These American mercenaries are revered in China. Their relatives are among the few US invitees to Xi’s WWII parade
Think of this job offer:
It is a one -year contract for living and working in China, flight, repairing and making aircraft. Payment is 30 days per year up to $ 16.725 per month. The housing is included and you will receive an extra 700 dollars per month for food. And there is an extra $ 11,000 for every Japanese aircraft you destroyed – no limit.
This is an agreement that the inflation took in 2025 dollars-a few hundred Americans to be a hero in 1941 and some of China’s rescuers will say.
These American pilots were members of the American Volunteer Group (AVG), who later known as flying tigers.
The group’s fighter planes contained the empty, teeth -filled mouth of a shark on the nose, a terrible symbol that has been used by some US military planes to date.
Symbolic violence was supported by AVG pilots in the war. Flying tigers are loan by destroying up to 497 Japanese planes while losing only 73.
Today, despite the US-China tensions, these American mercenaries are still respected in China.
“China always remembers the contribution and sacrifice made to him by the US and American people during World War II, or he says. Flying Tiger Monument Page People’s Daily Online, China’s newspaper, operated by the state.
The bond, the daughter and grandson of the Founder of the Flying Tiger, II.
Formation of Flying Tigers
In the late 1930s, China was occupied by the Empire’s armies of Japan and was fighting to rely on a better equipped and united enemy. Japan has never been found in the air that could bomb Chinese cities as she wanted.
The leader Chiang Kai-Shek, who was able to join China’s warlords under a central government under a central government, hired the American Claire Chennault, a retired US army captain to form an air force.
A Chinese soldier protects an American P-40 Flying Tiger Fighter Aircraft to an airport in China. – US National Archives
Chennault first spent several years, an air raid warning network, bringing together and built air bases throughout China. According to the official website of flying tigers. In 1940, China was sent to the United States – a neutral party – to find pilots and planes against Japan.
With good contacts under the direction of US President Franklin Roosevelt, Chennault was able to get the needy hand announcements with a budget that could pay three times more to pay the Americans in the US army.
Instead, an agreement was made to get 100 Curtiss P-40B fighters built for Britain sent to Britain.
In his memoirs, Chennault wrote that the P-40s lacked a modern arms view.
Yazılmış He was aiming for his weapons by seeing rude, homemade, ring and direct pistols instead of more accurate optical landscapes used by the Air Force and Royal Air Force, ”he wrote.
What P-40 lacked talent, Chennault made up in tactics, revealing the structurally weaker but more maneuverable Japanese aircraft that AVG pilots dive from a high position and heavy machine guns.
Low, bending, dogfight would lose the rotating P-40.
Ragtag Group Brochure
Registered pilots were far from the cream of the crop.
Ninety -nine brochures traveled to China in the autumn of 1941 with support staff. According to the date of the US Department of Defense.
Some of them were new from the flight school, others flying boats flying or ferry pilots for large bombardment planes. They registered to make a lot of money for the Far East Adventure or just because they were bored.
Maybe the best known of flying tigers, USA Sea Greg Boyington – The TV show of the 1970s was based on the “Black Sheep Fleet” – for money.
According to the history of the US Department of Defense, he ruined the loan responsible for a painful divorce and an old wife and a few young children and caused significant debts, and the Marine Infantry ordered a monthly report to his commander on how to explain his wage in the settlement of these debts, ”he said.
The US II.
Chennault had to teach the different group to the different group of fighter pilots – and fight as a group – essentially from scratch.
Education was meticulous and deadly. Three pilots were killed early in accidents.
During a training day, known as “circus Day ,, the pilots were damaged as eight P-40 as they landed hard, or the ground team was taxed very quickly and caused collisions.
Chennault expressed his disappointment against the Japanese bombardment planes attacked the AVG base in the city of Kunming on December 20, 1941. He thought the pilots had lost their disciplines.
The Ministry of Defense said, “They tried close impossible shots and then accepted that only luck had prevented each other from fighting or hitting each other,” he says.
Nevertheless, they dropped three Japanese bombers, losing only one fighter of fuel and colliding.
Establish a legend
The pilots quickly conquered the upright learning curves.
