Flying Tigers

The First American Volunteer Group (AVG; Chinese: 中華民國空軍美籍志願大隊) of the Republic of China Air Force, nicknamed the Flying Tigers (飛虎隊), was formed to help oppose the Japanese invasion of China. Operating in 1941–1942, it was composed of pilots from the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC), Navy (USN), and Marine Corps (USMC), and was commanded by Claire Lee Chennault. Their Curtiss P-40B Warhawk aircraft, marked with Chinese colors, flew under American control. Recruited under President Franklin Roosevelt's authority before Pearl Harbor, their mission was to bomb Japan and defend the Republic of China, but many delays meant the AVG first flew in combat after the US and Japan declared war.

The group consisted of three fighter squadrons of around 30 aircraft each that trained in Burma before the American entry into World War II to defend the Republic of China against Japanese forces. The AVG were officially members of the Republic of China Air Force. The group had contracts with salaries ranging from $250 a month for a mechanic to $750 for a squadron commander, roughly three times what they had been making in the U.S. forces. While it accepted some civilian volunteers for its headquarters and ground crew, the AVG recruited most of its staff from the U.S. military.

The Flying Tigers began to arrive in China in April 1941. The group first saw combat on 20 December 1941, 12 days after Pearl Harbor. It demonstrated innovative tactical victories when the news in the U.S. was filled with little more than stories of defeat at the hands of the Japanese forces, and achieved such notable success during the lowest period of the war for both the U.S. and the Allied Forces as to give hope to America that it might eventually defeat Japan. AVG pilots earned official credit and received combat bonuses for destroying 296 enemy aircraft, while losing only 14 pilots in combat. The combat records of the AVG still exist and researchers have found them credible. On 4 July 1942 the AVG was disbanded and replaced by the 23rd Fighter Group of the United States Army Air Forces, which was later absorbed into the U.S. Fourteenth Air Force with General Chennault as commander. The 23rd FG went on to achieve similar combat success, while retaining the nose art on the left-over P-40s.

The American Volunteer Group was largely the creation of Claire L. Chennault, a retired U.S. Army Air Corps officer who had worked in China since August 1937, first as military aviation advisor to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek in the early months of the Sino-Japanese War, then as director of a Chinese Air Force flight school centered in Kunming. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union supplied fighter and bomber squadrons to China, but these units were mostly withdrawn by the summer of 1940. Chiang then asked for American combat aircraft and pilots, sending Chennault to Washington as an adviser to China's ambassador and Chiang's brother-in-law, T. V. Soong.

Chennault spent the winter of 1940–1941 in Washington, supervising the purchase of 100 Curtiss P-40 fighters and the recruiting of 100 pilots and some 200 ground crew and administrative personnel that would constitute the 1st AVG. He also laid the groundwork for a follow-on bomber group and a second fighter group, though these would be aborted after the Pearl Harbor attack.

Of the pilots, 60 came from the Navy and Marine Corps and 40 from the Army Air Corps. (One army pilot, Albert Baumler was refused a passport because he had earlier flown as a mercenary in Spain, so only 99 actually sailed for Asia. Ten more army flight instructors were hired as check pilots for Chinese cadets, and several of these would ultimately join the AVG's combat squadrons.) The volunteers were discharged from the armed services, to be employed for "training and instruction" by a private military contractor, the Central Aircraft Manufacturing Company (CAMCO), which paid them $600 a month for pilot officers, $675 a month for flight leaders, $750 for squadron leaders (no pilot was recruited at this level), and about $250 for skilled ground crewmen. Some pilots were also orally promised a bounty of $500 for each enemy aircraft shot down, and this was later confirmed by Madame Chiang Kai-shek.

The first batch, some 300 men, departed San Francisco on 10 July 1941 and arrived in Rangoon, Burma, on 28 July, on the Dutch ship Jaegersfontaine, operated by Java-Pacific Lijn. The second batch, some 30 pilots, departed on 24 September 1941 and arrived on 12 November on the Dutch ship Boschfontein. These volunteers used civilian passports on these trips. After arriving in Rangoon, they were initially based at a British airfield in Toungoo for training while their aircraft were assembled and test flown by CAMCO personnel at Mingaladon Airport outside Rangoon. Chennault set up a schoolhouse that was made necessary because many pilots had "lied about their flying experience, claiming pursuit experience when they had flown only bombers and sometimes much less powerful aeroplanes." They called Chennault "the Old Man" due to his much older age and leathery exterior obtained from years flying open cockpit pursuit aircraft in the Army Air Corps. Most believed that he had flown as a fighter pilot in China, although stories that he was a combat ace are probably apocryphal.

Of the 300 original members of the CAMCO personnel, nine were Chinese-Americans recruited from America's Chinatowns. All nine were trained at Allison Engineworks in Indianapolis, Indiana: all were P-40 mechanics. Upon arrival in Kunming, two other Chinese-Americans were hired, a Ford Motor truck specialist and a doctor, raising the total to 11. Prior to 4 July 1942, three of the P-40 mechanics resigned. The official AVG roster lists the original eight.^{[citation needed][clarification needed]}