves in operations through their heroism or extraordinary achievement while participating in aerial combat.

Peng Jiaheng donated his Distinguished Flying Cross to the Beijing-based the Memorial Hall of the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in March 2005.

Peng suffered from acute myelogenous leukemia in 2009 and received bone marrow transplants from Peng Zhuonan, his youngest son, last December. He was reportedly in good health before his relapse on July 20, said Peng's wife, Fu Rumei.

"My father was very concerned about his AVG companion, Wang Yanzhou's health, when he was at the end of his life," said Peng Zhuonan.

With the death of Peng, Wang Yanzhou and Wu Qiyao are the only surviving AVG's pilots in the Chinese mainland. Wang and Wu live in the eastern provinces of Shandong and Zhejiang, respectively.

Peng himself requested an end to his medical treatment and money donations for his care, said his wife Fu Rumei.

"I am only an ordinary old person. Incurable diseases are common for my age and medicine can hardly sustain my life," said Peng Jiaheng several days before he passed away.

He made a will, giving the remaining 160,000 yuan (23,570 U.S. dollars) in donations to his surviving comrade-in -arms and to public welfare work.

A memorial meeting for Peng Jiaheng will be held on Saturday Aug. 28 at Babaoshan Cemetery in Beijing.

Peng Jiaheng, born in Indonesia in 1921, was enrolled in the Whampoa Military Academy in 1937 and later went to the United States to learn to fly in the 1940s.

Peng joined the AVG in 1944, an air unit organized by the United States to help China during the Second World War. He survived one air battle, sustaining more than 20 bullet holes in his plane.

Further, he fought in 64 air battles against the Japanese air force.

Xue Gang, nicknamed "old ant", who created www.ilaobing.com, a forum which means "We love Second World War's veterans", said many volunteers had paid visits to Peng and looked after him around the clock.

"Peng Jiaheng faced death unflinchingly when confronting national adversity. He is a national hero, so we are responsible for taking care of him," said Xue.

Xue, in his fifties, resigned from his job with an annual income of 200,000 yuan (about 29,460 U.S. dollars) in 2008, focusing instead on researching and visiting Second World War veterans throughout the country.

Since 2006, Xue has organized nearly 20,000 volunteers on the Internet to help Second World War veterans. He and his volunteers created profiles of more than 300 soldiers and each has got financially and mentally support.

Li Laigen, whose grandfather is Peng Jiaheng's schoolmate from Whampoa Military Academy, said he visited Peng every other day after his relapse.

"The veterans are real heroes in my heart," said Li, in his twenties, "I looked after him all these days as I wanted to be closer to the hero."

John Woo's Flying Tigers comes in IMAX - China.org.cn

2010-08-23T11:07:00.001+01:00

John Woo's Flying Tigers comes in IMAX - China.org.cn: "

RTE.ie

John Woo's Flying Tigers comes in IMAX
China.org.cn
Director John Woo's latest film "Flying Tigers," set to start shooting this fall, will be released in IMAX format according to the report of ...
John Woo Will Launch Flying Tigers At IMAXCinema Blend
EXCLUSIVE: John Woo, Imax expand 'Tigers'Hollywood Reporter
John Woo preps 'Flying Tigers' for IMAXDigital Spy
Collider.com (blog)
all 28 news articles »

John Woo Wants Liam Neeson to Star in "Flying Tigers" IMAX Movie ...

2010-08-20T11:05:00.001+01:00

John Woo Wants Liam Neeson to Star in "Flying Tigers" IMAX Movie ...: "There's finally been some movement on John Woo's next period war epic, the '40s aerial fighter movie..."

Big Movie Zone Blog » Blog Archive » Flying Tigers will get IMAX ...

2010-08-20T11:05:00.000+01:00

Big Movie Zone Blog » Blog Archive » Flying Tigers will get IMAX ...: "Director John Woo will work with the Creative Artists Agency and IMAX in an effort to super-size his roughly $90 million, 1940s bilingual aerial battle epic movie “Flying Tigers,” due to go into pre-production in China in September. ..."

John Woo Will Launch Flying Tigers At IMAX - Cinema Blend

2010-08-19T23:21:00.001+01:00

John Woo Will Launch Flying Tigers At IMAX - Cinema Blend: "

Hollywood.com

John Woo Will Launch Flying Tigers At IMAX
Cinema Blend
The film, estimated at $90 million budget, will focus on US Army Lt. Claire Lee Chennault, leader of the Flying Tigers squadron that trained the first group ...
EXCLUSIVE: John Woo, Imax expand 'Tigers'Hollywood Reporter
John Woo preps 'Flying Tigers' for IMAXDigital Spy
John Woo's FLYING TIGERS to Go IMAX; Wants Liam Neeson to StarCollider.com (blog)
ComingSoon.net -Kokomo Perspective
all 12 news articles »

Re: P-40 Warhawk

2010-08-19T16:03:00.000+01:00

Re: P-40 Warhawk: "WWII Weekend
"

Woo joins cast of Chinese propaganda blockbuster

2010-07-28T14:16:00.000+01:00

By MIN LEE (AP)

HONG KONG — A-List filmmaker John Woo is the first celebrity to join the cast of the second major film in the leading Chinese state film studio's campaign to reform the propaganda genre with a heavy dose of star power.
Last year, China Film Group Corp. released "The Founding of a Republic" to mark the Chinese Communist Party's 60th year in power. Eager to beef up the party's image among audiences who favor commercial blockbusters or Hollywood fare, the studio stacked the historical epic with Chinese-language cinema's biggest stars. Actors like Jackie Chan, Jet Li and Andy Lau were happy to comply even though they were given mere cameos, mindful of the importance of cultivating relationships in the booming mainland market.
China Film Group is now following up the 60 million Chinese yuan ($8.8 million) production with a second star-studded blockbuster that commemorates the 90th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party next year.
The first celebrity to sign on is "Mission: Impossible II" director Woo, China Film Group Film Production Corp. President Zhao Haicheng told The Associated Press in a phone interview on Wednesday. The veteran filmmaker will play Lin Sen, the former president of the ruling Nationalist government that the communists forced into exile in Taiwan in 1949, he said.
Shooting will start in mid- to late- August, Zhao said, declining to give further details.
The film called "The Founding of a Party" in Chinese will trace events between the 1911 revolution that overthrew imperial rule and the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921, the Chinese news website Sina.com reported on Wednesday. Directors Han Sanping — the chairman of China Film Group — and Huang Jianxin will shoot in Beijing, Shanghai, Paris and Moscow, the report said.
"The Founding of a Republic" raked in a massive 415 million yuan ($61 million) at the box office, helped by politically correct theater operators who flooded their properties with screenings. "The Founding of a Party" is likely to receive similar treatment.
Woo made his name in the Hong Kong industry with action thrillers like "A Better Tomorrow," "The Killer" and "Hard Boiled" before moving to the U.S., where his credits also include "Broken Arrow," "Face/Off" and "Windtalkers." Woo also had a small role in "The Founding of a Republic" but his character was cut in the final edit.
But he has focused on Chinese-language productions in recent years, directing the two-part historical epic "Red Cliff" and producing the upcoming kung fu movie "Reign of Assassins." His next project will take on the so-called "Flying Tigers" — American fighter pilots who defended China against Japanese invaders during World War II.

Flying Tiger ailing and low on funds

2010-07-27T01:21:00.000+01:00

Global Times

An 89-year-old former member of the American Volunteer Group (AVG) is suffering from leukemia and in dire need of money in order to be able to continue affording treatment.
Peng Jiaheng has been in hospital for 10 days due to a relapse of his illness.
Peng received a bone marrow transplant last December, and he was in good health before the relapse, his family told the Legal Mirror.
Born in Indonesia in 1921, Peng is the only surviving AVG member in Beijing.
In 1944 he joined the AVG, or the Flying Tigers, air units organized by the US to help ...

Claire Chennault - FU Hero

2010-07-22T02:33:00.000+01:00

Claire Chennault - FU Hero: "

The faculty at FU is proud to add Lieutenant General Claire Lee Chennault to it’s Hall of Heros. Claire Chennault was a contentious officer, and a fierce advocate of "pursuit" or fight-interceptor aircraft during the 1930s when the U.S. Army Air Corps was focused primarily on high-altitude bombardment. Kinda of sound like our military leadership of today? Chennault retired in 1937, went to work as an aviation trainer and adviser in China, and commanded the "Flying Tigers” during World War II, both the volunteer group and the uniformed units that replaced it in 1942.

Poor health and disputes with superiors (I guess they didn’t do Rolling Stones interviews back then) led Chennault to resign from the service on 30 April 1937. He then went to China and joined a small group of American civilians training Chinese airmen. When the Sino-Japanese War broke out in July, he served as "air adviser" to Nationalist Government leader General Chiang Kai-shek.

Immediately following the Japanese air Attack on Pearl Harbor, the first news reports released to the public pertaining to Claire Chennault's war exploits occurred on 20 December 1941 when senior Chinese officials in Chungking that Saturday evening released his name to United Press International reporters to commemorate the first aerial attack made by the international air force called the American Volunteer Group (AVG)

These American flyers encountered ten Japanese planes heading to raid Kunming, and successfully shot down four of the raiders. Thus, Colonel Claire Chennault became America's first military leader to be publicly recognized for striking a blow against the Japanese military forces.

Based primarily out of Rangoon, Burma and Kunming, Yunnan, Chennault's 1st American Volunteer Group (AVG) – better known as the "Flying Tigers” – began training in August 1941 and fought the Japanese for seven months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Chennault's three squadrons used P-40s to guard the Burma Road, Rangoon, and other strategic locations in Southeast Asia.

After the War, Chennault had a high opinion of Chiang Kai-shek and advocated international support for Asian anti-communist movements. He purchased several surplus military aircraft and created the Civil Air Transport (later known as Air America). These aircraft facilitated aid to Nationalist China during the struggle against Chinese Communists in the late 1940s, and were later used in supply missions to French forces in Indochina.

In 1951, a now-retired Major General Chennault testified and provided written statements to the Senate Joint Committee on Armed Forces and Foreign Relations, which was investigating the causes of the fall of China in 1949 to Communist forces. Together with Army General Albert C. Wedemeyer, Navy Vice Admiral Oscar C. Badger II, and others, Chennault stated that the Truman administration's arms embargo was a key factor in the loss of morale to the Nationalist armies. Shortly before his death, Chennault was asked to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee of the Congress. When a committee member asked him who won the Korean War, his response was blunt: "The Communists."

Here's a great video clip from back in the day about Claire Chennault's Flying Tigers.

Chennault: Door's open

2010-07-07T17:17:00.000+01:00

Gen. Claire Lee Chennault's fame hardly is limited to a wood-frame museum structure alongside Monroe's Kansas Lane that houses his memorabilia and bears his name. No indeed.

Nor has it been limited for seven decades, when this towering military figure from northeastern Louisiana first led volunteer forces in China in defending against invading marauders from Japan. His image frequently graced the covers of national magazines; his story was told by numerous biographers, including himself, and the story of his war efforts was depicted in Flying Tigers, a motion picture starring John Wayne, John Carroll and Anna Lee.

"Gen. Claire Lee Chennault and his Flying Tigers," an article written by historian William Caverlee and published in the summer edition of Louisiana's Cultural Vistas, serves as a ready reminder to northeastern Louisiana and beyond that the Chennault Aviation and Military Museum is well worth a visit and that the life of Chennault, a legendary yet controversial military figure, bears close study.

Caverlee's work includes recounting of Chennault's early life, his pre-military teaching career in northeastern Louisiana and his service to the U.S. Army. More specifically, it details Chennault's work with the Chinese government as it attempted to fend off imperial Japanese forces in the 1930s. It also explains that Chennault's work with "volunteers" who established a flying force for China before America's entry into the war also provided for Americans one of the few military success stories as the war unfolded for the United States.

Nor does Caverlee avoid the controversial nature of this successful general. He includes mention of several biographical works on Chennault, some at odds with the others over Chennault's importance as a military figure. Nonetheless, what emerges in the article on Chennault is an historical figure of some reckoning, one intriguing enough that it should send area residents who've not visited the Monroe museum to its doorstep.

The museum covers much more than Chennault's life. It tells the story of Selman Field, where navigators trained in World War II. It recounts the brave and dutiful efforts of local people in serving our nation's military. It provides the opportunity for community celebration in honoring our military. It tells a story that is both broadly American yet distinctively northeastern Louisiana's.

The museum, operated under the auspices of the Secretary of State's Office, is open free to the public from 9 a.m.- 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 1 - 5 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. There are many excellent reasons to visit.

The door is open.

http://www.thenewsstar.com/article/20100707/OPINION01/7070319

Air show grounded, but Air Force chapter has Flying Tiger

2010-06-17T17:54:00.000+01:00

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/broward/pompano-beach/fl-pbf-gold-0617-20100617,0,2842073.story

In July 1941, before the United States officially entered World War II, a secret force of volunteer pilots in the Army Air Corps banded together to help China fight the Japanese.

Their mission was covert, so much so that many of the pilots brought their wives and girlfriends to China so no one would suspect their real objective. Known as the Flying Tigers, the pilots helped bring supplies and soldiers into Burma and China during the war.

One of those men, Russell Castaline, will be the featured speaker Friday at the Air Force Association Gold Coast Chapter's dinner at El Palacio in Fort Lauderdale. Castaline is one of seven members of the Flying Tigers still alive. The Air Force Association's Gold Coast Chapter facilitated six air shows from 1999 through 2004 at the Pompano Beach Air Park, before a lack of funding forced the annual show to be discontinued.
The Gold Coast Chapter encompasses Broward, Martin, Palm Beach and St. Lucie counties and has roughly 700 members.

Castaline, 87, will speak about his experiences in the war, and as a member of the First American Volunteer Group, another name for the Flying Tigers.

Born in Boston, Castaline got his pilot's license at the age of 16 and joined the service at 17. He said he always wanted to be a fighter pilot and joined the American Volunteer Group in hope of getting his chance.
"I felt that this gave me an opportunity to fly with the Chinese Air Force," Castaline said, noting that he couldn't fly with the Army Air Corps until he was an officer. "I was very young and very anxious to fly."
Castaline never became a rated fighter pilot, but he did get a chance to fly on numerous occasions as a member of the AVG. He was mainly a crewman, and pilots often let him take the reins, he said.

"Whatever I did in that pilot seat was because they let me," Castaline said.

He flew more than 100 missions over the Himalayas on the C-47 Skytrain, a plane that was critical to the success of the war. Without that plane, Castaline said, Burma would have fallen to the Japanese. In all, he flew in about 145 missions carrying supplies and soldiers to the beleaguered British and Indian forces in Burma.

"There was not one mission that I flew… that wasn't extremely dangerous," he said.

One unusual mission involved flying Gen. Claire Lee Chennault, who commanded the AVG, to Egypt for a meeting. The Germans were pushing the British and the Americans toward Egypt, so the Allies had called for a big meeting with all the generals, Castaline recalled.

"[Chennault] was a regular guy, and we used to play softball together," he said. "Everybody was [equal] to him."

Castaline will speak at 6 p.m. Friday at El Palacio, 4900 Powerline Road in Fort Lauderdale.
"I think he's probably got a thousand stories to tell," said Gold Coast Chapter member Ran Meriam.

Tom Cruise not in John Woo's 'Flying Tiger SWAT Team'

2010-06-15T12:51:00.000+01:00

Tom Cruise not in John Woo's 'Flying Tiger SWAT Team': "'Flying Tiger SWAT Team' tells the story of 'The Flying Tigers', known otherwise as the 1st American Volunteer Group (AVG), a fighter squadron based in Yunnan, China, made up of American pilots that flew missions against Japanese ..."

P-40 and Spitfire Startup

2010-05-25T14:44:00.001+01:00

P-40 and Spitfire Startup

FlightBlogger

P-40 and Spitfire Startup - http://vimeo.com/11980559

Sunday from Vimeo - Comment - Like

Re: United States - California - Planes of Fame Airshow 2010 - Chino - 05/15/10

2010-05-21T11:03:00.000+01:00

United States - California - Planes of Fame Airshow 2010 - Chino - 05/15/10: "The original....
"

P-40 WARHAWKS AND CLAIRE CHENNAULT'S FLYING TIGERS « Pam5479's Blog

2010-05-20T22:21:00.000+01:00

P-40 WARHAWKS AND CLAIRE CHENNAULT'S FLYING TIGERS « Pam5479's Blog: "In preparation for the P-40E's arrival, this blog gives some background on the Flying Tigers and our new aircraft in particular. At the end of this blog, there are some larger-size pictures of P-40s, the Flying Tigers, ..."

Curtiss P-40 Flying Tigers

2010-05-20T03:14:00.001+01:00

MGB1977Red — April 29, 2009 — P-40s from around the US show off their colors! The pink Shark's Mouth P-40 belongs to Mrs. Suzanne DeLano Parish, a former WASP and president and co-founder of the Kalamazoo Aviation Museum. Desert Pink was an official color but this one is REALLY pink. Note the eyelashes on the Shark face and the Fifinella insignia which is the Women's Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) mascot, designed by Walt Disney.

Flying Tigers member first to visit Chennault museum

2010-05-17T12:06:00.000+01:00

By Matthew Hamilton • Gannett Louisiana News •
May 16, 2010
MONROE -- Sam Jue was 16 in 1935 when he left his
home near Hong Kong and came to America to join
his father.
Less than 10 years later he returned to China, this
time as a part of a special group of soldiers
requested by Gen. Claire Chennault to support his
"Flying Tigers" air units fighting Imperial Japan.
On Thursday, Jue became the first man who worked
directly for Chennault to visit the Chennault Aviation
and Military Museum in Monroe, according to
museum board member Skip Caissie.
The visit owed a lot to Jue's longevity and a bit to
Caissie's curiosity.
When he isn't serving with fellow board members at
the museum, Caissie works as a sales representative
with a food company and travels among the region's
grocery stores.
Two months ago, Caissie stopped by Sam Sing
Grocery Store in Rolling Forks, Miss., and Chennault
was on his mind as he talked to Richard Jue, one
member of the Asian-American family that ran the
store.
"I wondered if there could be a connection," Caissie
said. "I just shot it out there."
Caissie asked Richard Jue if he had ever heard of
Gen. Claire Chennault. Richard Jue introduced
Caissie to his father.
At 91, Sam Jue still runs Sam Sing Grocery. His
family has broached the topic of retirement, but Sam
Jue refuses.
At one point when Caissie and Jue were talking
about the Flying Tigers, Caissie said Jue went to
retrieve some piece of memorabilia upstairs and
politely asked Caissie to stay behind.
"He said 'Oh no, these stairs are too steep,'" said
Caissie, several decades younger than Jue. "'You
might get hurt.'"
In the midst of the U.S. involvement in World War II,
Chennault requested bilingual Chinese-Americans
to support the America's forces in southeast Asia.
Around the same time, Jue was drafted into the Army
and had no qualms joining the effort.
"We all wanted to fight the Japanese," Jue said.
After seven months of training in Springfield, Ill.,
Jue and his unit shipped off for North Africa, then
traveled to India before flying among the Himalayan
Mountain peaks to Kunming, China.

