Bob Sanders: Flying Tigers earned stripes in my heart

I stand in awe of many particularly heroic groups that have done their deeds over the centuries. Soldiers at Bastogne, the B-24 crews on that Ploesti raid, the 8th Air Force, the Marines and soldiers on those God-forsaken Pacific islands and atolls, the Pony Express ...

But my favorite of all time has to be the American Volunteer Group (AVG), AKA the Flying Tigers. They flew their first mission a few days after Pearl Harbor. Claire Chennault had been over there a while, trying to train Chinese pilots … without much success. A complicated plan was worked out whereby American Marine, Navy, Army and other pilots could volunteer to go to Burma/China to be part of a big adventure — exactly what kind they knew not.

Things began to come together. Chennault got hold of 100 Curtiss P-40s that had been rejected by the Brits and went about teaching these newcomers, many of whom had never flown single-engine planes, how to fly them. There were crack-ups as they learned their trade, and they also had to learn Chennault’s methods of air combat, the main one being: never dogfight with the Japanese planes. They were much more maneuverable. But the P-40 could take more punishment, and could dive in a manner that would tear the wings off the opponents’ planes.

So. Never dogfight. Get altitude, make one pass and dive away. They learned quickly. Here was this motley crew of adventurers, new at their job, against veteran pilots who had been fighting in China for years. And how did it come out?

Well, in their less-than-seven months of combat, they scored a certain 297 victories, 155 probables, and the Chinese were very careful about checking those victories, since they had to pay a $500 bonus for each certified victory AVG combat losses? Ten.

And this with planes considered obsolete, operating and living under the most primitive conditions with always a shortage of parts ...

Claire Booth Luce did a piece about the Tigers for Life magazine. Republic made a movie about them, “The Flying Tigers.” Bad movie, but some good shots of the P-40s.

And this was at a time when the Allies needed some heroes. We were getting the crap beat out of us all over the Pacific — Pearl Harbor, Singapore, the Philippines ...

And there couldn’t have been a more heroic group than the Flying Tigers. (The idea of the shark’s mouth on the plane’s noses came from a magazine picture of a German ME-109 thusly decorated.)

So it was kind of sad when the powers that be sneeringly disbanded the Flying Tigers and made them just a part of the 14th Air Force. Later on, everybody in the 14th started calling themselves Flying Tigers, shark’s teeth and all. But sorry. The real Flying Tigers flew from just after Pearl Harbor to the Fourth of July, 1942.

Long may they be remembered.

Bob Sanders is a longtime radio personality with WAUD in Auburn and writes a weekly column for the Opelika-Auburn News.