A few days after Kunming, they were commissioned as a vital port for the supply line that provided allied war materials to the Chinese troops facing the British colonial Burma, the capital of Burma and the Japanese army.
Japanese bombardment planes came in waves for 11 days during Christmas and Christmas holidays. Flying tigers tear holes from Japanese formations and strengthened their fame.
“AVG officially overthrew 75 enemy planes from the sky with an indefinite number of possible killing,” Group’s website says. “AVG losses were two pilots and six planes.”
Flying tigers spent a total of 10 weeks in Rangoon and never did more than 25 P-40.
American volunteer group planes flying during the World War II. – Three Lion/Hulton Archive/Getty Image
“This little power encountered a total of a thousand Japanese planes on South Burma and Thailand. They destroyed 217 enemy plans in 31 matches, and probably destroyed 43. There were four pilots killed in the air.
Despite the heroes of the flying tigers in the air, the allied ground forces in Burma could not hold the Japanese. Rangoon fell in March and AVG retreated to the north of Burma.
However, they tied the Japanese planes that could be used in India or elsewhere in China and Pacific, and took life to an allied war effort.
Fame claim
News, although it does not travel quickly in 1941-42, the United States is hugging from the destructive 7 December 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor – He was enthusiastic for heroes. Flying tigers fit the bill.
The Republican paintings published John Wayne in 1942 under the leading role of “Flying Kaplanlar”. Film posters showed a shark toothed P-40 dive in attack mode.
Meanwhile, AVG’s sponsors in Washington asked Walt Disney Company to make a logo.
The US history came with Disney artists with a Bangal Tiger with a winged ‘V’ governor for victory ”.
A World War II Period P-40 Warhawk, “Flying Tigers” painted in the colors of the American volunteer group is exhibited in Wisconsin, Oshkosh in 2007.-Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images/File
The logo did not contain the iconic shark mouth on the Flying Tigers plane.
Chennault wrote that it was not caused by the group of sharks, but that it was copied from the British P-40 fighters in North Africa, which may have copied them from Germany’s Luftwaffe.
“The term flying tigers, I will never know how to derive from the shark-nose P-40s,” he wrote.
Who will fight for whose country
When the US entered the war, US military leaders wanted flying tigers to be assimilated to the US Army Air Force.
But the pilots either wanted to go back to their original services – many of them came from the Navy or Marine Posts – or they wanted to stay as civil contradictions of the Chinese government, where the wage was much better.
Most Chennault told Washington that they left before doing what they wanted. When the army threatened to prepare them as a privilege if they are not voluntary, those who were thinking of signing were chosen.
Chennault was turned into a brigadier general in the US Army and admitted that flying tigers would be a US military outfit on 4 July 1942.
According to the US military history, although flying tigers continued to damage the Japanese in the spring of 1942 – from China to Vietnam from Burma to Vietnam – it was clear that it entered the decreasing days of power.
AVG, the day it would end on July 4, flying his last task.
Four Flying Tiger P-40 faced a dozen Japanese fighter in Hengyang, China. According to the US history, the Americans dropped six of the Japanese without their losses.
A US Air Force A-10 attack jet was depicted in Iraq in 2004. Flying tigers live in the iconic nasal art A-10 fleet. – Master SGT. Cecilio Ricardo/Digital/US Air Force
A contribution was never forgotten
In recent years, despite dull relations with Washington, American mercenaries continue to remain with China 80 years ago.
There are at least half dozen museums dedicated to the tigers flying in China or dedicated to exhibitions, which are the subject of contemporary films and cartoons.
A visitor is the old images and old uniforms of flying tigers at the Japanese War Museum in the Sichuan province in Sichuan in 2005. – Liu Jin/AFP/Getty Images
Flying Tiger Heritage Park is located in a old airport in Guilin, where Chennault was once a command of a cave.
Website in the USA Louisiana Museum This summarizes that Chennault’s name hopes to be at the top of the home page of her heritage using the last lines of the general’s memory:
“I hope that the flying tiger will remain in the air as long as it is necessary, and that it will be remembered as the symbol of two great people working on both coasts of the Pacific to a common goal in war and peace.”
Create an account for more cnn news and newsletter Cnn.com