For two years, Jue worked as an aircraft repairman in
Kunming, India, and at small bases throughout
China.
Asked what he repaired on the aircraft, Jue said, "the
tails of planes ... from bullets."
Nell Calloway, granddaughter of Chennault and
director of the museum, said when Jue arrived
Thursday, he still called Chennault "my general."
Calloway showed him a specially commissioned
Chinese painting of American planes flying "over the
hump" -- over the Himalayas.
"I'll never forget that," Jue said while looking at the
painting, though he admitted to being more scared
on a boat in the Atlantic Ocean. "All you could see
was clouds."
Calloway and board members planned to have Jue
give an audio record of his experiences with the
Flying Tigers, but Jue gave a brief summary on
Thursday saying, "We changed from defense to
offense."
With Jue and his family at the museum, Caissie
couldn't help but marvel at his fortune finding a
veteran of a war -- waged 70 years ago on the other
side of world -- 35 miles north of Vicksburg, Miss.
"We have not ever had anyone who worked directly
for (Chennault) in this museum," Caissie said. "It's
just a small world."

Former Flying Tiger mechanic Sam Jue (right) visits with Rosemary Chennault Simrall, the daughter of Gen. Claire Lee Chennault, at the Chennault Aviation Museum. Jue, a Chinese immagrant from Mississippi, serviced the tail wings on planes fighting in the Japanese campaign under Chennault's command. (Louisiana Gannett News)

http://www.thetowntalk.com/article/20100516/NEWS01/5160340/1002/Flying-Tigers-member-first-to-visit-Chennault-museum

Charles ( Chuck ) Tucker

2010-05-10T11:34:00.001+01:00

Charles ( Chuck ) Tucker was born in Philadelphia, Pa., on Dec. 23 1919 and entered in to eternal rest on April 26 2010 in San Jose, Ca., of natural causes, at the age of 90.

Chuck's passion for aviation began in 1938 when he joined the Civilian Pilot Training Program. His storied aviation career spanned 5 decades. He joined Maj. General Claire L. Chennault and the Flying Tigers during WWII as a P-40 fighter pilot and scored 4 victories in the China Theatre. After returning in 1943 he became a test pilot with the Air Force. In 1946 he separated from the service to pursue flying experimental tests as assistant chief of Northrop's Missiles Division, where he flew F-89 and YB-49 Flying Wing bomber programs. Chuck gained notoriety for his stall and spin tests in the YB-49 Flying Wing as well as the highly experimental X-4 Bantam which he was the first to test fly in Dec. of 1948. His experience in that aircraft inspired him to design the first full-faced shield helmet for which he was awarded a U.S. patent. In 1955 Chuck became an experimental test pilot for Lockheed, working with the XF-104 fighter and T2V projects. He also participated in the National Air Races from 1946-1949. He retired from Lockheed in 1975 as Chief Pilot. Chuck logged over 10,000 hours in a wide variety of aircraft, and was proud to be a founder and Fellow of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots as well as a member of the Quiet Birdmen.

When Chuck wasn't in the sky he enjoyed golf, fishing, camping or gold mining with his family. Chuck and his wife Marcella were married 57 years before she passed away in 2006. They resided in Saratoga, Ca. for 20 years where they raised two boys, Chuck Tucker of San Jose and Greg Tucker of Sunnyvale. After retiring, he and Marcella moved to Ridgemark C.C. in Hollister where he spent all but the last few months of his life. He leaves behind his two sons Chuck and Greg, and daughters-in-law, Joanne and Teri, grandson, Jeffrey whom he shared his passion for aviation, brother, Ed, sister-in-law, Raili, and niece, Tiina. Chuck is at peace now and will be greatly missed by his family, friends and colleagues. Chuck is now truly flying at a new level. A private family service is pending.

Published in San Jose Mercury News/San Mateo County Times on May 8, 2010

Source

Vet tells story of survival in Japanese prison camp

2010-05-09T03:09:00.000+01:00

http://www.thedestinlog.com/news/story-28799-nwfdn-bay-survival.html

Kari C. Barlow

Daily News

BLUEWATER BAY — Every spring, Chris Morgan’s thoughts drift back to when survival was his only concern.
It was April 29, 1945.
World War II was raging, and Morgan was a young prisoner of war in Burma’s Rangoon Jail.
Although starving and weak from bouts of malaria, he knew Allied forces were nearby.
“Almost on a daily basis, there were air raids over Rangoon,” recalls Morgan, who is 86 and lives with his wife, Connie, in Bluewater Bay. “I knew that five miles up there, there were free Americans.”
So did his Japanese captors.
They abandoned the prison camp that day and forced some of the men to march north out of Rangoon.
Sixty-five years have passed since Morgan’s liberation by British soldiers two days later on May 1, but his memories of those people, places and events have not faded.
“Everything is quite vivid,” Morgan says. “It was the most negative experience of my life.”

Answering the call
Like most people alive in 1941, he remembers exactly where he was when Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese on Dec. 7.
“I was standing in front of an ice-cream shop with my buddies,” says Morgan, who was a high school senior in Yonkers, N.Y. “We all wanted to sign up right then. We all wanted to go to pilot training.”
Two years later, he was the only one of his friends who had earned his wings.
After training in Montgomery, Ala., and in Northwest Florida, he was assigned to fly the P-51 fighter.
“I was 19 and flying one of those things,” he recalls with a laugh. “That’s better than a Corvette.”
In the late summer of 1943, he boarded a troop ship in San Francisco bound for Bombay. The journey lasted nearly 50 days, and the only pastime was gambling.
“I lost all my money the first couple of days, so I spent most of my time up on deck watching the flying fish,” he says.
In October, he finally arrived at his base in Dinjan, India in the war’s China-Burma-India theater. His squadron’s job was to relieve the Flying Tigers, the 1st American Volunteer Group.
“My first mission was on Oct. 16, 1943, and that was the day I went down,” says Morgan, who had been flying over the jungles of Burma. “My flight leader got disoriented. The sad part of it was, I knew where I was the whole time.
“I told him I could get him home, but he just pointed to his collar and told me to get back into formation. Being a good soldier, I did.”
Morgan eventually ran out of fuel and had to land in a rice field.
“I evaded for three days,” he recalls. “I hooked up with some Burmese natives who led me into an ambush.”
Barely 20 years old, Morgan found himself in the hands of Japanese soldiers.
“I wasn’t afraid of the Japanese,” he says. “I was afraid of the unknown.”
After surviving interrogation, the enemy soldiers set off toward Rangoon Jail.
“We walked, rode camels, rode railroads,” he says. “It was a 1,000-mile trip. … All the (illnesses) you pick up in that section of the world, I had ’em.”

‘Drowning from within’
Morgan arrived at Rangoon Jail on a stretcher, but that didn’t stop the Japanese soldiers from putting him in solitary confinement for three months.
“Their psychology was that it was supposed to break our spirit,” Morgan says.
It didn’t work, and eventually his captors let him stay among the other prisoners.
“It was mostly British, and there were Chinese and Indians in the camp,” he adds.
It was a place of starvation and constant sickness, where the prisoners survived on a pittance of rice, clear soup and pumpkins.
“We had very little to eat,” he says. “The biggest killer in the camp was beriberi. … beriberi is like drowning from within.”
Cholera struck the prison camp in June 1944. It killed with a swiftness that still amazes Morgan.
“It was a most dreaded disease,” he says. “You’re violently sick at 5 a.m. and then dead by 5 p.m.”
Morgan and one of his friends, a Canadian flight officer named Jim Drake, volunteered to sit with the dying men.
“There was nothing we could do for them,” he says. “The fixation we talked about was getting out, going home.”
Morgan remembers that Drake was worried they would all be dead by Christmas 1944 if they weren’t rescued soon.
His friend, he says, had lost his hope.
Drake died from beriberi on Christmas Day.
“That scared the daylights out of me,” says Morgan, adding that his friend’s death motivated him to stay mentally and physically tough.
To stay alert, he and other inmates would do calisthenics and quiz each other on the 48 states and their capitals.
“To this day, I do a crossword puzzle each day,” he says.

Left in a rice field
As their captivity lasted into the next year, Morgan and other inmates began thinking about breaking out.
“We had plans of our own,” he says. “We were going to take them over.”
They never got the chance because on April 29, 1945, the Japanese separated the men into two groups — those who could walk and those who couldn’t.
The sick were left behind at Rangoon Jail, and the rest were marched north about 50 miles.
Among those prisoners was a British general, Morgan recalls.
“(The Japanese) told him, ‘Give our men 10 minutes and then you are free,’” he says. “And that’s what happened. They left us in a rice field.”
But nearby British forces began strafing the field and inadvertently killing the British general. The prisoners scattered in fear.
“I jumped in a well,” Morgan recalls. “I jumped in on top of five other guys and about 10 more jumped in on top of me.”
After surviving the rescue, Morgan, who was 21 by then, was shipped back to the states to recuperate in Atlantic City, N.J. When he was able, he made his way back to Yonkers.
“The most emotional moment I had throughout everything that happened was coming home,” Morgan says. “My parents collapsed in my arms.”

‘Thank God for freedom’
In the decades following the war, Morgan met and married Connie and raised three daughters and one son.
Many years passed before he was able to talk freely about his POW experience.
“The things that were important to me were life and death,” he says of that time in his life. “Anything else was frivolous. That’s a good attitude for a prison camp. It’s not a good social attitude.”
In college, Morgan still suffered the residual affects of malaria. He went on to become a staunch advocate for POWs and POW military benefits.
He was the proud owner of the first POW license plate in the state of New Jersey.
Morgan understands that prison camps are part of war, but he can’t forget what he suffered at the hands of the Japanese.
“No country going into war prepares for prisoners. That’s why you have the mistreatment,” he says. “The only prejudice I have today is I won’t buy a Japanese car.”
Connie says her husband worked hard to share with his family his strong attachment to God and country.
“The loyalty he’s instilled in our children comes from within,” she says. “Every single one of them, they fly their flags, and the grandchildren always acknowledge their grandfather on Veterans Day.”
These days, Morgan’s life is filled with volunteering, travel, golf and family activities, but he always takes time to honor the people he served with in World War II.
“I’ll never forget them, the heroes,” he says. “I have memories of friends who are gone, and those are the memories I cherish.”

A Short History of Aircraft Nose Art

2010-05-04T01:05:00.000+01:00

Nose art
is a decorative painting or design on the fuselage of a military aircraft, usually located near the nose, and is a form of aircraft graffiti.
While begun for practical reasons of identifying friendly units, the practice evolved to express the individuality often constrained by the uniformity of the military, to evoke memories of home and peacetime life, and as a kind of psychological protection against the stresses of war and the probability of death. The appeal, in part, came from nose art not being officially approved, even when the regulations against it were not enforced.
Because of its individual and unofficial nature, it is considered folk art, inseparable from work as well as representative of a group. It can also be compared to sophisticated graffiti. In both cases, the artist is often anonymous, and the art itself is ephemeral. In addition, it relies on materials immediately available.
Nose art is largely a military tradition, but civilian airliners operated by the Virgin Group feature “Virgin Girls” on the nose as part of their livery. In a broad sense, the tail art of several airlines such as the Eskimo of Alaska Airlines, can be called “nose art”, as are the tail markings of present-day U.S. Navy squadrons. There were exceptions, including 8th Air Force B-17 “Whizzer”, which had its girl-riding-a-bomb on the dorsal fin.

History
The practice of putting personalized decorations on fighting aircraft originated with Italian and German pilots. The first recorded piece of nose art was a sea monster painted on the nose of an Italian flying boat in 1913. This was followed by the popular practice of painting mouths underneath the propeller spinner, initiated by German pilots in World War I. The cavallino rampante (prancing horse) of the Italian ace Francesco Baracca was another well-known symbol, as was the red-painted aircraft of Manfred von Richthofen. However, nose art of this era was often conceived and produced by the aircraft ground crews, not by the pilots.

Other World War I examples included the “Hat in the Ring” of the American 94th Aero Squadron (attributed to Lt. Johnny Wentworth) and the “Kicking Mule” of the 95th Aero Squadron. This followed the official policy, established by the American Expeditionary Forces’ (AEF) Chief of the Air Service, Brigadier General Benjamin Foulois, on 6 May 1918, requiring the creation of distinct, readily identifiable squadron insignia. What is perhaps the most famous of all nose art, the shark-face insignia made famous by the American Volunteer Group Flying Tigers, also first appeared in World War I, though often with an effect more comical than menacing.
While World War I nose art was usually embellished or extravagant squadron insignia, true nose art appeared during World War II, which is considered by many observers to be the golden age of the genre, with both Axis and Allied pilots taking part. At the height of the war, nose-artists were in very high demand in the USAAF and were paid quite well for their services while AAF commanders tolerated nose art in an effort to boost aircrew morale. The U.S. Navy, by contrast, prohibited nose art, while nose art was uncommon in the RAF or RCAF.
Curtiss P-40 fighter aircraft of the Flying Tigers, with their iconic shark face and the 12-point sun of the Chinese Air Force.

services while AAF commanders tolerated nose art in an effort to boost aircrew morale. The U.S. Navy, by contrast, prohibited nose art, while nose art was uncommon in the RAF or RCAF.
Curtiss P-40 fighter aircraft of the Flying Tigers, with their iconic shark face and the 12-point sun of the Chinese Air Force.

The work was done by professional civilian artists as well as talented amateur servicemen. In 1941, for instance, the 39th Pursuit Squadron commissioned a Bell Aircraft artist to design and paint the “Cobra in the Clouds” logo on their aircraft. Perhaps the most enduring nose art of WWII was the shark-face motif, which first appeared on the Bf-110s of Luftwaffe 76th Destroyer Wing over Crete, where the twin-engined Messerschmitts outmatched the Gloster Gladiator biplanes of RAF 112 Squadron. The Commonwealth pilots were withdrawn to Egypt and refitted with Curtiss Tomahawks off the same assembly line building fighter aircraft for the AVG Flying Tigers being recruited for service in China. In November 1941, AVG pilots saw a 112 Squadron Tomahawk in an illustrated weekly and immediately adopted the shark-face motif for their own planes. This work was done the pilots and ground crew in the field. Similarly, when in 1943 the 39th Fighter Squadron became the first American squadron in their theatre with 100 kills, they adopted the shark-face for their P-38 Lightnings. The shark-face is still used to this day, most commonly seen on the A-10 Thunderbolt II (with its gaping maw leading up to the muzzle of the aircraft’s GAU-8 Avenger 30mm cannon), a testament to its popularity as a form of nose art.
Nose art on a B-17 Flying Fortress
In the Korean War, nose art was popular with units operating A-26 and B-29 bombers, C-119 Flying Boxcar transports, as well as USAF fighter-bombers. Due to changes in military policies and changing attitudes toward the representation of women, the amount of nose art declined after the Korean War.
During the Vietnam War, AC-130 gunships of the U.S Air Force Special Operations Squadrons were often given names with accompanying nose art – for example, “Thor”, “Azrael – Angel of Death”, “Ghost Rider”, “War Lord” and “The Arbitrator.” The unofficial gunship badge of a flying skeleton with a Minigun was also applied to many aircraft until the end of the war, and was later adopted officially.
Nose art underwent a revival during Operation Desert Storm and has become more common since Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom began. Many crews are merging artwork as part of camouflage patterns. The United States Air Force had unofficially sanctioned the return of the pin-up (albeit fully-clothed) with the Strategic Air Command permitting nose art on its bomber force in the Command’s last years. The continuation of historic names such as Memphis Belle was encouraged.

International designs
Source material for American nose art was varied, ranging from pinups such as Rita Hayworth and Betty Grable and cartoon characters such as Donald Duck and Popeye to patriotic characters (Yankee Doodle) and fictional heroes (Sam Spade). Lucky symbols such as dice and playing cards also inspired nose art, along with cartoon characters and references to mortality such as the Grim Reaper. Cartoons and pinups were most popular among American artists, but other works included animals, nicknames, hometowns, and popular song and movie titles. Some nose art and slogans imposed contempt to the enemy, especially to enemy leaders.
The farther the planes and crew were from headquarters or from the public eye, the racier the art tended to be. For instance, nudity was more common in nose art on aircraft in the Pacific than on aircraft in Europe.
Luftwaffe aircraft did not often display nose art, but there were exceptions. For example, Mickey Mouse adorned a Condor Legion Bf-109 during the Spanish Civil War and one Ju-87A was decorated with a large pig inside a white circle during the same period. Adolf Galland’s Bf-109E-3 of JG 26 also had a depiction of Mickey Mouse, holding a contemporary telephone in his hands, in mid-1941. A Ju-87B-1 (S2+AC) of Stab II/St. G 77, piloted by Major Alfons Orthofer and based in Breslau-Schongarten during the invasion of Poland, was painted with a shark’s mouth, and some Bf-110s were decorated with furious wolf’s heads or shark mouths on engine covers. Another example was Erich Hartmann’s Bf-109G-14, “Lumpi”, with an eagle’s head. A Bf-109g-10 (10 red) of I./JG 300, maintained by Officer Wolfgang Hunsdorfer, was flown by various pilots. In addition, the fighter wing Jagdgeschwader 54 was known as the Grünherz (Green Hearts) after their fuselage emblem, a large green heart. The Geschwader was originally formed in Thüringen, nicknamed “the green heart of Germany”. Perhaps the flashiest Luftwaffe nose art was the snake insignia running through the whole fuselage of certain Ju 87 Stukas.

The Soviet Air Force also decorated their planes with historical images, mythical beasts, and patriotic slogans.
The attitude of the Finnish Air Force to the nose art varied by unit. Some units disallowed nose art, while others tolerated it. Generally the Finnish air force nose art was humorous or satirical, such as the “horned Stalin” on Maj. Maunula’s Curtiss P-36.
The Japan Air Self-Defense Force has decorated fighter aircraft with Valkyrie-themed characters under the names Mystic Eagle and Shooting Eagle.
Canadian Forces were reported to have nose art on CH-47D Chinook and CH-146 Griffon helicopters in Afghanistan.

Famous examples
General Adolf Galland was famous for painting Mickey Mouse on his aircraft, and the mascot was adopted by his Gruppe during the early airwar phase of World War II.Oberstleutnant Werner Mölders flew a yellow-nosed Bf-109F2 while with JG 51 during June 1941.Other fighter aces and their nose art have become synonymous.
* Don Gentile’s P-51C’s named “Shangri-La”, with an eagle sporting boxing gloves.
* Chuck Yeager’s series of aircraft named “Glamourous Glennis”, with bright letter art.
* Ian Gleed’s Spitfires featured Figaro the Cat, from the 1940 Disney animated movie Pinocchio.
* Pierre Closterman’s Hawker Tempest Le Grand Charles featured the Cross of Lorraine.
* Johnny Johnson’s Spitfire IX featured the Canadian maple leaf.
* Erich Hartmann’s Bf 109s featured a distinctive “black tulip” design on the very front of the cowling, immediately behind the spinner.
The markings of aces were often adopted by their squadrons, such as Galland’s Mickey Mouse and Hartmann’s black tulip (still in use today on the aircraft of JG 71 “Richthofen”).

