With General Chennault: The Story of the Flying Tigers

This edition is published by ESCHENBURG PRESS – www.pp-publishing.com

To join our mailing list for new titles or for issues with our books – eschenburgpress@gmail.com

Or on Facebook

Text originally published in 1943 under the same title.

© Eschenburg Press 2018, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

WITH GENERAL CHENNAULT

THE STORY OF THE FLYING TIGERS

By

Robert B. Hotz

with the assistance of

George L. Paxton, Robert H. Neale, and Parker S. Dupouy

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

DEDICATION 4

FOREWORD 5

PROLOGUE 7

Chapter One — JAPAN’S FIRST DEFEAT 14

Chapter Two — GATEWAY TO CHINA 20

Chapter Three — HELL’S ANGELS 24

Chapter Four — CHRISTMAS OVER RANGOON 31

Chapter Five — LOUISIANA SCHOOLTEACHER 37

Chapter Six — MAN ON A FLYING TRAPEZE 43

Chapter Seven — APOSTLE OF PURSUIT 50

Chapter Eight — TIGER IN CHINA 57

Chapter Nine — AMERICAN VOLUNTEERS 65

Chapter Ten — TOUNGOO 70

Chapter Eleven — PANDA BEARS 87

Chapter Twelve — ADAM AND EVES 121

Chapter Thirteen — GROUND CREWS 136

Chapter Fourteen — HELL ON THE ROAD TO MANDALAY 143

Chapter Fifteen — REVOLT AT LOI-WING 158

Chapter Sixteen — BOMBS AWAY 167

Chapter Seventeen — THE LAST GAMBLE 179

Chapter Eighteen — END OF A LEGEND 187

Appendix — AVG ROSTER 194

ALL RECEIVING HONORABLE DISCHARGES 194

AVG MEMBERS WHO RESIGNED BEFORE DEC 7 1941 WITHOUT DISCHARGES, EITHER HONORABLE OR DISHONORABLE 204

AVG MEMBERS WHO RESIGNED AFTER DEC. 7, 1941 WITH DISHONORABLE DISCHARGES 205

AVG MEMBERS WHO VOLUNTEERED CONTINUOUS SERVICE IN CHINA AFTER JULY 4, 1942 207

AVG PERSONNEL LOSSES 209

CONFIRMED AIR VICTORIES 211

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 215

DEDICATION

TO THE TIGERS WHO PAID OFF

FOREWORD

FRANKLY, THIS BOOK was written as a result of an amen at a bar in the Artists and Writers Restaurant in New York City. In September 1942, George (Pappy) Paxton was still celebrating his recent return from China with Jack and Jean Johnston, after-hour habitués of the bar from the New York Herald Tribune. Louder and louder Pappy sounded off his pet hates of certain people and professionals, alternating with praise for the best——————General in the whole Air Force. He heard an echo from the other end of the crowded and noisy bar. There stood a chubby, boyish, beady-eyed young fellow, glass raised, fairly bursting with enthusiasm and yelling, Amen, brother!

Jack and Pappy moved down—after all, the cheese and crackers were at the other end. Bob Hotz, I want you to meet Pappy Paxton, a Flying Tiger. Bob started calling Flying Tigers by their nicknames, reviewing squadron movements, air battles, dates, places; and singing the praises of the Old Man.

Pappy began checking up on his drinks, for he knew this Bob Hotz was not a member of the AVG. The situation cleared as Bob spoke of having been in a position for months of following the exploits of the AVG and of a book he was writing on General Chennault. He insisted that the story of Chennault and the Flying Tigers should be told accurately and factually without any attempt at heroics.

Later, Jack explained that this Bob was Robert B. Hotz, a former Correspondent in Europe with the New York Herald Tribune and New York correspondent for the Milwaukee Journal. Jack furnished the two with football tickets for the next day. There was only AVG talk at the game.

Over a month later Pappy’s good friend and self-appointed publicity manager, Fred Darius Benham, took him to the Yale Club. There he met Cecil Goldbeck, editor of Coward-McCann. Pappy expressed the desire to get the story of the genius of Chennault and the Flying Tigers into book form. Cecil said such a book on Chennault was being written for Coward-McCann and was nearly ready for publication. The writer’s name was Robert Hotz. The result was the idea of getting other Tigers to assist Hotz for a full and complete story. Pappy talked it over with some of his buddies.

