The legend of Flying Tigers: The Americans who helped China fight Japan in WWII

All eyes are on China. Its ambition to reshape the world order is no longer muted. After the SCO Summit, President Xi Jinping is all set to stage a massive military parade on September 3 (Wednesday) to mark 80 years since Japan surrendered, leading to the end of World War II.

At the military parade, rubbing shoulders with Xi will be Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. There will be leaders of Iran and Myanmar, and others from the Global South. It’s a show of strength by China amid a trade war unleashed by Trump.

Amid this unease, Beijing has invited a few Americans. They are descendants of those who fought for China in World War II – a group of pilots, mechanics and other support crew. They were recruited in 1941 to take on the Japanese. The American Volunteer Group (AVG) later went down in history as the Flying Tigers and are celebrated in China even today. This is their story.

The making of the Flying Tigers

In the late 1930s, China was crushed by Imperial Japan. Its air force was formidable, bombing city after city. Chiang Kai-shek, the Chinese general who was the head of the Nationalist government, hired Claire Lee Chennault, a retired US Army captain, to form an air force that would counter the Japanese.

Chennault helped China build airbases and an air raid warning system. Then came the big task of building a force to take on the mighty Japanese. He returned to the US in search of his men (some women). America had not joined the war yet.

It helped that Chennault had contacts in the Roosevelt administration. What worked in his favour was the compensation: The pilots would earn three times more than they did in the US military, according to a report in CNN.

By 1941, the US veteran zeroed in on the fliers and a support team; together they formed the American Volunteer Group (AVG). But what would they fly? A deal was made to get 100 Curtiss P-40B fighters built for Britain to China, the report said.

The AVG warplanes stood out – they were conspicuous by an open, tooth-filled mouth of a shark on their nose, a symbol which is still used by the US military.

The training

Around 300 US servicemen and a couple of women nurses volunteered to fight the war in China, a country they knew little about. Wonder why. For a variety of reasons – patriotic, altruistic, mercenary, or just “for the hell of it”, according to the US Defense Deparment history.

Ninety-nine of the volunteers were pilots; some had just passed out of flying school, others were ferry pilots for bombers, and many of them were adventurers in Asia. Chennault trained them to be fighter pilots.

On one training day, eight planes were damaged because the pilots landed hard or the ground crew taxied too fast, leading to collisions, reports CNN. It wasn’t looking good.

Their first combat mission was when the Japanese bombers attacked the AVG base in Kunming in December 1941. But the American pilots brought down three Japanese bombers and lost one fighter, which crash-landed after running out of fuel.

Flying Tigers at war

Soon, this group of pilots learned the tricks of the trade. The P-40s could not match up to the Japanese planes, so Chennault came up with a tactic. The AVG pilots would dive from a high position and fire their machine guns at the enemy jets, which were weak in structure but could be manoeuvred more easily.

While the Flying Tigers became more formidable over time, they did not operate in a vacuum. They got extensive support from Britain’s Royal Air Force, especially when the war came to Burma (now Myanmar), where they were deployed after Kunming.

Japanese bombers attacked Rangoon over 11 days during the Christmas and New Year holidays, from December 1941 to January 1942.

During one of the fights, “the AVG pilots flew into the Japanese formation, downing six, but losing two planes and pilots, while the RAF failed to make contact. This first raid on Rangoon turned the city into bedlam”, the US Defense Department history says.

The Flying Tigers were in Rangoon for 10 weeks. With around 25 P-40s, they knocked off 75 enemy aircraft. The AVG lost two pilots and six aircraft.

“This tiny force met a total of a thousand-odd Japanese aircraft over Southern Burma and Thailand. In 31 encounters, they destroyed 217 enemy planes and probably destroyed 43…. Sixteen P-40’s were destroyed,” Chennault wrote in his memoir.

The Flying Tigers put up a fierce fight, but the Allied ground forces could not stop Japan. After Rangoon fell in March 1942, the AVG retreated to interior Burma, according to the CNN report. However, their unexpected defence of Rangoon disrupted the Japanese timetable of conquering Burma and invading India, the US Defense Deparment history says.

Between 1941 and 1942, the group fought the far-superior Japanese air force over the skies of China and Southeast Asia. The pilots reportedly destroyed 497 Japanese planes while they lost 73. However, a report in China Daily claims that the Flying Tigers shot down more than 2,600 Japanese fighter planes. The war, it says, claimed the lives of 2,000 volunteers.

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour on December 7, 1941, the United States wanted to fight back. They wanted heroes like the Flying Tigers. After the US entered the war, its military leaders wanted this group to be part of the US Army Corps.

However, the pilots had a different plan. Many hoped to return to the Navy or Marine Corps, or take up civilian contracts with the Chinese government. When the US Army threatened to draft them as privates, many opted out, the CNN reports.

Chennault, however, went on to become a brigadier general in the US Army and agreed that the Flying Tigers would become a US military outfit on July 4, 1942. It is when the AVG flew its last mission.

Heroes in China

Today, ties between the US and China are tense, but the Asian nation has never forgotten the contribution of the Flying Tigers. There are several museums and exhibits dedicated to them in China.

Ahead of the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, “Flying Tigers: A Bond Between China and the US” sculpture was unveiled in Southwest China’s Chongqing municipality.

Xu Shaoli, president of the American Flying Tigers Friendship Association and donor of the sculpture, said that the sculpture was inspired by an old photograph of Chennault with a Chinese soldier safeguarding an aircraft.

Now, at the big military parade in Beijing on September 3 (Wednesday), China remembers these American mercenaries. Their descendants are invited to parade. This includes Cynthia Chennault, the daughter of General Chennault, and his granddaughter.

“My grandfather believed in standing by the Chinese people — not just in battle, but in spirit,” Patti Lou Chennault, a granddaughter of General Chennault, told China Daily.

More than eight years later, China has not forgotten that commitment. The Flying Tigers may be gone, but their legacy lives on.

With inputs from agencies

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