Nose art bans

The British MoD banned the use of pin-up women in nose art on Royal Air Force aircraft in 2007, as commanders decided the images (many containing naked women), were inappropriate and potentially offensive to female personnel, although there were no documented complaints.

http://eastofeton.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/a-short-history-of-aircraft-nose-art/

The forgotten war

2010-04-30T11:06:00.000+01:00

http://www.yorknewstimes.com/articles/2010/04/30/news/doc4bda182b768f8466460894.prt

Courtesy photo Leo Soukop (left) of Exeter, and Fred Erks and Earl Redding, both of York, visited the National World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. They took a seat in front of the stone commemorating American war efforts in the China-Burma-India theater of operations, where each of the men had served. Top Photo: Earl Redding was a flight engineer and gunner, then a crew chief, working aboard B-25 bombers during World War II.

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Local vets served in China-Burma-India

By Kate Burke

Published: Friday, April 30, 2010 1:16 AM CDT

ORK — Before Afghanistan, before Korea, another conflict involving American servicemen was called “the forgotten war.”

The spectacular land and sea battles of the European and Pacific theaters during World War II overshadowed the steady, quiet and very necessary efforts of American and British allies in China, Burma (also called Myanmar) and India.

Three York area men, Fred Erks and Earl Redding of York, and Leo Soukop of Exeter, are China-Burma-India (CBI) veterans. Fourteen Nebraska CBI vets still gather in York every year for a reunion; the local men invite any CBI vet to join them.

Redding and Erks, both wearing their CBI commemorative ball caps, got together recently to talk about their wartime experiences.

The Japanese had invaded China in 1937, and American civilian volunteers, among them the famous Flying Tigers, had already been involved there in China’s defense before the United States entered World War II after the December 7, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

America needed to keep a supply route open to U.S. and Chinese forces in China. In 1942, Japanese forces destroyed the only overland supply route, the Burma Road, which stretched from northern India, through Burma and into China.

The Japanese presence in Burma also threatened India, then a British colony.

A struggle began to retake and reopen the Burma Road. While ground operations commenced at a slower pace, U.S. pilots under the authority of Air Transport Command began to airlift supplies to Chinese forces already fighting the Japanese in Burma.

The airlift part of the operation became known as “flying the Hump,” the “Hump” being the eastern end of the Himalaya Mountains, where peaks reached as high as 16,000 feet.

Redding recalls another name for the Hump: Aluminum Alley, a reference to the numerous crashes of Allied planes through the region.

Redding was initially based, with the 12th Bomb Group, at Dacca (now Dhaka), India, and eventually along the border with Burma.

“Every day was bath day,” Redding says, as he recalls being drenched by up to 308 inches of rain a year.

A former flight engineer and gunner, Redding was made a crew chief in the CBI theater. He kept the B-25 Mitchell bombers flying, despite the hazardous conditions imposed by the heavy rains.

“The pilot didn’t get to take [his plane] until I said you can have it,” Redding says.

Redding describes taxiways and revetments, a sort of parking space for planes with a berm around it, built up over rice paddies.

He recalls one incident when he was in a plane’s cockpit, running the engines. He needed to see outside, but the rain was so heavy on the window that he opened the door to look out.

Just then, someone in a plane on a nearby revetment accidentally discharged a tail gun, straight into a nearby 500 pound bomb.

“I was out of the airplane before the propellers quit,” Redding says with a grin.

The blast blew a fuel truck into the rice paddy and badly damaged a third plane.

Redding expresses admiration for the Nepalese Ghurkas and Indian Sikhs he saw in action. Both groups had long been employed by the British Army for their fighting skills and fierce bravery.

“The Ghurkas and the Sikhs were probably the best fighters in the whole theater,” he says.

Redding recalls off-duty adventures, too, such as a trip he and a buddy made to Srinagar, the summer capital of Kashmir, then an independent state.

“It’s just unusual,” Redding says of his getaway destination. “Not too many people get to Kashmir.”

He and his friend hitched a ride to Calcutta (now Kolkata), and there, not sure they really conveyed their wishes to the ticket master, they bought “mystery train tickets” and boarded a train compartment.

Apparently, Redding says, their ticket assignment did not match their compartment choice, and a merry chase ensued.

From Calcutta in the east to Bombay (now Mumbai) in the west to Lahore in the north, a trip of more than 2,300 miles, the “railroad police” tried to kick them off the train. Other travelers seemed to enjoy helping the GI’s hide, even tucking them into baggage compartments.

The U.S. servicemen did eventually make it to Srinagar, where they rented a houseboat on a lake and hired a cook and servants. But Srinagar is located in the foothills of the Himalayas.

It snowed.

Within three days, Redding and his buddy hoofed it back to Lahore, where they made an American-style steakhouse their base of operations.

Erks had fewer opportunities for crazy adventures. A Fireman 1st Class, most of Erks’ Navy service was in the forward engine room aboard the destroyer USS Taussig.

The ship’s mission was to help protect the aircraft carriers of the U.S. 7th Fleet in the China Seas.

From day to day, Erks helped keep fuel flowing to the ship’s steam turbine engines. The engines always had to be run a little hot, so the ship could respond to crisis at a moment’s notice.

“It takes a little time to get the steam up,” Erks notes.

Shanghai was the 7th Fleet’s base in China. The city is now the largest in China and one of the largest in the world, a dynamic center of commerce and trade with a population of over 20 million people.

However, from his shore leave in Shanghai, Erks recalls a city that was on its way to modernity but hadn’t achieved it quite yet. Oxcarts pulled goods on roads along open sewers, “and the kids,” he says, and sighs, shaking his head for the impoverished children he saw.

In the country, he says, farmers hitched oxen to wooden plows.

“If they had trucks,” Erks notes, “they were used American military trucks.”

Erks had signed up for a two-year enlistment, but at the end of the war he spotted his name on a list of servicemen going home. He had served a little over half his tour.

He returned to the York area to farm.

Redding left the service in 1945 and became a charter member of the Nebraska Air National Guard.

After retiring from there, he put in 17 years at Strategic Air Command headquarters at Offutt Air Base as a program analyst and propulsion specialist with the Air Force.

Their war efforts may have been “forgotten” even while they undertook them, Erks and Redding say, but they were just as vital as any other.

Erks knew those engines had to be kept hot for the good of the ship. Even though he wasn’t flying them, Redding knew those planes had to be reliable.

“You don’t sleep until it comes back,” he says.

Erks adds, “That’s why they called us a crew.”

For more information about CBI reunions in the York area, phone Earl Redding at 362-2787 or Fred Erks at 362-2312.

TOURISM HOT SPOTS: No. 2, A peek into the past

2010-04-27T11:13:00.000+01:00

The legacy of the man whose name graces the Chennault Aviation and Military Museum attracts visitors from all over the world.
The building that houses the museum was the home of Gen. Claire Chennault, who organized and commanded the Flying Tigers and helped train Chinese pilots to battle against the Japanese during World War II.
“The Chinese still appreciate today what General Chennault did for China. He is quite a hero still in China,” said Nell Calloway, director of the Chennault Aviation and Military Museum. “One of purposes of the museum is to educate people about the war in China. So few people really know about World War II in China.”
The more than 7,000 artifacts on display at the museum represent all branches of the military and wars, Calloway said.
“What makes the museum unique is we focus on the people who served in the military as much as the wars themselves,” she said. “Most exhibits we have are about local people from northeastern Louisiana and the surrounding areas.”
The museum times its major events every year to coincide with Memorial Day in May and Veterans Day in November. On May 29, Vietnam fighter planes will be on display in a field close to the museum, and an Apollo space suit will be exhibited through June 1.
The Vietnam Traveling Memorial Wall will make its first-ever stop in Monroe during a Veterans Day celebration at the museum Nov. 5-7.
“People tell us all the time that the museum is the best kept secret in Monroe,” Calloway said. “It’s been called a pearl, a jewel. When people get inside, they’re amazed at what we have.”

http://www.thenewsstar.com/article/20100427/BUSINESS/100426036

Help museum spread wings

2010-04-12T21:26:00.000+01:00

The News Star
Money donated to the Chennault Aviation and Military Museum is timely.

The $25,000 grant delivered by Monroe Mayor Jamie Mayo and the $5,000 from the Monroe-West Monroe Conventions & Visitors Bureau will be combined with the $34,000 from the Friends of the Museum to be used as a match for $200,000 from the state of Louisiana. The goal is to build a 3,000-square-foot building in which military aircraft can be restored.

The project is important to the museum dedicated to northeastern Louisiana's role in aviation and the military.

Drive by the museum now and you can see historic aircraft in varying stages of rusting away. Restoration of these aircraft is essential to the museum's mission.

Friends of the Museum will restore two Beechcraft planes and one Douglas DC-3 cargo plane.

Two of the aircraft have direct ties to Gen. Claire L. Chennault, a local hero born in Texas but who grew up in Waterproof before coming to world prominence as the leader of the Flying Tigers in World War II.

One of the Beechcraft planes will be a replica of the one flown by Chennault.

The DC-3 will be like those that flew over the Himalayas in Southeast Asia during World War II.

But Chennault is just one of the region's connections to flight. A second Beechcraft to be restored will be similar to the ones at Selman Field used to train navigators during World War II.

The museum has a moon rock on display, arranged by James Halsell, a West Monroe native who flew on space shuttle missions.

And Monroe still identifies closely with Delta Air Lines, the major carrier that started here. The museum explores that history as well.

The museum is a jewel in northeastern Louisiana with plans for getting better.

Once the aircraft are restored, they'll need a place to be exhibited, protected from the elements.

Roy Johns, Friends board chairman, said that the planes would eventually be displayed in a planned 27,000-square-foot building along with others. That structure will be called the Chennault Flying Tigers Building. Some of the aircraft will hang from the ceiling with larger planes being displayed on the floor.

To fulfill this dream, however, more money will be needed. We hope local residents will help provide the museum the funds needed to further its pursuit to pay tribute to the men and women who served at Selman Field during World War II and to the legacy of air travel rooted deeply in the region.

Flying Tiger in WWII, secret ambassador today

2010-04-07T11:14:00.000+01:00

By Wang Ke
China.org.cn, April 7, 2010

Plane engines roaring, white clouds and landscapes receding underneath, Anna Chan Chennault sat quietly and stared through the window at the horizon. It was nearly impossible for her to remember how many times she had returned to the vast land of China.

Ms. Anna Chan Chennault [Wang Lei / China.org.cn]

Shrewd, rich, perceptive, one half of a world-famous love story, respected, at least in certain quarters, Anna, though more than 85 years old, still seemed full of energy. The plane flew north from Beijing, taking her to Erdos, the richest city in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. It was her first trip there.

"I have heard it is a very beautiful place and where Genghis Khan is buried," she said. "China is changing so much and everyone should come to see."

A legend in the Chinese community, Anna is famous for many reasons. She was the wife of "Flying Tigers" leader General Claire Chennault, the first female reporter for the Central News Agency, and the first person of Chinese ancestry who have had a successful political career in the United States, where she became known as "the hostess of Washington."

Often acting as a "secret ambassador," she served as an emissary for interactions among the Chinese mainland, Taiwan and U.S. Over the past eight decades, she has devoted all her life to promoting dialogue and exchange between the two sides of the Pacific Ocean. She has published an autobiography and several collections of writings. Numerous TV serials based on her life have been produced and broadcast in Taiwan and the mainland.

"I love both China and U.S. very much!" Anna told China.org.cn. "I member the toast made by President Nixon in 1972 when he came to Beijing,that 'The Chinese people are a great people, the American people are a great people. If we can find common ground to work together, the chance for world peace is immeasurably increased.'"

Female avant-garde in the WWII

Born into a well educated family in Beijing on Jun. 23, 1925, Anna was the most opinionated and stubborn of the siblings. In 1939, WWII broke out, the world was in chaos, and China was battling the Japanese Fascists. Anna's father, a diplomat, wanted to send his children to study abroad, but Anna refused. Instead, she led a nomadic student life, attending middle school in Hong Kong and Lingnan University in Guangdong Province.

She recalled that life was extremely hard during the Anti-Japanese War. "There was no electric light for studying, no hot water for bathing. People couldn't even get one meal with meat per week," she said. But even under such harsh conditions she never quit studying.

In 1944, Anna graduated from Lingnan University with a degree in Chinese. She began her career as a journalist, serving as a war correspondent for the Central News Agency from 1944 to 1948 and a feature writer for the Hsin Ming Daily News in Shanghai from 1944 to 1949.

"At that time, I was so young and full of passion and enthusiasm. I wanted to be a journalist, to report the real China to the whole world," she told China.org.cn. "It was a tough but amazing experience that I was able to interview common people and write about the war."

In 1946, Anna met her future husband General Claire Chennault, who was a major war hero in China. The Flying Tigers squadron that Chennault trained made him immensely popular among Chinese servicemen and civilians alike. In 1947, Anna married Chennault, who was 32 years her senior. Their love story has moved generations of Chinese people.

Anna Chan Chennault and her husband General Claire Chennault.

But Chennault died of lung cancer in 1958. Although they only spent 11 years together, Anna cherishes that period as the most precious time in her life. She said she would never remarry again as there was no room in her heart for anyone but her husband.

"A person always needs love. The 11 years of the marriage with General Chennault was the most precious time in my life. Though he left us a long time ago, I still miss him," she said.

Anna visits the Chennault's grave to mourn him every Veteran's Day with his friends and colleagues. She has planted a jequirity tree at the tomb, a symbol of lovesickness in China.

American political star

No one will deny that the legend of Anna began with her marriage to Claire Chennault. In 1949, she left for Taiwan with her husband. But in July 1958 came the black day when Chennault died of lung cancer.

A strong woman, the death of her husband did not slow Anna's career. After his death, Anna settled in the U.S. with their two children. She received an honorary Doctor of Literature Degree from Chungang in Seoul, Korea in 1967, and an honorary degree at Lincoln University in San Francisco.

Anna took a variety of jobs - becoming chief of the Chinese section of the machine translation research department at Georgetown University, a broadcaster for the Voice of America, a lecturer, a writer, a fashion designer, and one of the key executives of Flying Tiger Line for which she handled many contract negotiations.

She was very active in Republican Party affairs, with posts including co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee's Finance Committee (1966-1983) and was twice chairwoman of the National Republican Heritage Groups Council.

Because she helped a number of Republican presidential candidates in elections, she gained the trust of the White House. Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan all asked her to take on various informal tasks for them. In 1963, President Kennedy named her the chairman of the Chinese Refugees Relief Committee, making her the first person of Chinese ancestry to be appointed to the White House staff.

According to Nixon, A Life by Jonathan Aitken, after an unexpected encounter with Anna in Taipei, Nixon complained to accompanying congressman Patrick Hillings "She's a chatterbox."

Anna said: "I hope through my efforts, the two super powers (China and U.S.) can work closer. In fact, this is my only motivation. I deeply love these two counties."

Her hard work has been recognized by the international community. In 1966, she won the Freedom Award of the Order of Lafayette and the Freedom Award from the Free China Association; in 1971 she received the Award of Honor from the Chinese-American Alliance.

http://www.china.org.cn/china/2010-04/07/content_19757320.htm

John Woo's seeing Red

2010-04-07T02:57:00.001+01:00

By Ruth Myles, Calgary HeraldApril 6, 2010 7:02 PM

Director John Woo attends the Australian premiere of 'Red Cliff' as part of the Sydney Film Festival at the State Theatre on June 9, 2009 in Sydney, Australia.

Photograph by: Mike Flokis, Getty Images

Hold up: a John Woo film without a single gunfight? No insanely intense shoot-'em-up with the good guy and the bad guy duelling it out, oversized weapons a-blazing in each hand? Consider, however, that Red Cliff is set in China, circa 208 AD, and the lack of widespread gunplay becomes clear.
That's not to say that the latest from the master of Hong Kong action movie scores low on the dynamic scale. Far from it. Epic in proportions (there were more than 2,000 people on set for some scenes), Red Cliff bristles with energy in the telling of the beginning of the end of the Han Dynasty as regional warlords band together to take on the power-hungry Prime Minister Cao Cao (Fengyi Zhang). The director - famed for his kinetic, highly choreographed gun battles - even references one of his earlier works, Hard Boiled, when a warrior with an infant strapped to his back fights off a wave of attackers.
"I've been dreaming of making this movie for over 30 years, but we didn't have the budget or the technology. I couldn't have made it 30 years ago. But now we have the budget, we have the time, we have the people, and we also have the great locations to do," says Woo, speaking on the phone from Beijing. "In the meantime, I've been working in Hollywood for over 15 years, and it made me learn a lot, so much (of it) from the new technology. I thought it was about time to take what I've learned in Hollywood, and from Canada, too, and take it to Asia."(Woo shot Paycheck in Vancouver, as well as the TV pilot for The Robinsons: Lost in Space, which was never picked up.)
But while it was a snap to get financing and permission to shoot in China, deciding how to tell the story that is part of the cultural fabric in that country wasn't. While he started with an historically accurate take, Woo changed it up, placing more emphasis on the message of "the weakest defeating the strongest" by working together.
"I think two things make a great epic: It has to have the historical feel, and also the personal point of view. That is usually hard to make them together. Only one person could do it: David Lean, with Lawrence of Arabia. He was the only one who could make the movie have the depth of historical fact, but also, he had a pretty strong personal message in the film. . . . I tried to make the movie exciting, but in the meantime, also send a good message."
And there are two ways to take in the director's vision: the North American release, with a run time of two and a half hours, or the original Asian cut of the film, which clocks in at four and a half hours, which features "a lot more character, more storylines." (Both are out on DVD and Blu-ray on April 13.) Woo is in his native China - his family fled to Hong Kong when he was five - prepping for his next project, Flying Tigers. It's based on the real-life adventures of a squad of American pilots-for-hire who flew for the Chinese against the Japanese before the U.S. entered the Second World War.
And that's not the only iron in his fire. On IMDB, Woo has 11 projects listed under the "upcoming" banner. "I love movies and I love work," the 64- year-old director says with a laugh, mentioning three projects by name: Marco Polo, a remake of the French classic Le samourai, and an English remake of his own classic Hong Kong film, The Killer.
Woo says he loves to learn.
"I am not trying to be humble. I am still learning. It's nice, learning by doing, so I just keep working. In the meantime, I am so grateful for the audience, for the fans. They have given me such great support. That has also encouraged me to keep making movies."

CLAIRE LEE CHENNAULT, (1890-1958)

2010-04-06T11:29:00.000+01:00

Posted by Mitch Williamson at 2:57 PM

Lieutenant General Claire Lee Chennault led the Flying Tigers (also known officially as the American Volunteer Group, or AVG) during the early part of World War II in China, before the United States entered the war. The Flying Tigers was a group of primarily American, volunteer pilots who flew combat and transport aircraft for the Chinese armed forces in the early part of China's Anti-Japanese War.