Some members of the Group were leary. They had been hounded from all sides for stories of their experiences. They had read too many thrill a minute stories in Sunday Supplements—many of which had been written by publicity-seeking pseudo-Tigers who had resigned in time of war and arrived home early. The others, too, wanted the whole story accurately told and their fellow citizens to have a clear picture of their beloved General Chennault, who had brought into being the Flying Tigers. But strangely, these fliers, criticized by some for accepting $500 bonuses for Japanese planes shot down, would not turn over their diaries and tell all for someone to capitalize on their story.

The simple solution for this was an agreement entered into with the publisher by the author and those assisting him that all royalties from the sale of this book would be deposited to the account of the American Volunteer Group Memorial Fund, C. L. Chennault, Trustee, in a bank of General Chennault’s choice.

Bob Hotz has spent the past year and a half in research on General Chennault’s life and ambitions, in endless bull sessions with us and every Flying Tiger he could possibly meet. Especially helpful have been Paul Frillman, Charlie Bond, Bob Prescott, and Erik Shilling. All Tigers owe Bob Hotz a debt of gratitude. We feel that he should have been one of us from the beginning. At his request he is now serving under General Chennault in China as a captain in the Air Force, and we know he is in good hands.

Through the past year all of our efforts have been those of trustees for our buddies, working toward our original goal—to put into book form the simple, straightforward picture of a man we fairly worship and the history of his Flying Tigers, a group of which, we admit, we are proud to be members.

GEORGE L. PAXTON

ROBERT H. NEALE

PARKER S. DUPOUY

WITH GENERAL CHENNAULT

The Story of the Flying Tigers

PROLOGUE

THE ORANGE GLARE of sunrise behind the shadowy hills revealed a clear sky broken only by a few scattered clouds—the kind of sky that heralded a long clear day. The dawn of December 20, 1941, was breaking ominously bright over the hills of southwestern China. In many lands the promise of such a day would be cause for rejoicing. In Yunnan Province a clear dawn meant one thing only—Japanese bombers on the prowl.

In the city of Kunming early risers anxiously scanned the sky for growing cloud banks. They knew that a cloudless sky would bring the flash of red-spotted wings over the city. They knew that red balls would mount the air-raid masts before the sun reached its zenith; and that they might not live to see it set. For more than a year Japanese bombers had seldom let a clear day pass without searching out Kunming, capital of Yunnan Province. Kunming is a vital valve on the 2,000-mile Burma Road, linking the end of the railroad in northern Burma with Chungking, capital of Free China. Through Kunming flowed most of the foreign supplies which China was still receiving in 1941 for her scattered armies and infant war industries. Outside the city was a training center for China’s battered Air Force, which made Kunming a potential aerial threat to the Japanese advance from Indo-China.

Kunming presents an easy as well as strategic target to enemy bombers. It sprawls along the shores of huge Lake Kunming on a broad, fertile plateau. Above the western shore of the lake looms She-shan Mountain, the tallest peak in the region; and to the southeast lie two other large lakes in a direct line with the principal Japanese bomber base, at Hanoi, Indo-China. On a clear day the glistening of sunlight on the trio of lakes and the beckoning peak of the mountain betray the city to Japanese pilots while their bombers are still miles away over the mountain.

On a day such as this Saturday promised to be, the enemy could hardly miss their target. As they had done so often before, the bombers would circle wide of the city in precise V formation at about 6,000 feet. They would sweep in from the north, holding formation as steadily as if riding on rails. When they were directly over the city, the bomb-bay doors would swing open in unison, and salvos of bombs would hurtle down on the helpless people below. Watchers on the ground would be able to see the rows of fat black bombs fall free of the silvery bombers and bury themselves in the mass of the city. The city would explode in a cloud of flame and black smoke seeming to reach up after the fleeing planes. Heavy 500-pound demolition bombs would crash into warehouses where precious supplies trucked over the Burma Road awaited transshipment to the scattered Chinese armies. The Japanese pilots would sprinkle silvery incendiaries at random in the old wooden district of the city to add fire to the horror of dynamite and strike terror into the hearts of a people who dared resist the armies of Nippon. A brace or two of heavy bombs would be saved for the big grassy airfield to the south of the city where the Chinese Air Force was training pilots. Leaving the city burning and bleeding behind them, the bombers would wheel lazily away like a flock of sated vultures. Back over the three gleaming lakes and the mountains of southern China they would fly, back to their base at Hanoi. Always the bombers came in low over Kunming, and always they came unescorted. There were no fighters to attack them, no antiaircraft fire to keep them high. Bombing Kunming was as safe as flying the mail.