Claire Lee Chennault was born in Commerce, Texas, on September 6, 1890. He grew up in Franklin Parish, Louisiana, where his father was a cotton farmer and locally elected sheriff. Chennault attended Louisiana State University and Louisiana State Normal School, from which he graduated with a teaching degree. After graduation from college, Chennault taught high school in his hometown, later accepted a teaching position at a business college in New Orleans, and also taught physical education in Ohio. He married the former Nellie Thompson, a Louisiana native, with whom he had four children.

Chennault entered the U.S. Army near the end of World War I and underwent officer training at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana. He was initially commissioned as a reserve officer, a second lieutenant of infantry but later transferred to the Signal Corps. Chennault was trained as an army aviator and became a rated military pilot on April 7, 1919. With the end of World War I and the ensuring drawdown in the size of the military, Chennault was discharged from the army on April 9, 1920, only a year after finishing his pilot training. After his discharge from the army, Chennault attempted to farm cotton in Louisiana but quickly applied for a commission as an active-duty army officer in the newly organized Army Air Service, in which he was commissioned a regular officer on September 14, 1920.

During the years between the two wars, Chennault served in a variety of flying assignments, including on the Mexican border in support of patrolling U.S. Army infantry units. He also excelled in aerobatics and was a highly successful pilot of pursuit aircraft. After promotion to captain, on April 12, 1929, he was assigned primarily as a pursuit instructor. Chennault served the remainder of his active-duty army career as a flight instructor at Maxwell Field (now Maxwell Air Force Base), Montgomery, Alabama, until his retirement from the Army Air Corps in 1937.

Because Chennault had made a name for himself in aviation circles as an expert in aerobatics and air combat tactics, he was sought after by U.S. aviation companies after his retirement. The Soviet air force also tried to hire him as an adviser; however, he refused that employment. Chennault accepted an offer in summer 1937, after the Japanese armed forces attacked China, to become an aviation adviser to the Chinese armed forces, then under the leadership of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. When Chennault arrived in China, the Chinese air force comprised about 600 aircraft, some from the United States; some from Germany, which had provided considerable aid to the Nationalist government; and some from Italy. In fact, Italian aviation firms were the strongest competition for U.S. industry for aircraft sales to China.

For a number of years prior to Chennault's arrival in China, dating to early 1932, an unofficial U.S. air mission had functioned in that country. The Chinese had already been under attack by the Japanese in Manchuria since the Mukden Incident (Nine One Eight (918) Incident) of September 18, 1931, and were working to develop their armed forces. A former American Army Air Corps colonel, John H. Lovett, had established an aviation training school in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, which helped to develop China as the world's largest export market for American aviation equipment at that time. Before Colonel Lovett's return to the United States at the expiration of his own contract in 1935, exports of U.S. aircraft and equipment to China had reached over $9 million.

After his arrival in China in 1937, General Chennault developed a close and carefully cultivated relationship with Chiang Kai-shek's wife, American-educated Soong Mei-ling, and her brother, T. V. Soong, who functioned as an emissary to the United States for Generalissimo Chiang during World War II. During the period before the war when he served as an adviser to the Chinese air force, Chennault concentrated on refining fighter aircraft tactics for the Chinese pilots. He also coordinated a number of notable, although not tactically effective, bombing raids against the Japanese armed forces, which were already at war with China. The most spectacular of these raids was a May 1938 propaganda leaflet drop on the Japanese ports of Sasebo and Fukuoka (the raid was originally intended for Tokyo, but the aircraft were diverted).

In May 1941, the United States began to deliver Lend-Lease supplies to China over the Burma Road. Lend-Lease aid had been extended to China in March 1941, and the aerial defense of the Burma Road, as China's remaining supply line from the west, became critically important to the war effort. Chennault organized the "American Volunteer Group," or Flying Tigers, with the tacit assent of the U.S. government. From offices in the United States, he recruited pilots to fly against the Japanese. From October 1941 to July 5, 1942, Chennault led the American Volunteer Group against the Japanese air force. He held the rank of colonel in the Chinese air force at that time. After the United States formally entered the war, and the mission of General Joseph Stilwell was sent to China, Chennault turned into one of the strongest adversaries of Stilwell, clashing with him over the primacy of the air war against Japan versus the vigorous prosecution of the ground war. Chennault's strong relationship with Chiang Kai-shek's wife, Soong Mei-ling, and brother-in-law, T. V. Soong, as well as Stilwell's vocal distaste for Chiang as a leader, combined to eventually undermine Stilwell's own effectiveness in China.

On June 28, 1942, Chennault was given command of the China Air Task Force (CATF). This task force was subordinate to the 10th U.S. Air Force, based in India under the command of Major General Clayton Bissell. By the end of World War II, Chennault was a U.S. Army Air Forces major general, with command of the 14th U.S. Air Force in China. Major General Chennault returned to the United States after the surrender of Japan, arriving on August 24, 1945. He soon returned to China in a private capacity to organize the China National Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (CNRAA) Air Transport Service (known as CAT), with 20 C-46 transport aircraft and two C-47s. CAT went on to ferry Nationalist troops into Manchuria to fight the Communist forces, to evacuate the Nationalist Army out of Manchuria when it was taken over by Communist forces, and to assist in the evacuation of the Nationalist government to Taiwan in 1949. It eventually became a U.S. proxy contract air service. Under Chennault's direction, CAT also flew supplies for Far Eastern air forces in the Korean War under contract for the U.S. government and also flew supplies into Dien Bien Phu in support of French forces in Indochina. Chennault returned to the United States in July 1958 and died of throat cancer.

REFERENCES Martha Byrd, Chennault: Giving Wings to the Tiger (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1987); Anna Chennault, Chennault and the Flying Tigers (New York: P. S. Eriksson, 1963); Claire Lee Chennault, Way of a Fighter: The Memoirs of Claire Lee Chennault (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1949); Charles F. Romanus and Riley Sunderland, The United States Army in World War Two. The China-Burma-India Theater: Stilwell's Mission to China (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1953); Roland Sperry, China through the Eyes of a Tiger (New York: Pocket Books, 1990.)

http://chinaburmaindiatheatre.blogspot.com/2010/04/claire-lee-chennault-1890-1958.html

The Museum of Flight: 23rd Fighter Group

2010-03-31T21:32:00.001+01:00

Greetings!

Successor to the World War II's legendary "Flying Tigers" American Volunteer Group, the U.S. Army Air Force 23rd Fighter Group made arguably the largest contribution toward the Allied victory in the China-Burma-India Theater of combat of any air unit during World War II. Author Carl Molesworth will recall this record in a presentation based upon his 2009 book, "23rd Fighter Group--Chennault's Sharks." The program is on Saturday, April 3 at 2 p.m. Molesworth will field audience questions and sign his books after the presentation.

The Museum has just released 100 tickets to our VIP Gourmet Soiree food and beer pairing event on April 24 from 6-7 p.m. Tickets are $100 each and include admission to the 8th Annual Hops and Props event (7-10 p.m.) Contact Sandra Ewing at sewing@museumofflight.org or 206.768.7221 to reserve your tickets today. Hops and Props has been sold out for weeks, so don't miss this opportunity to attend this popular event!

On the radar: Vietnam-era pilots panel, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum space historian Dr. Roger Launius and more! Check out the calendar below for details.

Click here to vote for The Museum of Flight in Evening Magazine's "Best of Northwest Escapes" contest! The Museum is nominated for the "Best Museum" category. Voting ends on Sunday, April 11.

Dream, Discover, Soar!
Sincerely,

The Museum of Flight

In This Issue

Family Programs

In Search of Amelia Earhart

April 2010 Events

Bank of America Weekend Family Workshops

Saturdays and Sundays
11:15 a.m. and 1:15 p.m.

Kites on the Fly!

Mask Kites: April 3, 4, 10, 11

Fisherman's Kites: April 17, 18, 24, 25

Did you know that people have been flying kites for over 2,000 years? Come hear the story of these incredible yet simple flying objects, then make and decorate your own kite to fly at home!

CONTACT INFORMATION

The Museum of Flight

206.764.5720, email

Membership

206.764.5711, email

Volunteering

206.768.7179, email

Giving

206.768.7162, email

Education
206.768.7116, email

Museum Store
206.764.5704, email

TTY

1.800.833.6385

April 2010 Events

Wells Fargo Free First Thursday

Thursday, April 1, 5-9 p.m.

Once a month, the Museum stays open late--and admission is free! Enjoy the Museum's T.A. Wilson Great Gallery, J. Elroy McCaw Personal Courage Wing, Space: Exploring the New Frontier exhibit, and more from 5-9 p.m., courtesy of Wells Fargo. Museum Store and Wings Cafe will also remain open for the extended hours on this night.

Girl Scout Day

Saturday, April 3, 10 a.m.-3 p.m.

Explore the wonders of the night sky in the Museum's portable planetarium while satisfying elements fo the Space Explorer Try-It and the Sky Search Badge

Participants must bring a bag lunch. $12/Girl Scout. Accompanying adults at no charge. Payment required at time of reservation.

To register, call 206.764.1384 or contact www.museumofflight.org/contact/On-Site+Programs. Registration closes March 26.

23rd Fighter Group: "Chennault's Sharks" Lecture and Book Signing

Saturday, April 3, 2 p.m., Allen Theater

Successor to WWII's legendary "Flying Tigers" American Volunteer Group, the U.S. Army Air Force 23rd Fighter Group made arguably the largest contribution toward the Allied victory in the China-Burma-India Theater of combat of any air unit during WWII. Author Carl Molesworth will recall this record in a presentation based upon his 2009 book, "23rd Fighter Group-Chennault's Sharks."

Vietnam Panel Discussion II

Saturday, April 10, 2 p.m., Allen Theater

Veteran flyers from the Vietnam era--Jim Platt, Doug Clarke and Don Scott, will share their experiences in a panel discussion in conjunction with the Seattle Opera's upcoming production of "Amelia," a new work that explores the American experience in Vietnam and our fascination with flight.

"Robots vs. Humans in Spaceflight: Technology, Evolution, and Interplanetary Travel" Lecture by Dr. Roger Launius

Thursday, April 15, 7 p.m. Allen Theater

Chair of the Division of Space History, National Air and Space Museum and former Chief Historian at NASA, Roger Launius will make a presentation based on a recent book that explores the history and possible futures for human/robotic spaceflight, "Imagining Space: Achievements, Possibilities, Predictions, 1950-2050." Admission is $10 for general public and $5 for Museum members.

"Perspectives on the Past, Present and Future of Human Spaceflight" Lecture by Dr. Roger Launius

Saturday, April 17, 2 p.m. Allen Theater

Launius will explore the history of spaceflight during the past 50 years and offer comments on the core challenges for future exploration. Those challenges include political will; cheap, reliable access to space; smart robotics; protecting this planet and this species; and exploration of the moon and Mars.

Hops and Props 2010

Saturday, April 24, 7-10 p.m.

The Museum's 8th annual Hops and Props event is sold out. $30 designated driver tickets will be available in the Museum Store the night of the event.

Curtiss P-40, aircraft of the Flying Tigers

2010-03-31T11:15:00.000+01:00

Here's a great video showing a Curtiss P-40C the warpaint of the Flying Tigers--the American Volunteer Group that flew and fought for the Chinese Air Force in the early months of World War II in the Pacific. The video is by "Captain Lou" Costello. Don't you just love the sound of that Allison engine? All right, perhaps you don't, but I am so addicted that I sometimes leave the sound running in the background while I work on mundane chores. It keeps me on the edge of my seat. I also like the fact that the pilot lands the plane on the two main wheels, the way it ought to be done, instead of stalling it onto the runway in a three-polint landing.

This particular aircraft was one of a hundred or so that went to Russia, and was among those recover after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It bears the name and fuselage number of Erik Shilling, a former AVG pilot with whom I used to joust on the internet newsgroups, and who inspired me to take up flight training twelve years ago, and eventually to get my recreational pilot's certificate. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

http://wimw-ford.blogspot.com/2010/03/curtiss-p-40-aircraft-of-flying-tigers.html

Maj. Gen. Claire Chennault: Aerial acrobat and pursuit pilot pioneer

2010-03-26T23:59:00.000Z

By Jessica Casserly
Air University Public Affairs
Looking to the sky over Prattville in 1931, residents might have caught a glimpse of Capt. Claire Chennault flying home for lunch in his P-12.

A tactics instructor at the Air Core Tactical School on Maxwell Air Force Base, Captain Chennault was known for his daring on and off-duty adventures, said Fred Schramm, Air University History Office historian. “Captain Chennault was known to fly his P-12 upside down under the highway 31 bridge on his way home for lunch. He would also take his P-12 to Louisiana for the weekend on hunting expeditions,” Mr. Schramm said. “He would load his dogs in the cargo section of the plane and fly home with his game strapped to the wing of his plane.”

A Louisiana State University graduate and former one-room schoolhouse teacher, Captain Chennault was commissioned in the infantry during World War I and earned his pilot’s wings at Kelly Field, Texas in 1919, Mr. Schramm said.

Claire Chennault led the "Flying Trapeze" in 1935. (Maxwell AFB)

After graduating with the last U.S. Army ACTS class at Langley Field, Captain Chennault followed ACTS to Maxwell AFB to serve as an instructor, said Mr. Schramm. Known as a rebel for his ideas about pursuit flight and tactics, Captain Chennault’s teaching style and philosophies matched his dare-devil attitude in the air, according to Jerome Ennels, a former historian with the AU/HO.

In 1932, Captain Chennault set out on his riskiest challenge yet, organizing the Air Corps’ first aerobatic team, “Three Men on a Flying Trapeze,” Mr. Schramm said. The test for would-be teammates was simple: If pilots could stay within inches of Captain Chennault’s wingtips while he performed 30 minutes of aerial acrobatics, they earned a spot on his team. Only three men completed the challenge.

In 1936, after four years of performing aerial wonders, the team disbanded, but not before paving the way for the Skylarks and eventually the Thunderbirds, Mr. Schramm said.

Retiring from the Air Corps in 1937, Captain Chennault left the U.S. for China. “Invited by Gen. Chiang Kai-shek to organize ‘The Flying Tigers,’ Captain Chennault served air efforts in China for the duration of World War II,” Mr. Schramm said.

Returning to the U.S. in 1945 as a retired major general, Captain Chennault spent much of his time with his wife, Anna, in Washington, D.C., Mr. Schramm said. Losing his battle with lung cancer, General Chennault died in 1958, but his legacy lives on at Maxwell.

On 22 May, 1975, Maxwell celebrated General Chennault and his air ingenuity with the dedication of Chennault Circle, Mr. Schramm said. In true Chennault fashion, the dedication ended with a Thunderbird air show. “After all,” Mr. Schramm said, “General Chennault began aerial demonstrations.”

http://www.maxwellgunterdispatch.com/article/20100326/DISPATCH01/100326015/1114/DISPATCH

Chennault museum will use $30,000 to get grant to build building to display planes

2010-03-26T02:50:00.000Z

The Chennault Aviation and Military Museum and its friends hope to use $25,000 from the city of Monroe and another $5,000 from the Monroe-West Monroe Convention and Visitors Bureau as matching funds to receive a state grant.
The money will be used to construct a 3,000-square-foot building where volunteers will restore three vintage World War II airplanes.
“We have people coming here every day that want to get a close look at the planes, but we can’t let them because of liability issues,” said museum director Nell Calloway.
Friends of the Chennault Aviation and Military Museum will restore two Beechcraft planes and one Douglas DC-3 cargo plane. One of the Beechcraft planes will be a replica of the one flown by Gen. Claire L. Chennault who commanded the Flying Tigers. The second Beechcraft will be similar to the ones at Selman Field used to train aviators during World War II.
The DC-3 will be like those that flew over the Himalayas in southeast Asia during World War II.
Roy Johns, Friends board chairman, told the City Council at its meeting Tuesday that the planes would eventually be displayed in a planned 27,000-square-foot building along with others. That structure will be called the Chennault Flying Tigers Buildings.
Johns said the restored aircraft would then be on display with some hanging from the ceiling with larger planes being displayed on the floor.
Funds for the city’s share will come from economic development funds because the project will result in additional tourism to the museum.
Alderman Eddie Clark asked Johns if the planes would be available to the public while being restored. Johns said it would be possible, but that museum personnel would have to be notified in advance so the building could be unlocked.

http://www.thenewsstar.com/article/20100325/UPDATES01/100325024

On Being Duped by a Source: Thoughts on Interviewing Airmen – and Anyone Else

2010-03-25T09:49:00.002Z

Introduction

Has an important source for your book lied to you?

If the answer is yes, and the book is published, then what happens? Ask Charles Pellegrino.

Charles Pellegrino’s “Last Train from Hiroshima” was receiving rave review and racing up the amazon ranking like the bullet train. Then the publisher, Henry Holt Company, pulled the plug and announced it was recalling the book as if it were a runaway Toyota. The reason was that the one of the sources may have been a fraud and another “character” in the book might not have existed. A non-fiction book which has built a story structure based on what turns out to be an imposter, is no longer non-fiction. It becomes fantasy. This has to be an author’s worst nightmare. His source material is tainted. His publisher is demanding an explanation and the author fails to satisfy the publisher as to authenticity of his sources.

The case is right up dark alley of the International Crime Author’s Reality Check. As a group, we have our radar out for reality lapses.

“Last Train from Hiroshima” is a non-fiction book. It is supposed to be based on fact. The stuff that happened was supposed to have happened. The characters involved were supposed to be actual people who lived through and participated in World War II. It was supposed to debunk the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. One of the author’s sources turned out to be an imposter.

The press had a field day with the circumstances surrounding the writing of the book, the author’s response to questions about his research, and the publisher’s dramatic decision to withdraw the book. Not to mention that James Cameron optioned the book for a major Hollywood film.

The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/09/books/09publishers.html
The Telegraph (UK): http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/7361952/Hiroshima-book-pulled-from-shelves-over-doubts-about-sources.html
The Mercury News: http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_14498194?nclick_check=1

I asked veteran author Bob Bergin to give us his views, based on his research experience. Bob is the right author to talk about these matters. For years he’s researched material for a number of books about the World War II Flying Tigers and has interviewed many of the survivors of that small group of pilots. He has first hand experience about talking with people who participated in events that happened sixty years ago. Bob has also come across some imposters.

In the essay below, Bob shares his experience of the difficult research stage that all writers must proceed through and what dangers to look for on the way.

————————————————————————-

On Being Duped by a Source:
Thoughts on Interviewing Airmen – and Anyone Else

Bob Bergin

Christopher Moore and I both like a good war story – particularly when it’s told by a man who was there. When Publisher Henry Holt pulled back The Last train From Hiroshima, it quickly got our attention. A source told untruths to the unfortunate author – and the author built a good bit of his book around them.

Now that is an awkward thing to happen – and happen it does. It could happen to any one of us who does interviews. It makes one think. Can a writer protect himself from being had? And how does an author keep from becoming a dupe? I think there are two ways: one can be lucky, or one can go into an interview prepared.

The interviews I’ve done over the years have involved a variety of military types, but in my earliest efforts I was a specialist of sorts – and that taught me something.

My focus was the American Volunteer Group (AVG) Flying Tigers. Fewer than 100 pilots and 200 support personnel comprised the group. They existed as a combat unit for only the first seven months of World War II. In that time they were credited with destroying 297 Japanese aircraft in the air and another 150 “probably destroyed,” which makes the AVG Flying Tigers one of the most effective units in the history of aerial warfare.

I had an affinity for the Tigers from my earliest youth. They were a colorful lot, rowdy on the ground, exceptionally effective in the air. And they operated in the skies over Burma, Thailand and southwest China, the part of the world I would become much involved with. Through one of those quirks of fate, I found myself involved with a Thai aviation foundation when it came across the only wreckage ever found of one of the AVG Flying Tiger’s 100 original P-40 aircraft. My long and close association with the Flying Tigers stemmed from that.

By the time I did my first formal interview of a Flying Tiger I already knew the group well. I had arranged their visit to Thailand to see the P-40 wreckage, joined them on two trips to China and attended their reunions. Two of the pilots lived near me and became good friends. When an editor suggested a formal interview of one of them, I had already heard all the stories and read their history – several times. But for that first interview I did a lot more reading. I wanted to learn everything I possibly could about the man I would interview. When I started asking questions, I wanted to know as much about his AVG career as he did.

I may not have reached quite that stage, but knowing as much as I did, made that first interview a reasonably smooth process. That was the way to go, I decided, and from then on, solid preparation preceded any interview I did, be it of airman, soldier, or spy.

All the Flying Tigers I knew had good, vivid memories. The events we talked about had taken place 50 years before, or even longer, but there were few problems. A forgotten name or place was no big deal. It was misremembered situations that I had to be careful of. One pilot told of strafing passes he made during a raid on a Japanese airfield. Years after he was gone I located the combat reports of that day. Under “ammunition expended,” he had written: “none.” He had flown top cover and was not one of the shooters. There was no intention to deceive, I’m sure of that. He said what he believed. He had been on many raids and his mind had probably transferred the vivid details of one raid to another. But there were few instances of that.

Looking back, the AVG interviews were easy. I was dealing with known quantities, the real McCoy. But there were others out there: impersonators, fabricators, the ones who wanted to be Flying Tigers. I met one of those only once, at an air show. He was regaling some young people with his tiger tales, but vanished quickly when he learned that I had a bit more knowledge of the AVG than those to whom he usually told his stories.

I was well into my relationship with the AVG, when a friend passed me a paperback, China through the Eyes of a Tiger. “Must be one of your friends,” he said. “Do you know him?” The author’s name was not familiar. He could have been a pilot with the 14^th Air Force, I thought. They came after the AVG, and were also called Flying Tigers.

I started reading. The book purported to be an account of an AVG Flying Tiger pilot. It took only minutes before I was sure: The man was a fraud, not a Flying Tiger. It’s hard to describe, but given my familiarity with the real tigers, what this man was saying simply did not feel right. This was not the world of the Flying Tigers I knew. His was a different reality. And I suddenly realized what I had. I had heard about him so long before, that I had already forgotten: Captain Incredible!

Captain Incredible first came to prominence in 1990, after he started selling his book. One of the AVG pilots, R.T. Smith wrote an expose for a popular aviation magazine. Captain Incredible was a veteran, and he had served in China, but he was an enlisted man, not an officer, and he had never been a pilot or in any way associated with the AVG. Yet here he was, claiming to be an AVG pilot, to have shot down at least four Japanese aircraft, and probably seven more – and he had the chest full of medals to prove it. He spoke at VFWs, schools, air shows and other venues to which grateful citizens frequently invited him and where he sold his book. After he was exposed he didn’t go away. He ducked under the radar and continued with his book selling and speaking engagements. A second expose, a lengthy newspaper article in 1999, got considerably more attention and apparently finally did him in.

Captain Incredible was a charming and convincing man, so much so that no one ever bothered to check his credentials. Even in years gone by that would have been easy enough. In today’s world of the internet, it’s unforgivable.

But I never crossed paths with the Captain. My interests in aviation expanded and I went off to do other things: to Burma to explore a mysterious shoot-down of a World War II bomber on the Thai-Burmese border in 1961; to China for the first interview of a Korean War era Chinese Mig ace, and much more recently to interview the pilot who dropped China’s first h-bomb. Investigating the fate of two AVG POWs in Thailand, I became interested in what happened on the ground in WWII’s China-Burma-India theater. I focused on the operations of the Free Thai and the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). It was a series of new worlds, each requiring a lot of research before I felt competent to do interviews. But that was all part of the fun. And somewhere along the way I met the Me 262 thief.

An acquaintance who knew my interest in aviation history told me he had met someone I really had to talk to: an American WWII pilot who had been shot down over Germany, then stolen a German airplane to get back to friendly lines. The airplane was a Messerschmitt Me 262, the first operational jet fighter. Now that was worth a telephone call.

My prospective interviewee was eager to tell me all about it. He had been attacking an airfield when his aircraft – a twin-engine P-38 fighter, as I recall – was hit by ground fire. He bailed out and reached the ground unobserved. Realizing he was close to the airfield, it struck him that he might just be able to steal an airplane to get back to friendly lines. And indeed he found an unattended Me 262. He had never seen one of these before, but from briefings he knew they existed. He managed to get into the aircraft, took off and made his way back to friendly lines – concerned all the way about being shot down as an intruder by Allied aircraft. But of course he wasn’t. This was the first example of the Me 262 to fall into American hands.

I didn’t know much about Me 262s, but after hearing him out, I said the first thing that came to mind: “How did you even know how to get the engines started?” A jet would have been so different from the piston engine aircraft he flew.

“Ah, well,” he said. “I can’t tell you. That has to remain secret.”

I replied to that with an astonished, “What?”

“When I was debriefed back in England, I was told that knowledge of this new airplane had to be restricted, and that I could never speak of it – even after the war was over.”

“But the war was over fifty years ago,” I said, “And you have been telling people that you flew it.”

“Yeah, but I haven’t been telling the details. I can’t tell the details. They’re still secret. ”

And there my interview of the Me 262 thief ended.

I’ve had several similar, if more mundane encounters, usually with individuals who were vets with great war stories, told with great gusto, but which came apart on close examination. On the whole, the people I choose for interviews are known quantities. They’re in the history books, or otherwise well known. Often members of the same unit could confirm their legitimacy – even when clouded by the fog of espionage like the Free Thai Movement or the Office of Strategic Operations (OSS).

In the end it all comes down to knowing your subject matter – and knowing it well. Alexander Pope said it: A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Beware that your incomplete knowledge could make a charming fabricator’s tale sound credible. Know your stuff, check your facts – all of which is just part of your job as a writer – and in the end you will be smarter than the bad guys.

Bob Bergin is a former U.S. Foreign Serve officer who writes about the history of aviation and OSS operations in Southeast Asia and China. He has written three novels set in Asia. His most recent, Spies in the Garden, was released in February 2010.

http://www.internationalcrimeauthors.com/?p=548

Veterans Spotlight: Jensen Beach veteran with Chennault in China

2010-03-20T23:26:00.000Z

By Joe Crankshaw

JENSEN BEACH — Maj. Robert “Bob” Mayes, 89, U.S. Air Force (retired), joined the Army in 1939 hoping to become a pilot. But the doctors said his eyesight was too poor for him to be a pilot and he was sent to school to become a radio operator.
Upon graduation, he went home to Lewistown, Pa., and met his future wife, Naomi Moore, at a neighborhood ball game. He arranged a double date and as he and his friend and Naomi and her friend rode out to a lake for the afternoon, the car radio announced that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.
The news ended the date, and he and his friend returned to their units at Bolling Field in Washington, D.C., and Naomi went back to nursing school. Mayes was sent to India and assigned as the radio operator on the plane for Gen. Claire Chennault, famed for organizing the “Flying Tigers” or American Volunteer Group, to fight for China before Dec. 7. Chennault was training Chinese pilots at Kunming, and when he wasn’t flying his plane, it was flown over “the Hump,” the Americans’ name for the Himalayan Mountains.
“We flew the ‘Hump’ ferrying supplies to the Chinese,” said Mayes.
Mayes and the other crew members were invited to a party given by Gen. Chiang Kai-shek and his wife, Soong Mei-ling. When Chiang found out it was Mayes’ birthday, he turned the event into a party for the radio operator. He gave Mayes a red silk tie.
Eventually, Chennault was given command of the 14th Air Force, and after 2 1/2 years flying over The Hump and around China, Mayes was sent home. He wanted to marry Naomi, who by then was working as a nurse for the Army’s fledgling missile service.
Naomi Mayes recalls it was a wartime marriage. “I worked until 5 p.m. on a Friday. We got married at 7 p.m. and on Monday I flew to Texas and a new duty assignment.”
Mayes accepted a transfer to the reserves in 1948 to attend the University of Texas, where he received an electrical engineering degree and worked briefly for IBM before being recalled and assigned to a missile unit. He remained in the service and he and Naomi did tours of duty in Germany.
“We had to go to Africa to fire our missiles,” Mayes said, “because there was no place to shoot in the mountains of Germany.”
He also served at Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg Air Force Base. He retired and went to work for Raytheon. He retired again to an antique home in Massachusetts. Finally, the couple sold the 1700s-era house they had restored and moved to Jensen Beach to be near their daughter.

http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2010/mar/20/veterans-spotlight-jensen-beach-veteran-flew/

Some Feature of Flying Tigers From

2010-03-15T10:09:00.000Z

By 古孟文　http://2010spring.blog.ntu.edu.tw/2010/03/15/some-feature-of-flying-tigers/

One of the features of the Flying Tigers is “shark paint coating”. Because shark is the king of the sea and Japanese are afraid of it. So AVG painted shark at the nose of their fighters. When Japanese saw the painting, they felt scared and lose morale. But Chinese people had not see shark yet, so when they first saw the unique fighters, they screamed “Tigers are flying in the sky!” Some people told it to General Chennault, and he also liked this nickname. This was the reason why we called AVG and CACW “Flying Tigers”. And AVG request famous animator Walt Disney to design an emblem for AVG. The tiger had wings on its back, and its head and tail formed a “V” character. Besides, according the Chinese traditions, this kind of painting was thought of as a kind of “fire-preventing picture” which could prevent the planes from catching fire and confronting accidents.
From - http://2010spring.blog.ntu.edu.tw/2010/03/15/some-feature-of-flying-tigers/

Tigers Over Kweilin. the Saga. March 14, 2010

2010-03-15T10:06:00.000Z

What follows is the story of the evolution of the largest painting I've ever produced, "Tigers Over Kweilin". The Painting took over two years to complete. It is 72x96 in size...

Ever since I was a little boy I was captivated with the photos and stories of the "Flying Tigers". The A.V.G., or "American Volunteer Group". Both my parents were involve in one way or the other with the war effort during WWII. Growing up I had seen images in an American Heritage Book on the History of Flight, which my parents had in their library in our home.

There was one photo in the book of General Claire Chennault. I'd seen his weathered face standing firm and confident against the painted nose art of a Curtis P-40 "Kitty hawk". It stuck me deeply.

There was something about this image that stuck with me throughout my life, and when my father told me stories about how he supplied fuel for Chennault and the A.V.G., a seed was planted. Something inside me felt proud to be an American. I felt an inner drive to acknowledge the A.V.G. in some way, some day.

This man, Clare Chennault had the vision; to enroll a small group of American Warrior Pilots, in the idea of resigning their commissions in the U.S. Army Air Corps, and fly as mercenary pilots for the Chinese Air Force; against the Japanese Imperial Forces, who were expanding into Indonesia in the early days of WWII. At the time the U.S. had an Isolationist Policy and was merely fighting a proxy war against Japan and Germany through a lend lease program; to supply armaments in order to battle the axis powers.

Chennault was able to convince the U.S. Gov. to lend around 80 aircraft to the Chinese Government, (who had been under occupation by Japan since 1936), but the U.S. Gov. would not allow U.S. Pilots to fly the aircraft. Chennault convinced a hand full of American pilots to resigned their commissions (sacrificing their futures for the sake of stemming the spread of Japanese Imperialism).

This was not a popular thing to do. In fact it was preposterous: who ever thought it appropriate to resign their commissions to fight for a foreign country? But it had to be done! These men flew training missions in the six months prior to America's entry into WWII, and on Dec. 7, 1941, as if by divine guidance, they were serendipitously in place; all ready to take on the enemy!

In the beginning of the conflict, these men flew missions against the Japanese with little support from the home front; and they would not be resupplied either in aircraft or in parts. Instead, if a plane was lost or so badly shot up that it could no longer fly, ground crews would "cannibalize" the plane for parts, just to keep the other planes flying.

Through attrition: little by little the Tiger's numbers dwindled as they, along with their aircraft, would die in their fight against the Japanese. Fortunately, their successful exploits in turning back the Japanese were reported in the newspapers back in the U.S.A., which was good for public morale. America had been caught flat footed at Pearl Harbor, but because of the vision and foresight of Chennault, the Tigers would be like a cog in a wheel for the enemy.

After the Tigers were successful in turning back the Japanese in their quest for Indochina, they were were eventually relieved of duty by the 'Official' U.S. Army Air Corps under Gen. Stilwell. These A.V.G. pilots; many of whom were double aces (denoted by five or more enemy kills), were told they could stay on and fight under the 14Th Air Force, and would lose their rank, (be demoted). Or, they go home to the USA without any future career in the U.S. Air Corps.

Many A.V.G Pilots, feeling insulted, left for home and gave up the fight. Some though continued the fight through speaking publicly about their exploits in order to raise money for the war effort. Only a handful of the original A.V.G. stayed on to instruct the incoming rookie pilots how to do combat with the enemy. These pilots eventually gained great fame and earned the accolades from their country.

Five years ago,I was gifted a large quantity of canvas. My artist friend Dominique Raboule assisted me in stretching it out on to stretcher bars. I had the intention to explore the idea of painting the effect of lightning within clouds. I held this idea for at least four to six months until one day when I was at a black and White Photo Lab in Santa Barbara called, "Specialty Photo". It was there I saw the image on a calender taken by a well known Photographer, John Sexton...

http://tvs-theartist.blogspot.com/2010/03/tigers-over-kweilin-saga-march-14-2010.html

The P-40 and the Flying Tigers

2010-03-14T01:48:00.000Z

In late 1941 the Japanese Zero fighter was gaining an aura of invincibility, winning a high percentage of its battles. It was a good aircraft, but it did have its drawbacks, one of, which were its slower speeds and its inability to withstand high-speed dives. It won most of its fights with it’s outstanding agility at low speeds and altitudes.
Claire Lee Chennault was a former colonel who had retired from the U.S. Army Air Corps because his theories on tactics were so at odds with the fiercely conservative Air Corps brass. He was asked to help modernize the Chinese Air Force and quickly became friends with Chaing Kai Shek and his lovely wife. The retired colonel wrote a report about the deadly Zero and sent it to the U.S. government. It was promptly filed away. This was a mistake. If the threat had been taken seriously and if American pilots had been trained to deal with such a fighter, the Japanese would likely have sustained much heavier losses in the early air war.
Col. Chennault built up a group of Curtiss P-40s in his Chinese redoubt. At most there were ...
http://www.bestarticle.org/travel/the-p-40-and-the-flying-tigers/

Quotes: Pacific vets talk about battles

2010-03-13T03:20:00.000Z

Veterans recall hell, and humor, of war

Herb Laufman, 87, Scottsdale

I flew in the China-Burma Theater 14th Air Force (Flying Tigers) 27th Troop Carrier Squadron. (We) air-dropped food and ammunition to ground troops in Burma and China, delivered aviation fuel to B-29s, towed gliders, dropped OSS paratroopers in preparation for invasion of Japan, evacuated wounded and rescued prisoners of war.

The fighting in the China-Burma Theater was directly connected to the fighting in the Pacific.

The ground fighting on the mainland of China was devastating, bloody, with millions of civilians raped and killed. The untrained and ill-equipped Chinese army was unable to resist the Japs' attacks. Gradually, the Japanese drove further into China, overrunning American air bases. Finally, in early 1945, the Chinese were able to mount a successful offensive and drove the Japanese back. During this time, almost all supplies, food, ammunition and medical supplies, were supplied by airdrops. . . . It is hard for me to realize how little is known about this part of the battle against the Japanese. It's often called the unknown or forgotten war. . . . The fighting in Burma and India was just as intense as in other areas of the Pacific. There was just less known about it because it was so isolated and because so many fewer troops were involved, and it was so difficult for reporters to reach those areas.

http://www.azcentral.com/ent/celeb/articles/2010/03/12/20100312veterans-pacific-quotes0314.html

Remains: A Story of the Flying Tigers (Kindle Edition)

2010-03-12T14:15:00.000Z

Review: “A cracking good yarn about interesting people, including the Japanese fighter pilot whose story adds special realism to the battles.” — Air & Space / Smithsonian magazine, Oct-Nov 2001
Fitz and Blackie have joined the American Volunteer Group, mercenary pilots who became famous in the defense of Burma and China as the Flying Tigers. Love, fear, death, and disillusionment are the payoff, along with a $500 combat bonus for each Japanese plane they d (more…)

http://www.diamondford.com/remains-a-story-of-the-flying-tigers-kindle-edition/

New American DrugLords Preview VII: 60-year history of covert activity at Venice Municipal Airport

2010-03-10T10:56:00.000Z

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

New American DrugLords Preview VII: 60-year history of covert activity at Venice Municipal Airport
Video, 10 min 36 sec.

THE ULTIMATE HEDGE: Venice airport has 60-year history of drug trafficking

An investigation into suspicious circumstances surrounding the sale of the former Huffman Aviation has unearthed an explosive secret at the heart of an otherwise unremarkable aviation facility.

Almost since its inception, the specter of heroin trafficking has hung over the airfield which would later become the Venice Municipal Airport.

During World War II, when it was known as the Venice Army Air Field, it was home to the Stateside operations of a man widely and credibly accused of using proceeds from international heroin trafficking to prop up the war machine of a corrupt Chinese warlord whose army, even after its defeat, hung on to a lion's share of Southeast Asian real estate which became known as the Golden Triangle.

Contemporary newspaper clips from the time show that the Venice Airport has had an extraordinary six-decade long history, and been the scene of covert activities including gunrunning, international heroin and cocaine trafficking, and being used as a launch pad for coups in the Caribbean and Central America.

These activities required, available evidence will show, the regular and systematic corruption of officials in Venice and Sarasota County.

The recent infamous and still-painful history of the Venice Airport, home base for Mohamed Atta and his crew of terrorist hijackers, it turns out, is just the most recent in an extraordinary history of elite deviance, criminal mischief, and international intrigue.

In an ironic twist, without the FAA’s remarkable campaign of arm-twisting and bullying of hapless local officials to secure their approval of the new owners of what used to be Huffman Aviation, hand-picked by a federal receiver who a U. S. District Court Judge in Tampa had appointed to unravel the financial affairs of Art Nadel six days before Nadel had even turned himself in... we might never have sifted through decades of newspaper clippings, and the remarkable story of the Venice Municipal Airport, which is the very definition of America's secret history, might never have come to light.

Historical plaque build up

[Click image to enlarge.] Since the early days of the Second World War, when it was still known as Venice Army Air Field, the pattern of covert activity at the Venice Airport has remained remarkably consistent over six decades.

Ironically, it was an attempt to continue to conceal the airport's original mission, an elaborate cover-up in 1992 seemingly designed to prevent the airport’s clandestine role from ever becoming public knowledge, which first piqued our interest in the story of the man whose operations shaped the Venice Airport's early history.

But the cover-up backfired, and became visible, where it remains to this day, in an unlikely location:

Directly across from the Venice Airport sits an historical plaque dedicated in a ceremony in 1992 to commemorate the airport’s beginnings as a U.S. Army Air Base during World War II.

The wording on the plaque states The Venice Airport, states the plaque, has its origins in the early days of WW2, when it was known as the “337th Army Air Field Base.”

However, strange as it may see, there is no such entity: there is not, and never has been, anything called the 337th Army Air Field Base.

At the inception of what became the Venice Airport, as is fairly widely known, it was known as the Venice Army Air Force Base.

So, what is going on?

An American Patriot... and heroin trafficker

The Venice Historical Archives explains:

"The plaque commemorates the 337th Army Air Field Base and was erected by the Venice Aviation Society Inc. in October 1992."

The designation is meant as “a joke:”

"The plaque has numerous errors including referring to the Base as the 337th and the entire second sentence. The caricatured mosquito, symbolic of the striking power of the P-51 and of the bloodthirsty pests of the area, was designed by Capt. James H. Archibald as the ”official” insignia of the ”337th AAF Base Unit”, the VAAF’s permanent ”Party” outfit. Both the insignia and unit designation were intended as a joke!"

We've never heard of an official historical plaque “intended as a joke,” and doubt anyone at the Venice Archives and Area Historical Collection has, either.

Moreover the point of the "joke," and/or why it should be considered funny, remains unexplained.

But while there was no 337th Army Air Base, we have heard of the 337th, we seemed to remember dimly... There was a 337th Fighter Group.

The Shrine of the Empty Suit

At the Clearwater St. Petersburg International Airport, home of the infamous DC9 "Cocaine One" caught with 5.5 tons of cocaine aboard in Mexico's Yucatan in 2007, we first saw a shrine to an aviation outfit from World War II which used to train there:

The famous Flying Tigers.

They were first known as the American Volunteer Group, states an informational wall of photos on the second floor of the nearly empty airport.

They were a "band of American pilots who literally built a fighting air force from scratch to stop the Japanese from gobbling up all of Asia."

One of their units, the wall indicates, is the 337th Fighter Group.

Was the 337th Army Air Field plaque in Venice some kind of cryptic reference to the Flying Tigers?

Synonymous with the Flying Tigers is the name of General Claire Chennault. Even that is a misnomer, however, a ceremonial rank bestowed on Chennault by President Dwight Eisenhower six days before he died of cancer in 1956.

While he lived, Chennault was one of the most controversial American military figures in this nation's history. He was widely disliked by his peers, though not, it must be said, by those who flew for him.

His military career, according to newspaper reports at the time, was sidetracked by his superiors, who may have heard hints of things ordinary Americans would begin to hear whispers about only many decades later.

The Flying Tigers in Venice Florida

General Claire Chennault's Flying Tigers had a strong presence in Venice.

We found numerous references in local newspapers from the time indicating that the Venice Army Air Field training pilots for General Claire Chennault's Flying Tigers and later for his 14th Air Force, which took over from the Flying Tigers when they were disbanded.

In fact, Venice seemed to specialize in Chinese flyers, even training an all-Chinese squadron for Chennault, supposedly at the express request of Madame Chiang Kai-Shek.

Moreover one of Chennault's aces, Pappy Herbst, left China to became the Deputy Base Commander at the Venice Army Air Field.

According to American was correspondent Clyde Farnsworth, Chennault even created a composite Chinese and American Air Wing in which Chinese and American aviators "live together, work together, and enter combat together."

These aviators came together, received their training, and learned to fly at the Venice Airport. Chennault's presence in Venice is well-established.

So why are there so few references to the role played by the Venice Army Air Field in the CBI (China-Burma-India) Theater?

Old Soldiers Sometimes Lie

Let's take a look.

Claire Chennault, according to numerous reporters and credible news sources, was there at the start when the American military and intelligence services began their use of narcotics to fund their anti-communist endeavors.

Chennault helped Chinese warlord Chiang Kai-Shek fund his civil war against the Communist Red Army through heroin trafficking, both during, and after World War II.

According to Joseph Trento in "The Secret History of the CIA:

"General Claire Chennault organizer of the Flying Tigers during World War II, was put in charge of Civil Air Transport as well as Taiwan's other air service while his wife Anna spent her time lobbying in Washington for more aid to help her husband's effort against the Communist Chinese."

"Chiang Kai-Shek's men, funded by the CIA, became the foot soldiers of Asia's drug armies... Hundreds of tons of opium and heroin... were carried on these CIA flights."

From Douglas Valentines "Strength of the Wolf: The Secret History of America's War on Drugs:"

"Despite the July 1949 seizure in Hong Kong reported by the New York Times of 22 pounds of heroin emanating from a CIA-supplied outpost in Kunming... the China Lobby launched a massive propaganda campaign based on the allegation by the head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics that the Red Chinese were the source of all the illicit dope reaching Japan."

"The China Lobby raised $5 million which the CIA used to purchase General Claire Chennault's fleet of planes and convert them into the CIA's first proprietary Air Force."

From Modern China: An Encyclopedia, by Ke-Wen Wang:

"No one could have foreseen that one legacy of the Flying Tigers would become Air America. Claire Chennault and the Flying Tigers symbolize the... failure of American foreign policy in the region."

From "Under the Influence" by Preston Peet:

"The practical effect of all of this was to turn Claire Chennault's Flying Tigers into flying dope peddlers.

"Think. It ain't illegal yet."

There are dozens of examples. A clear consensus of investigative reporters, authors, and scholars have reached the same conclusion...

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

But don't tell that to the Sarasota Herald Tribune.

It was clear that the plaque at the Venice Airport had not just made a bad joke, or a simple mistake. It was intentionally misleading.

They have a word for the type of communication displayed on the historical plaque commemorating the Venice Army Air Field.

That word is disinformation.

Seventy years after elements of the U.S. military connected with the “China Lobby” began a long flirtation with heroin trafficking, it still serves that purpose.

Moreover, its source, the Venice Aviation Society, was a belligerent (supporting the "Dark Side of the Force) during the recent war for control of the Venice Airport waged between elected city officials and the FAA.

The story of Claire Chennault proves that U.S. Major Generals can be excused if they have a second job as an international drug kingpin... as long as they're anti-communist.

What makes the story of General Claire Chennault at the Venice Airport germane to the present situation? As we reported several weeks ago, (and we'll have more about it later), the new owners of the former Huffman Aviation are in business with a private military contractor in Georgia who was involved in extraordinary renditions for the CIA.

Curiously, former Huffman owner Wally Hilliard was in business with the same man.

But then, recent owners of Huffman Aviation share a lot in common.

Just like prior owner Wally Hilliard (but even more inexplicably, since at least Hilliard was a pilot, even if a narcoleptic one), Art Nadel, for example, used substantial portions of his ill-gotten gains to purchase dozens of airplanes and aviation facilities...

One of America’s groundbreaking muckrakers, author Upton Sinclair, once said "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

NEXT: HUSH HUSH. TOP SECRET. AND VERY CONFIDENTIAL...

What happens when you get caught red-handed at the Venice Airport with weapons caches, P-38 Warbirds, tanks, and plans for a coup in Central America?

A textbook illustration of how things get (and stay) "All hushed up" in Venice Florida.

March 8, 2010
by Daniel Hopsicker
[See links to the preceeding 29 parts to Dan's report here.]

http://kysor.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-american-druglords-preview-vii-60.html

John Woo To Direct Flying Tigers

2010-03-10T10:48:00.000Z

John Woo To Direct Flying Tigers: "

I'm sorry if this is a re-post and a bit dated.

I haven't heard of any updates or proposed release date.

John Woo To Direct War Epic about The Flying Tigers

Monday, July 6, 2009 2:06PM - By Laura Aguirre

John Woo’s next film titled Flying Tiger Heroes has been confirmed after it was announced in a press conference in China. The film is happens to be the most expensive Chinese production so far costing 100 million pounds, with half of those funds supposedly coming from the US, although it is still not clear as to who the American backers are.

Flying Tiger Heroes is based on the Flying Tigers, an American Volunteer Group that flew missions against the Japanese in World War II. The Flying Tigers flew inside an aircraft that looked like the one above and apparently destroyed 300 enemy air-crafts, for which only 14 causalities were reported. The film will mix Hollywood and Chinese stars together, but we have no clue exactly who is being considered for any of the roles.
Here’s more from the director:

This is an extremely important production. Currently, basic preparations for shooting work have already been made and in a month we’ll confirm the script. This Yunnan-themed film emphasizes China-US friendship and the contributions of the Flying Tigers and the people of Yunnan during the War of Resistance.

Source:http://screencrave.com/2009-07-06/john-woo-to-direct-flying-tigers/

This Week in American Military History

2010-03-10T03:57:00.002Z

Posted By Crush From W. Thomas Smith, Jr.'s series at Human Events:

Mar. 11, 1943: “The Flying Tigers” – the famous volunteer group of American fighter pilots contracted to the Chinese Air Force during World War II and ultimately brought under U.S. Army Air Forces command as the China Air Task Force – is absorbed into the 14th Air Force.
Commanded by Gen. Claire L. Chennault, “the Flying Tigers” were so-named because of the tiger-shark faces painted on the noses of their P-40 fighters.
Today, according to the U.S. Air Force, airmen of the 14th Air Force are “the day-to-day operators of Air Force Space Command's space forces.” And the centerpiece of the 14th Air Force emblem is a tiger with wings.

Air War in the Pacific, Pt. 2: Profiling the Zero, Warhawk, and Wildcat

2010-03-09T03:00:00.000Z

And this post is even longer.

Burning Origami Samurai

Picture three or four images that sum up the Pacific War for you. The Zero has to be there. It’s really as Japanese as the Samurai or trippy role playing fantasy games. It was even built by Mitsubishi.

A6M Zero, a gorgeous, delicately nimble, flying incendiary death trap

A gorgeous plane in many ways, with very clean lines and well proportioned, there’s plenty to admire in the Zero. It had very good speed, exceptionally long range (longer than anything America could field until second generation planes with external fuel tanks), low stall speed (very large wing area), stability, and incredible maneuverability. Exceptionally lightweight, the Zero had a good climb rate and, at low speeds, was a better dogfighter than possibly any other plane of WW II. It’s diminutive cousin built for the Japanese Army, the Ki 43 “Oscar,” was perhaps even more maneuverable, though underpowered and woefully underarmed. One American pilot described an Oscar pull off acrobatic feats normally seen only at airshows: three Immelman’s (from the straight and level, pulling into a half loop then rolling level, to gain altitude and change direction all at once) in a row followed by a “Hammerhead Stall” (pulling straight up into a stall, then kicking the nose down into a dive).
The Zero, along with many of Japan’s most commonly fielded aircraft, suffered from weaknesses that allied pilots would eventually learn to exploit. Most famously, it had absolutely no survivability if damaged. There was no armor plating, and the primary fuel tank was just beneath the cockpit, and was not self-sealing (a mixture of charcoal and rubber lining that congealed to stop leaks, standard on allied aircraft). Very light damage would usually set the plane on fire. The trade off, light weight, maneuverability and long range, also gave the Zero poor dive capabilities (as odd as that sounds, it proved crucial).
The Zero’s characteristics reflected Japanese design philosophy and pilot culture. Japanese prototypes were fielded tested almost exclusively by front line pilots, who had effective veto power over whether a design would be accepted for production. A joy to fly, pilots loved the Zero’s handling and maneuverability, and didn’t want the plane weighed down by extra armor (pilots always want more maneuverability, even though, as outlined later, dogfighting capability is decidedly not the final word in air combat). First used in China as a bomber escort, the Zero proved perfectly suited for dealing with ancient Chinese biplanes (supplied by Russia and the U.S.) with poor armament. Oddly, the Japanese never seem to have seriously considered the necessity of bomber interception as an important role for the Zero. Against American bombers heavily armed and armored, the Zero’s fragility and light armament was at a disadvantage.
In addition, while no major power considered developing fighters as ground attack aircraft before the war, allied planes proved excellent in a tactical bomber role. The Zero proved adequate against exposed ground forces as a strafer, but was not up to the challenge of withstanding heavy anti-aircraft fire.
At first, the Zero was a terrifying surprise for allied pilots who didn’t think Japan had much of a modern air force. The Zero made it’s reputation almost instantly, as it savaged opponents left and right for the first six months of the war.
Furthermore, the thousand or Japanese naval pilots at the outset flying the Zero were some of the best in the world. Japan spent years training pilots in the run-up to the war, and accepted a very small number of applicants. Most had well over six hundred hours in type, and they were well trained in doctrine, proving superb at bomber escort and carrier warfare. Japanese pilots cut their teeth over China, slaughtering Chinese air force. Like the Germans in Spain, the Japanese received combat experience before WW II kicked off for real. However, while Germany learned mostly the correct lessons from her Spanish adventure, Japan picked up a few bad habits (see above).
In contrast, allied forces were mostly under-manned, inadequately trained, and unprepared. Rag tag collections of American units in the Philippines, Wake, and Guam, and British and Anzac units in Hong Kong, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, and New Guinea were caught off guard and overwhelmed by Japanese offensives, which brilliantly utilized economy of force (e.g. the eighty or so American fighters on the Philippines faced more than double that number of Japanese forces, with tactical surprise to boot).
That initial disparity in force structure is the biggest single reason the Zero built up such a fantastic reputation, one which it coasted on thereafter. That reputation has in large part covered over most of the Zero’s crippling weaknesses, along with the later advent of second generation American aircraft which ended up being some of the best piston engined fighters of all time. But what happened in between?
In between, American and Anzac forces blunted the Japanese drive into New Guinea, landed on Guadalcanal, and started driving up the Solomons towards Rabaul, the Japanese center of gravity in the theater. The allies accomplished this without interior lines, on the wrong end of a very long supply chain, and in a third rate theater only grudgingly receiving reinforcement from Washington commanders more worried about concentrating against Germany.
That’s not a bad job, so how’d we do it? These two ships below, one rather beautiful, the other…not so much, are only recently receiving their due praise.

Built American Tough

Most American aviation companies had a tenuous existence in the interwar years, many barely turned a profit or none at all until the war started. Most managed to keep afloat by catering to the civilian aviation market. When you’re trying to get a leery public on board, you have to preach safety and reliability. Also, no only really understood just how metal fatigued could effect a plane over time, and so American designers universally erred on the side of caution. To round it out, the geography of the United States played a factor, as American planes had to be able to perform equally well in any environment, from Florida to New Mexico to Alaska.
As a result, if the Zero was a finely tuned and delicate race car, American fighters were pure Detroit muscle, with armor plating. In fact, when you make the automotive analogy, the advantages in the American design philosophy become more apparent. Horsepower, weight, ruggedness, and firepower were the deciding factors. Despite the common perception that later American fighters were built in response to the lessons learned by the Zero, subsequent American designs continued to reflect the same basic philosophy exhibited so well in the P-40 Warhawk, and the F4F Wildcat.

Under appreciated today by everyone except her pilots, and victims

The Curtis P-40 Warhawk, in production throughout the entirety of the war, was developed off of an earlier design, the P-36. While not a huge improvement in technology and performance (most of the designs–F6F, P-38, P-47, F4U–which would go on lasting glory in WW II were already on the drawing board/prototype phase when the war started), the P-40 could be easily built in large numbers quickly, and was a fairly proven design.
The Warhawk was decently maneuverable, slightly faster than the Zero straight up, and heavy. It couldn’t climb or turn with the Zero in a pure low-speed dogfight, but it could dive like a falling demon, and had six guns to the Zero’s four (four .30’s and two .50’s at first, soon upgraded to six .50’s). At high speeds, the Warhawk could actually out-turn the Zero.
And it could take punishment. Stories and pictures of Warhawk’s making it home with whole chunks of the wing or tail missing are not that uncommon. On the Eastern front, one Russian pilot scored two kills on separate occasions by ramming German bombers (only the first one was unintentional). Self-sealing fuel tanks were standard, and critical areas had armor plating. A veteran Zero pilot, Takao Tanimuzu noted after the war that “you could always tell if it was a Zero or enemy plane that had crashed in the sea. The Zero left a fire on the surface, but the American plane just left an oil slick.” Robert DeHaven American ace with 14 kills (ten of them in P-40’s) once had his rudder control, hydraulics, radio, and left guns all shot out in a dogfight, but he still managed to get back to his base where:

“I couldn’t get the gear down so I belly-landed. My plane was a total wreck. I have no idea whether that Tony pilot claimed me as a victory, but he certainly had a legitimate right to because my airplaine was forced to crash-land wand was totally wiped out. I survived, which was the main thing. They gave me some whiskey, which was most welcome, and I think I slept for about twenty-four hours.” (pp. 245-246)

The Grumman F4F Wildcat, was also developed out of an existing design, the F3F (a biplane). I don’t think even the most faithful Wildcat pilot ever called it “pretty.” On paper, the Wildcat appeared even more outclassed by the Zero

Stubby, Ugly, Deadly

than the Warhawk, slower, and less maneuverable. It had good armament though, with four .50’s, later upgraded to six.
but the Wildcat was, if anything, even tougher than the Warhawk. Not for nothing did pilots jokingly refer to “Grumman Iron Works” as the plane’s manufacturer. Japanese ace Saburo Sakai was astonished when, in one engagement:

I had full confidence in my ability to destroy the Grumman and decided to finish off the enemy fighter with only my 7.7 mm machine guns. I turned the 20 mm cannon switch to the ‘off’ position, and closed in. For some strange reason, even after I had poured about five or six hundred rounds of ammunition directly into the Grumman, the airplane did not fall, but kept on flying. I thought this very odd—it had never happened before—and closed the distance between the two airplanes until I could almost reach out and touch the Grumman. To my surprise, the Grumman’s rudder and tail were torn to shreds, looking like an old torn piece of rag. With his plane in such condition, no wonder the pilot was unable to continue fighting! A Zero which had taken that many bullets would have been a ball of fire by now.

Allied pilots at first tried to fight the Zero on it’s own terms, in the classic straight up dogfight. Dogfights almost inevitably end up in tight turning contests which bleed off airspeed; the optimum flight envelope for the Zero. That’s where it racked up impressive kill numbers. At one point, in late 1942, an RAAF Wing of Spitfires (three squadrons) was sent to help defend Darwin Australia. The pilots, veterans of the Battle of Britain and North Africa, and flying one of the most famous dogfighters of all time, were used to outmaneuvering anything the Luftwaffe could field at that time, and so they were very rudely shocked when they tried to dogfight the Zero straight up and found themselves at a disadvantage.
But making war fair is one of the dumbest things you can do, so allied pilots learned not to fight fairly. Pilots quickly developed alternative and often unorthodox tactics, which would end up with very lopsided tallies for American and Anzacs pilots in the South Pacific. For example, Royal New Zealand Air Force P-40’s would eventually claim 99 confirmed kills to only twenty loses, a nearly 5:1 kill ratio. That’s slightly on the high end of things, but all told allied pilots, mostly in Warhawks and Wildcats, ended the South Pacific campaign on the plus side of the ledger. Marine Corps ace Joe Foss, who contests the title of top USMC ace with Pappy Boyington, scored his twenty-six kills in one three-month tour on Guadalcanal, all in the F4F Wildcat. The famed “Flying Tigers” in China, would eventually post an astonishing 70 to 1 kill ratio against Japanese planes of all types with their iconic shark’s teeth-painted P-40’s.
Assessing overall kill ratios is extremely difficult for any number of reasons. Rotating units meant that overall strength of forces continuously fluctuated, and distinguishing between planes shot down, damaged beyond repair, broken down due to mechanical difficulties, destroyed on the ground, or lost without any explanation makes all but the most general estimates inexact. But as a rule of thumb, throughout most of the campaign Japan kept anywhere from six hundred to a thousand planes in theater. The allies, at first less than that, then greater. Each side continually reinforced, so overall losses were much higher than that. The estimates, but together after the war by the Japanese indicate that from April 1, 1942, to April 1, 1944 (when the South Pacific campaign effectively ended), the Japanese navy lost roughly 4,400 fighters, 2,000 tactical bombers, and 1,400 multi-engine bombers. At the same time the Japanese army, lost most of the 800 aircraft it deployed to the theater. On the other side, Bergerud estimates that the allies in total lost about 2,000 aircraft of all types in the South Pacific. (pp. 668-669) While this showcases the total dominance eventually won by the allies, I’m trying to look more closely at the early period of the campaign, before P-38’s, P-47s, F6F’s, and F4U’s were deployed. Bergerud makes a helpful distinction for us by summing up:

“The loss ratio, if these figures are at all correct, would have been roughly 3:1 in favor of the Allied side. I think this is a reasonable estimate. This is a reasonable estimate. The Allies were holding their own in fighter-to-fighter combat at the beginning, and as the months went by superior Allied tactics took advantage of an inherently superior conception of air warfare. Speed of escape, ruggedness, and firepower would trump maneuverability in the end.” (pp. 670-671)

Next time: Tactics and what it says about institutional adaptability.

http://www.culturalgadfly.com/?p=3047

Restoring a piece of history

2010-03-06T09:25:00.000Z

When finished, the P-40 will go in the air museum’s Oswin Elker wing

By ELOISE OGDEN Regional Editor eogden@minotdailynews.com

Last winter volunteers began the restoration of a P-40 fighter plane in the Dakota Territory Air Museum in Minot. That work is continuing and when the project is finished, the plane will be the centerpiece of the museum's Oswin H. Elker Memorial Wing, named in honor of the late World War II fighter pilot.
As their schedules allow, Darrel Kerzmann, Minot, and 1st Lt. Justin Shetter and Tech. Sgt. Tim Lett, both of Minot Air Force Base, work on the plane.
Kerzmann said the plane is the type of aircraft that Oswin Elker flew in World War II.
"It's the type of aircraft that he flew in China," he said.
Elker, a native of Surrey, served with the 75th Fighter Squadron of the Flying Tigers in the 14th Air Force Division during World War II.
Kerzmann heads the restoration project. "But if it weren't for Tim and Justin we wouldn't be where we're at right now," said Kerzmann, a museum board member.
The plane was donated to the museum by Ron Fagen of Granite Falls, Minn. Fagen owns Warhawks Inc., an aircraft restoration business, and Fagen Inc., a construction business.
When they began the project "the fuselage was here, the wings were here, and the landing gears, as you see, were in a crate," Kerzmann said.
"So the airplane was basically disassembled and that's what we're taking on now we're putting it back together. We're putting it back together with the pieces we have and those we don't have or wouldn't be able to purchase, we're going to fabricate," Kerzmann said.
Shetter and Lett, both on active duty in the Air Force, and Kerzmann, with Civil Service at the base, work on the project on Saturday and other days when their time permits.
"It takes a dedicated effort," Kerzmann said.
Kerzmann is retired from the Air Force where he was in aircraft maintenance. He was on active duty for 25 years and for the past several years has been with Civil Service with the maintenance group at the base. He works for Air Force Engineering and Technical Services, or AFETS.
With all their experience combined Lett's training in sheet metal, Shetter's experience in aircraft maintenance and Kerzmann's experience the restoration project is coming together.
Very fitting to their project of restoring a World War II aircraft, this past Saturday when the three were working on the project four Canadian visitors who were in town stopped by the museum. Kerzmann, Shetter and Lett gave them a tour of the museum. During the visit they learned that two of the visitors, John Yeomans and Weldon Moffatt, were bomber pilots in World War II. Yeomans, a former prisoner of war, flew the Lancaster bomber for the Royal Air Force, was shot down over Germany and became a prisoner of war 66 years ago that day. Weldon Moffatt flew a Halifax bomber for the Canadian Air Force. All are from Regina, Sask.
The P-40 will not be restored for flying, Kerzmann said. "The aircraft will be put back together only for static display," he said.
When they will finish the project is not definite.

http://www.minotdailynews.com/page/content.detail/id/537238.html

When Victory Was in the Air

2010-03-05T11:10:00.000Z

By DANIEL FORD

As a boy toward the end of World War II, I fell in love with the B-29 bomber, a smooth, pencil-thin Boeing airplane with wings that spanned an unimaginable 141 feet. Despite its delicate appearance, an empty B-29 weighed 37 tons, to which the U.S. Air Force would routinely add 20 tons of gasoline, seven tons of bombs, and three tons of "miscellaneous weight," including nearly a dozen Americans with flak vests and steel helmets. In the Pacific Theater, whole fleets of B-29s—up to 800 on a single raid—would roll down coral-and-asphalt runways and stagger into the air, bound for the 3,000-mile round trip from the Mariana Islands to the empire of Japan. More than any other instrument of war (not excluding the atomic bomb, which was useless without it), the silvery B-29 bludgeoned imperial Japan into submission.
The B-29 "Superfortress" was the most beautiful warplane ever built and a generation ahead of any other bomber of the day. It carried five times the ordnance of the B-17 "Flying Fortress" (also from Boeing) and delivered it faster and over a greater distance. Its crew compartments were pressurized and heated; its guns were aimed by an early kind of computer. Altogether, as a pilot once told me, "that was a millionaire's airplane." Its big flaw was engines that regularly overheated. The same pilot once took off with an engine on fire but the other three running smoothly. "Let the son of a bitch burn!" he told his crew, gambling that they'd be safer if he carried on than if he tried to land a plane brimming with gasoline and explosives. Sure enough, the fire burned itself out, and he flew the 15-hour mission without incident.
The story of how B-29s and lesser aircraft ended the Pacific War is wonderfully told by Barrett Tillman in "Whirlwind." After a brief, costly and largely ineffectual effort to bomb Japan from China—requiring gasoline and bombs to be delivered "over the hump" of the Himalayas—the campaign was moved in late 1944 to three newly captured Pacific islands, east of the Philippines and due south of Japan. The Marianas—Guam, Saipan and Tinian—posed their own difficulties, but at least they were at sea level, and the construction crews could start from scratch. On Tinian, not much larger than Manhattan, 15,000 workers laid six runways, 11 miles of taxiways and parking areas, and so many roads and buildings that the little island qualified as the largest aviation complex in the world. In the process, they moved billions of cubic yards of dirt and gravel, enough to build three Boulder Dams.
Though Mr. Tillman depends mostly on previously published accounts, he conveys details of the great Tokyo fire raid (March 1945) and the atomic obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (August) in terms that are fresh even to those who have read them before. Mr. Tillman is a master storyteller, too. He recounts with poignancy the experience of Sgt. Henry "Red" Erwin, a young radioman who, blinded by a flare that has gone off prematurely in the cramped crew compartment of his B-29, grabs it, tucks it under his arm and stumbles forward to throw it out an open window, saving his crew from the impenetrable smoke and from the awful possibility that the flare will burn through the floor and ignite the plane's ordnance. A Medal of Honor is rushed to Erwin within days, as he lies in a hospital bed, before (as everyone expects) he succumbs to his grievous wounds. But somehow he survives. "Discharged in 1947," Mr. Tillman writes, Erwin "devoted nearly four decades to helping other veterans in a Birmingham [Ala.] veterans' hospital."

View Full Image

Whirlwind

By Barrett Tillman
Simon & Schuster, 316 pages, $28

More important, Mr. Tillman's version is blessedly free of the easy virtue and after-the-fact righteousness that color most accounts of World War II. He finds the incendiary and atomic bombs horrific but necessary, and he doesn't subscribe to the view that Japan would meekly have given up if we'd been less insistent about unconditional surrender. "The final verdict," he writes, "is this: air power forced the capitulation of a desperate, tenacious enemy and thus rendered unnecessary the ghastly prospect of the bloodiest invasion in the sanguinary history of the human race." He quotes a Japanese admiral who thought that the Americans could be defeated on the beaches with an "acceptable" loss of three million to five million Japanese citizens, though he conceded that the toll might reach 20 million—nearly a third of the country's population.
Similarly, Mr. Tillman goes against conventional wisdom by praising Curtis LeMay, the ferocious general who whipped the B-29 crews into shape, then sent them against Tokyo at low level, laden with incendiary bombs, at night, in planes that, to lighten them, had been stripped of most of their defensive guns. LeMay was, Mr. Tillman concludes, "the most competent, most thoroughly professional airman of his generation."
To be sure, LeMay and the B-29 weren't alone in savaging Japan. Smaller Army bombers and hordes of Army, Navy and Marine fighter planes joined the assault in the summer of 1945. And Japan did plenty of savaging in return. Mr. Tillman, alas, nowhere gives a final casualty figure for the U.S. air campaign, or even for the B-29s, though he does note that 94 of the big bombers were shot down over Japan. Given the unreliable engines, the vast distances and the challenge of rescuing survivors at sea, the toll was likely two or three times as great. But even those 94 planes were carrying 1,034 young men, or about as many as we have lost from all services in our long-running combat in Afghanistan.
Mr. Ford is the author, among other books, of "Flying Tigers: Claire Chennault and His American Volunteers, 1941-1942."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704240004575085790239894142.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

P-40E, ‘supercar’ feature statics at open house

2010-03-05T02:19:00.000Z

-- Air Force photos

P-40E Warhawk
The P-40, developed from the P-36, was America’s foremost fighter in service when World War II began.

P-40s engaged Japanese aircraft during the attack on Pearl Harbor and the invasion of the Philippines in December 1941. They also were flown in China early in 1942 by the famed Flying Tigers and in North Africa in 1943 by the first Army Air Forces all African-American unit, the 99th Fighter Squadron.

The P-40 served in numerous combat areas – the Aleutian Islands, Italy, the Middle East, the Far East, the Southwest Pacific and Russia.

Though often outclassed by its adversaries in speed, maneuverability and rate of climb, the P-40 earned a reputation in battle for extreme ruggedness. At the end of the P-40’s brilliant career, more than 14,000 had been produced for service in the air forces of 28 nations, of which 2,320 were of the “E” series. The aircraft was also called the “Kittyhawk” and “Tomahawk” in England and Canada.

Air Force ‘supercar’ The Vapor
What happens when Air Force technology meets an everyday sports car? Built in only three months by professionals at Galpin Auto Sports and Airmen from several different technical career fields, the Air Force’s two “supercars” are a Dodge Challenger and a Ford Mustang that are outfitted with cutting-edge technology. Dubbed “Vapor” and “X-1,” respectively, they serve as recruiting tools that travel the country, appearing at high schools and numerous public events.

The Vapor, which will appear at Maxwell’s Air Show, is equipped with a computer system, allowing for unmanned remote access. A custom, “stealth” exhaust mode renders the powerful engine nearly silent.

The car also boasts night and thermal vision, projected on a heads-up windshield display via a 360-degree surveillance camera. Other features include 20-inch, carbon fiber rims, a GPS transponder for tracking, dual steering and biometric access to vertical doors.

For more information on the Air Force Super Car Tour, visit www.airforce.com/supercar.

http://www.maxwellgunterdispatch.com/article/20100304/DISPATCH01/100304022/1114/DISPATCH

Curtiss P-40 Tucking Up The Gear On Takeoff - #OSH05 by Bob Burns

2010-02-28T12:41:00.000Z

(Click image for larger) Photo by: Bob Burns

Flying Tiger Reunion - Geneseo 2008 Air Show

2010-02-27T09:40:00.000Z

2008 Air Shows

Geneseo

Location: Geneseo, Airport, Geneseo, New York

Admission: $45.00 for 3 days, Internet price.

Parking: Free on the airport grounds.

Value: Good (if the weather cooperates)

The grass field and the flight path for the air show provided excellent viewing and photographic opportunities in general if one got to the show early, as in 6 a.m..

Geneseo, is located just south of Batavia, NY., and southeast of Buffalo, NY. I heard from many air show enthusiasts, that Geneseo was one of the few shows where one can actually get close to the actual planes and mingle with the pilots! The show was advertised as the "P-40 Flying Tigers Reunion" with other interesting and rare planes such as the B-24 OL 9247, the famed B-17F Memphis Belle (replica made from from an actual B-17G model), this replica was used in the movie of the same name. The original B-17F Memphis Belle, is at the USAF Museum, in Dayton, Ohio, and is undergoing restoration.

Geneseo had the making of a good air show, in reality due to the weather, it should have been called the "Rain & No Show" as it rained on all three days and several of the aircraft of interest never showed up due technical difficulties.

The weather is beyond anybody's control, and it was terrible. On Friday the 13th(!), the arrival date for the aircraft, it rained several times, and that prevented me from taking photos until about noon. Then, the weather let up a bit, (2) F-16s flew by once real quickly. While I was taking static photos, heard some jet noise and when I looked up and saw another F-16 with a P-51 Mustang, practicing for the upcoming Heritage fly-by, on Saturday and Sunday. Although they flew by unexpectedly, I managed to take a few photos of them together. Just after 2 p.m., it started to rain once again. This time, however, it was severe, so I left for the day. The weather cleared about 4:30 p.m., and most of the aircraft arrived after that time. I was hoping that the advertised ones such as the the B-24A "Ole 927" and the B-25 "Briefing Time" would still show up by Saturday morning, as these two were on my list of musts.

Saturday, June 14th, started out sunny, but the grass field was very wet and soggy. I was able to take static photos of some of the aircraft there, but I noticed quite a few of the advertised aircraft were missing from the lineup. While there were plenty of Texan T6 trainers or as they are called in Canada; Harvards, and older civilian types these were not on my priority list. My focus was on the WWII warbirds and on the P-40 Flying Tiger Reunion planes.

While there were other WWII era aircraft such as the Japanese Aichi D3A1 Val, and Douglas Skytrain, I already had photos of these from Friday and and from previous shows. Several Russian made Yak-53 Trainers from the 1980's flew in on Saturday morning too, but I am not sure if they participated in the air show later on. They were gone by Sunday morning. There would be a Heritage flyby with an F-16 and a P-40, apparently for the first time as such, and a Hercules cargo drop demonstration too!

I found myself a good spot near a grassy taxiing area, which at the time looked promising for taking photos. I met some other fellow photographers, one from Guelph, Ontario, who reassured me that this was indeed the best spot. This was at 6 a.m. Around 8 a.m., a couple of the air show ground directing personnel told us, “we could stay where we were, but during some of the taxiing we may have to move for a bit, but after that we can return.’’

The show started around 10 a.m., and around 11 a.m., we were told to move while some of the aircraft were being refueled too close to us, but we could return once they were done. Just as we moved back around 11:30 a.m., we were then told "Sorry, but due to FAA regulations, you will now have to move to another area!" I have nothing against complying to Laws and Regulations, but our reaction was “Gee, thanks a lot!! Couldn't you have told this to us at 8 a.m. or even before the show got started?” I do not think that we were violating the FAA regulation, nor do I think that the regulation changed in a couple of hours! And if we were in violation, we were at 6 a.m. too. These brilliant ground directors might have told us, the photographers there for a reason, besides out of boredom, that we would have to move, period, right then. Certainly not after the show had started and went on for over an hour! Since by this time, the flight line viewing area was packed in some places up to 20 rows deep. Good luck trying to take a decent photo. Murphy’s law was in full swing as someone would stick their cell phone camera up in the air right in front me, or bob their heads into my sight line, blocking the view. Seems people always do!

My day was clearly ruined and so it was for other photographers too. In fact, some were so disappointed and disgusted with this that they packed up and went home, vowing never to return!

Anyhow, I stayed since I had an assignment to complete, and found myself a distant, relatively acceptable spot that would give a sight line above the heads of the crowds. At least, I would be able to take some images, once the planes were in the air, or so I thought. As soon as the show was starting to get interesting, (I am not interested in photographing civilian types of small aircraft painted in pink), just after the B-17 took off, the rain started. After about 40 minutes, on again, off again, with some stronger downpours in between, the rain finally stopped. My camera gear was still relatively dry as I had placed them on my lawn chair with a plastic tarp over them. Since I already missed the Mustangs in the air, due to my move to an alternate location, I was looking forward to see the P-40 Warhawk in the air. Finally the P-40 Flying Tigers Reunion planes took off. There were five P-40s at the show, but only four off them flew on Saturday. I thought, well if nothing else, I will have some images of the Flying Tigers. But it was Murphy's Law at work once again. Even though, I was far from the crowds, a group of 5 or 6 persons with 2 baby carts blocked my view by stopping in front of me to discuss what little Johnny ate and why Susie threw up in the morning. As I tried to move, these people just kept moving too, pushing their carts in from of me and blocking my view. It felt like they were on a mission, to stand in my line of sight, blocking the little view I had of the show. After about 45 minutes they finally moved on, but now I was interrupted by people who actually, and incredibly, stuck their faces into my lens while I was trying to take photos of planes flying low. Asking brilliant questions, "just how close will that big lens of yours bring in the planes?" Despite this I managed to take some shots of the Hurricane and the Spitfire, and even some WWI biplane action. The show was now running late due to the earlier rain delay, and it started to get overcast once again. By this time, I had had enough distractions for the day. I left around 4 p.m. before the show was over. My Saturday was a right off for me, but still I had some lingering hopes for Sunday.

Sunday, June 15, it was foggy and overcast, but it looked as if the weather would clear up just enough to take some decent photos. I had a good, ‘safe’ spot staked out at 6 a.m. Around 8:45 a.m. it started to get dark once again and it rained until about 10 a.m. I was close to a tent, where the ground personnel and some of the pilots were sitting. I and countless others joined them inside the tent. It rained quite heavily, and we wondered if the show would be cancelled or not. But there was no clear reply. Finally the rain stopped, and around 10:30 a.m., the opening ceremonies started, and a few older Sterman biplane trainers took off. But as soon as they were in the air, a rain storm blew in, it not only rained once again, it was a torrential downpour, and it just didn't want to stop. Noon went by and the water was standing about 1.5" to 2" on the ground. During the storm a lot of people had left. I asked if the show would be cancelled, but again the ground crew had no clear answers. Around 12:30 p.m., I decided that it was pointless to hang around anymore, even the U.S. Marines had left the show! Even if the rain would stop that instant, I had serious doubts that the WWII Warbirds, would risk taking off in such conditions. The P-40s, P-51s, the lonely Hurricane, Spitfire, and Corsair are worth over million a piece, if I would be the owner I would certainly not take off when considering the local conditions.

Some of the participants were:

•(1) B-17F "Memphis Belle"

•(4) P-51D Mustang -- one was a Canadian

•(5) P-40 Warhawk -- only 4 flew, one had problems

•(1) Corsair

•(1) Hurricane -- from Canada

•(1) Spitfire -- from Canada

•(1) Hawker Seafury -- from Canada

•Several Harvards -- from Canada

•Several WWI biplane replicas -- from Canada

•and many others with a lot o civillian types too.

Geneseo doesn't have a tarmac, only a grass covered landing/take off airstrip. With so much water on the ground, these historical aircraft could be damaged very easily while taxiing in the muck. I packed up my gear, and headed toward my car. I was drenched and my shoes were totally soaked through as I waddled in the up to 2" of standing water, mud and muck. I then left the airport. The rain stopped soon after, but I was through.

Geneseo, by far for me personally anyway, had to be the worst air show I have ever attended to date. Not just due to the weather, but due to the lack of proper information by the ground personnel and, unfortunately, by some of the most inconsiderate and rude people I have ever encountered in my life at an air show. While, I was able to shoot images for my assignment, the quality and the quantity were certainly compromised by weather and events. Perhaps next year it will better everyone and that includes me too.

Rating: 5 out of 10 Due to these reasons:

•the weather

•lack of proper organization

•misinformation

•some of the people who attended.

The highlight of the show was the Heritage Flight of the P-40E Warhawk with the F-16 Figthing Falcon.

http://www.airshowsreview.com/2008-Geneseo-NY-Airshowreview.htm

Who Is This Nascar Racing Legend ?

2010-02-25T08:01:00.001Z

Grew up on a farm in Neshaminy, Pennsylvania
Flew B-17s for the Army Air Force in WWII
Flew for the Flying Tigers
Driver, mechanic, crew chief for stock cars in 1950s and 1960s
Won two Grand National (Winston Cup today) Championships
Won Indy in 1960
Worked in Ecuador for 30 years in oil drilling and gold mining
Wrote for Popular Science and Circle Track magazines

3 Responses to “Who Is This Nascar Racing Legend ?”

Madame Lynn
-That sounds like the late, great Smokey Yunick.

-Ah, A trick answer. Yunick’s car won Indy, he did not drive it that race.
I love these old facts questions.

tom p
-Yep, that’s Smokey Yunick, one of most genius minds to ever work on a car.

http://www.nascar-cup.com/nascar-tracks/who-is-this-nascar-racing-legend

FLYING TIGERS AS THEY REALLY WERE

2010-02-20T11:15:00.001Z

http://chinaburmaindiatheatre.blogspot.com/2010/02/flying-tigers-as-they-really-were.html
Posted by Mitch Williamson

Those who recognize the term Flying Tigers, remember it as a unit of volunteer U.S. pilots working for the Chinese in their struggle with Japan before Pearl Harbor. Not so. While there were American volunteer pilots recruited for service in China, the Flying Tigers first saw action in Burma, where they were caught in transit (to China) by the Japanese attacks in December 1941. In those battles, the Americans fought under British control and in a few months most were inducted into the U.S. Army Air Force and continued to serve in China as part of the newly activated U.S. Fourteenth Air Force. The Flying Tigers' name itself did not appear until after Pearl Harbor (in a Time magazine article in late December). The Walt Disney Studios promptly provided a suitable insignia.

Officially known as the American Volunteer Group (AVG), the organization had a curious history. The organizer and leader of the Flying Tigers was Claire Chennault. An able U.S. Army fighter pilot, he made himself unpopular with his theories (largely correct) of how to use fighters. Forced to retire in 1937 (at age forty-four), he cast about for something to do before (as he was sure would happen) America was at war with Germany and Japan and he would be able to get back into uniform. Through his contacts with aircraft manufacturers, he secured a contract to do a survey of the struggling Chinese Air Force and suggest changes that would provide better defense against the rampaging Japanese fighters and bombers. Chennault made an impression on the Chinese and was asked to gather the dozens of mercenary pilots into one unit, train them to act as a team, and give the Japanese a bloody nose. He was also put in charge of training new Chinese pilots. It was a tall order. The largely non-American mercenaries were an undisciplined lot and many did not have a mastery of English. The aircraft were an oddball collection of whatever the Chinese government had been able to buy. Russian, German, Italian, and American manufacturers were all trying to sell additional aircraft (and not always their best stuff). The Russians had their own group of "volunteer" pilots, but the Chinese weren't impressed by the Russians' skill, nor did they trust the Communists. This is understandable, as the Chinese Communists were trying to overthrow the non- Communist Chinese government (a temporary truce was in effect in order to oppose the Japanese).

The U.S. government was also concerned with the hammering the Chinese were getting from the Japanese Air Force. By late 1940 an agreement was made for the U.S. government to provide loans for the Chinese to buy the latest U.S. fighter aircraft, and for U.S. Army and Navy pilots to be recruited for the AVG. Officially, the U.S. government had nothing to do with the recruiting (although the recruiters were free to entice serving pilots to join the AVG). But Chennault and the Chinese didn't care about these technicalities. With the AVG, the Chinese would have trained and disciplined pilots flying modern aircraft. The pilots and aircraft reached Burma in late 1941, and it was in Burma that a training base was set up for the AVG pilots to perfect their teamwork before going north into China. Thus it was in Burma that the Flying Tigers got their first taste of combat, and after Pearl Harbor at that. The AVG moved to China in early 1942.

In July 1942, the Flying Tigers ceased to exist. Oh, many of the pilots were still flying in China. But they and their aircraft were no longer mercenaries but part of the army air force. In their seven months of existence, the 340 pilots and ground crew of the AVG claimed (and 68 pilots were paid bonuses of over $5,000-in 1994 dollars-per aircraft for) destroying 296 Japanese aircraft. The AVG lost 86 aircraft (only 12 in air-to-air combat), including accidents and 22 were captured when Japanese infantry overran one of their storage facilities in Burma. Twenty-two AVG pilots were killed, captured, or missing. Postwar examination of Japanese records indicates that the AVG actually destroyed 120 Japanese aircraft and killed 400 pilots and aircrew. Many of the Japanese aircraft destroyed were bombers, which had larger crews. Put another way, the Tigers destroyed 21 Japanese aircraft per thousand sorties, while losing only 2 of their own. Their Japanese opponents shot down 6 Tigers per thousand sorties while losing 64 aircraft. The Tigers flew six thousand sorties during this period, versus only two thousand for their Japanese opponents.

When history comes to life

2010-02-18T09:30:00.000Z

Author: Linda Sickler

They might be too young to know who Rosie the Riveter was, but the participants of a recent model airplane building class at the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum in Pooler are old enough to build their own planes. Well, small ones, anyway.
Mighty Eighth Director of Education Heather Thies was dressed as Rosie the Riveter for the day's lesson. "The purpose of doing this is to teach children about history," she said.
Rosie the Riveter was used to represent the many American women who worked in war factories during World War II. Many of the planes featured at the class were built by women.
"This class gives children the opportunity for hands-on work with the airplanes so they understand them better," Thies said. "It also gives them an opportunity to do something fun with the family."
Volunteer Shawn Balcomb said all types of model planes are available in the museum's gift shop, but the ones chosen for the class are kid-friendly. "There's minimal gluing and screwing," he said. "Most of them are snap-ons."
Everett Broady helped his sons Caslin, 11, and Braxton, 5, assemble their planes. "This is better than sitting in front of the TV or playing video games," he said. "It teaches them skills, plus it's about American history."
Caroline and Clay Massey were accompanied by their grandmother, Judy. "We thought this would be something fun to do when Mimi is babysitting," she said. "He loves trucks, cars and airplanes."
Kristin Goodwin of Savannah said her son, Hunter, 8, was already familiar with the Mighty Eighth. "We had his birthday party here in August," she said. "We decided to come back and try some of the other activities."
Hunter's father, Joel Goodwin, watched his son's progress as Hunter put together a Flying Tiger. "I thought it was a good experience for him," he said. "He's learning about planes and American history."
As for Hunter, he was gathering important information for the future. "When I grow up, I might want to be in the U.S. military," he said.
Kimberly Barkey said the model plane building class was particularly good for her sons, Erich, 11, and Cameron, 6. Erich has Asperger's syndrome, an autistic spectrum disorder that affects a child's ability to socialize and communicate effectively.
Children with Asperger's may be socially awkward and have an all-absorbing interest in specific topics, but they are often extremely bright. "I don't worry about him," Barkey said with a laugh. "I think he's going to be an engineer."
Cameron has attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. Problems associated with ADHD include problems with concentration and impulsive behavior. "His skills are really growing," Barkey said. "'Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian' is his favorite movie.
"They love airplanes," she said. "This helps them focus. This is an opportunity for them to find an outlet and develop skills."
Thies presented a program on the history of fighter planes and bombers. The Flying Tigers P40 model airplane was particularly popular with the builders.
"These planes had tiger teeth painted on the front," Thies said. "They were more intimidating as they flew at you. It's an American plane, because it has a blue circle with a white star."
Some planes were painted unusual colors, including yellow and black. "They painted some planes crazy colors for formations," Thies explained.
The painted planes were used to help other pilots. "If you had 2,000 planes getting into formation, you'd have a special place where you were supposed to fly in," Thies said. "This plane turned and landed and showed them where to go.
"These never went on bombing runs," she said. "With those colors, the Germans would have seen them and shot them down."
Planes used in combat were drab or silver in color. "Some are made of aluminum - yes, just like a Coke can," Thies said.
The models put together in the class were all American planes, but the participants also learned something about the planes the enemy flew. "The Messerschmidt 109 was the most used German fighter plane," Thies said. "We have one here in the museum.
"The Japanese Zero was the most used Japanese plane," she said. "The Mighty Eighth didn't fly over Japan, so we don't have any Japanese planes in the museum."
Participation in the model airplane building class is free with the purchase of a model airplane in the museum gift shop, and includes a free child's admission to the museum. The cost of a World War II model airplane is $10.
The next classes will be held May 15 at 10 a.m., 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. Space is limited, but registration can be made by calling Thies at 912-748-8888 or by sending e-mail to educa tion@mightyeighth.org.
Mighty Eighth Marketing and Public Relations Manager Mandy Livingston said the class is offered four times a year. "We try to keep it under 30 minutes so we can keep their full attention," she said.
"We want to get children involved and start young to teach them about aviation, as well as the history behind these airplanes," Livingston said. "Here at the museum, we have summer camps, birthday parties and Scout programs. Scouts can earn credit for their aviation badges."
The museum also has a new program called Bunking In! that allows children to spend the night at the museum. While there, they participate as airmen and airwomen in a World War II mission.
Developed for ages 5 to 12, the program begins at 5:45 p.m. and ends the next morning at 9 a.m. Activities include dinner in the museum pub, a tour of the museum led by Rosie the Riveter, a scavenger hunt and movie time.
Kimberly, Erich and Cameron Barkey said their visit to the museum won't soon be forgotten. "We love it when history comes to life," she said.

http://savannahnow.com/west-chatham/2010-02-17/when-history-comes-life

Eye of the tiger

2010-02-12T10:58:00.002Z

By Raymond Zhou

BEIJING, Feb. 12 -- As the Year of the Tiger approaches, the animal that burns bright is revealed as having striking similarities in both Chinese and Western culture.

I was born in a year of the tiger.

When I was a child, the tiger was mainly thought of as a predator. About the most famous tiger story in China is from Outlaws of the Marsh, in which Wu Song, in his drunken bravado, single-handedly defeats a tiger attack and kills the animal in the process. It has since become the archetypal rite of passage for a young hero. Just as you have to slay a dragon in Western mythology, you'd better grapple with a tiger and knock him unconscious, literally or figuratively, to fulfil the ritual coming-of-age.

The tiger was known as man-eating, yet it was not associated with evil. In a sense, it is an animal humans have to conquer, yet do not hate. We use the tiger bone to increase our sexual performance, and Tiger Balm is essentially a panacea for all minor ailments. Tiger skin is so treasured only a lord of the jungle - colonial hunters - could use it as a seat cushion. Well, that's my impression from movies and folklore.

There was a chess game popular during my childhood years. It ranked a dozen animals in a hierarchy. The elephant is at the top of the echelon, followed by the lion, and then the tiger. The weakest is the mouse, but it can eliminate the elephant by climbing into its trunk. I didn't know then the lion was called "king of the jungle", but I understood the elephant was not something to be feared as it always lumbers. I might have given it more respect had I seen a movie with an elephant charge scene. Anyway, the real rival for the tiger seemed to be the lion.

But the lion loses big time in one crucial area: It is not one of the 12 Chinese zodiac animals. Only when Disney released its Lion King does the tiger finally retreat, in my mind, to take its backseat in cultural consciousness.

In northern China, the tiger has a slight image problem. If a kid is described as "tiger-headed", he is colorful but a bit slow. By natural extension, he is going to grow up into a bully rather than the class president. Fortunately, this connotation did not exist in my hometown in Zhejiang province. Adults felt I was not "tiger" enough, as I was a little timid and introverted. I have a cousin born in the same year who was always pushing around and swaggering. So, he was a much better torchbearer of the tiger spirit. Had I known there's a Cowardly Lion somewhere, my days as a not-so-brave tiger would have been more bearable.

I first encountered a Western image of my zodiac animal in William Blake's poem. "Tiger, tiger, burning bright" is a line that more than resonates. It never occurred to me to use a fiery image. In Chinese literature, the tiger could be associated with the wind as its dexterous prancing has a whooshing sound, akin to the Chinese word for tiger "hu". We say "hu hu sheng wei", conjuring up a caped hero descending in a regal manner - OK, batman in a tiger-skin cloak.

Blake also mentions the tiger's "fearful symmetry". For me, it is a symbol of virility. Tigers seem to resemble young men, always running around, testosterone-driven yet blissfully oblivious of their sexual potency. Depending on where you stand, it's to be feared or idolized. I don't know how much this has to do with the animal's fast-approaching extinction in China. But people eat tigers, partly to prevent themselves from being eaten, and partly to boost their yang energy by taking on some of the tiger's perceived qualities.

Although East and West approach the tiger differently, it is not diametrically opposite, like the dragon. The Flying Tigers, the American volunteer airmen who fought for China in its war against Japan's invasion, was a great name that sounds equally awe-inspiring in Chinese and English. Now, imagine it's changed to Flying Eagles. Of course, eagles fly. What's so unique about the name, except it derives from the American eagle?

Before William Blake painted the tiger as an animal of feral beauty, it was a figure of savage ferocity, just like ancient China. In Shakespeare's plays, Romeo, when breaking into Juliet's tomb, has manners fiercer "than empty tigers or the roaring sea". In an effort to banish Banquo's ghost, Macbeth claims he would not tremble at "the rugged Russian bear, the armed rhinoceros or the Hyrcan tiger". But no one can deny its strength and agility or Henry V would not order his troops to "imitate the action of the tiger".

Human ambivalence toward the tiger is best summed up by essayist and novelist G K Chesterton, who used "terrible elegance" to describe the animal's exquisite physicality and unpredictable savagery. This is shared by both Western and Chinese cultures. When you say someone is a tiger in bed, we know perfectly well what is meant.

But the dragon-tiger dichotomy emerges in the moniker assigned to the Asian economies of Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan. It's called the "Four Tigers" in English, but the "Four Small Dragons" in Chinese. If we reverse them, the "Four Tigers" in Chinese would still be acceptable, albeit a bit too cute and lightweight. But "Four Dragons" in English would be way too ominous.

Nowadays when you google "tiger", you mostly get news about the disgraced golf star. I must point out Tiger Woods was not born in a year of the tiger, but would have been a great spokesman for the year, his current troubles notwithstanding.

My cousin, born in the same year as I was, was named Tiger - legally named, not just a nickname. But he is not a star. Was it laziness or aspiration on the part of his parents that gave him the same name as the zodiac year? We Chinese generally do not have this custom or we'd have thousands of Rat Zhang, Sheep Wang or Rooster Zhu. But Tiger is different. It can be brought down a peg or two when it is called a "big cat", or "the big worm" in the Wu Song story. It is wild at heart but at the same time can be thought of as a pet.

Happy Year of the Tiger!

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/indepth/2010-02/12/c_13173346.htm

You ask Youker: What are the details on the WWII flying ace from Berks?

2010-02-04T14:00:00.001Z

http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=193002
You ask Youker is a weekly feature providing answers to quirky curiosities of the Berks County area.

Q: Can you tell me more about J. Gilpin Bright, the World War II flying ace from Reading?

It was an era of humility.
Men came back from World War II and readjusted to civilian life. They were welcomed home with open arms, but in many cases, their stories went untold.
And so it was for J. Gilpin Bright, a man credited with shooting down six planes during stints with the Flying Tigers and the Army Air Forces. When he returned stateside, he settled into life, an unheralded hero.
During the war, his exploits were well-chronicled. The papers called him the number one ace of the Army Air Forces. His picture was in Life magazine. A series of letters he wrote home to his parents was published in Atlantic Monthly.
But few people outside his immediate family knew what happened to Bright after the war.
Reading Eagle reader Randy Gartner of Robesonia wrote to me wanting to find out more about Bright's life.
Gartner had found a copy of a story that appeared in Life magazine that talked about Bright's time with the famed Flying Tigers in Burma.
Bright was born in Bern Township, and he and his siblings divided their time between the family farm in Berks and the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia, said Joseph C. Bright, a Philadelphia attorney and a nephew of J. Gilpin Bright.
Bright attended a charter school in Philadelphia and went to Princeton University before enlisting in the military, Joseph said.
He spent summers at the family farm here in Berks.
During his distinguished flying career, Bright shot down Japanese, German and Italian planes in four theaters of war.
He was the first U.S. flier to earn that distinction, his nephew said.
But he also had several close calls.
"He was shot down twice and escaped from enemy hands twice," Joseph recalled.
A Life magazine photographer captured Bright and his comrades as they fought the Japanese while with the Flying Tigers.
Bright flew the P-40 Tomahawk with the iconic bared teeth nose art.
After the war, Bright went to work for a Philadelphia brokerage firm. Later in life, he tried to start an airline, but the effort was short-lived, Joseph said.
Eventually, Bright became a self-employed ironworker, making speciality castings. He died in 1973 in a Philadelphia veterans hospital.
"After the war, he did not get acknowledged for his accomplishments," Joseph said. "People simply did not talk about the war. He kept his war stories to himself."