Thus had Japanese bombers woven the pattern of life in Kunming all through the winter and spring of 1941. It was a grim pattern and helpless. The banshee wail of the air-raid siren, red cloth balls bouncing up warning masts, the muttered phrase chin paw (air raid) passing from mouth to mouth—these were the heralds of familiar despair. The drone of many motors in the sky, the silver flashing of wings in the sun, signaled the prelude; the whistle and crash of bombs, the ghastly climax. Afterwards the dust of blasted adobe and tile buildings slowly settled; the smell of blood and TNT mingled in the streets; the shrieks of the wounded subsided into moans drowned out by the roaring of flames through wooden structures. Then began the grim task of reconstruction—extricating twisted limbs and battered bodies from jumbled wreckage, clearing streets of rubble, fighting fires with buckets of water, hundreds of coolies trotting to the airfield with baskets of dirt to fill bomb craters. At night the people returned to cook and sleep among piles of rubble which had once been homes.

Only the violent storms of the monsoon had power to change the pattern. Then driving rains shielded the city; black thunder-heads piled up over the mountain and broke in crashing storms; heavy gray clouds hung low over the peaks. Japanese pilots never ventured aloft during the sticky weather of the monsoon. They preferred not to dodge Yunnan mountain peaks while flying on instruments through heavy overcast. They had no desire to be wrapped in sudden storms far from their bases. They rested until the monsoon had passed, and the Chinese came to love the gloom of the monsoon weather as much as they hated the sunny days which left them helpless on the earth’s surface like black ants in a white teacup.

The end of November saw the monsoon fade and the clear weather of the long dry season begin. On December 18 the Japanese Army Air Force regiments based in Indo-China opened the bombing season with a raid on Kunming. The raiders missed the warehouses and the airfield. They hit only the sprawling bulk of the city and the sparkling lake, but hundreds of Chinese were killed and parts of the city were still smoking. The anxious watchers on the morning of December 20 knew that the Japanese bombardiers would soon be back, eager to improve their aim.

All China was discouraged. Ever since the hot July night in 1937 when the Chinese Incident began on the Marco Polo Bridge near Peiping, China had been battling the invaders alone and without respite. For four and a half long years she had watched the Japanese push five predatory fingers through her richest territory. Now they were grasping at her heart.

The Chinese people had seen their industry and commerce stolen or uprooted and driven into the western hills as the Japanese armies marched into Hangchow, Hankow, Kiukiang, and Kaifeng. They had seen their seaport links with the outside world cut off as Shanghai, Wenchow, Amoy, Swatow, and Canton came under the guns of the Japanese Navy. They had seen Nanking, their capital, looted, burned, and raped. Five rich provinces had been swallowed up and Chinese puppets installed in them to rule, exploit, and starve their population. Millions of Chinese soldiers had died fighting Japanese artillery, planes, and tanks with machine guns, rifles, and swords; and thousands of civilians had perished in air raids. While the survivors fought on, patiently rebuilding and silently mourning, the Japanese Air Force ranged the interior of China in a systematic attempt to wipe out the remaining cities in Free China, until the skies over China became a sphere of terror and daylight a thing of dread.

During this reign of horror the main hope of the Chinese had lain in three thin trickles of foreign supplies. The new industrial co-operatives of the interior strove to replace the captured industries and add a measure of economic democracy to the new Chinese life; but they fell far short of supplying the country’s war needs and were, in turn, dependent upon foreign machinery and supplies for their own existence.

The first of these three lines of foreign supply brought aid 9,000 miles from the United States. Freighters from the Pacific coast discharged their cargoes at Haiphong, a port on the Gulf of Tongking in French Indo-China. From Haiphong a narrow-gauge railway ran to Hanoi, the capital, and then split in two directions: one line ran north to Nanning in China; the other climbed northwest over the mountains to Kunming.

A second supply route moved by camel caravan and truck from Russian Turkestan, through Sinkiang, to Lanchow in the Northwest. This route connected Sergiopol, railhead of the Trans-Siberian and Turko-Siberian lines in Turkestan, with Chungking. This was the main route for supplies from Russia.

The third supply line began at the docks of Rangoon where British ships unloaded. A railroad carried their cargoes from Rangoon to Lashio, the railhead in northern Burma; and at Lashio American-made trucks took up the burden and rattled 688 miles over a narrow, twisting, primitive highway to Kunming, and thence over better roads to Chungking.

Since 1940 the Chinese had seen two of their three supply lines cut off and the third pinched off for three months. After the fall of France, in June 1940, the Japanese, with the help of the victorious Germans, forced the Vichy Government to close the Haiphong-Kunming railroad. Three months later Japanese troops marched into French Indo-China and seized the warehouses at Hanoi in which American supplies were awaiting shipment to China. During the same black summer of 1940, the Japanese Foreign Office bluffed the British Government into closing the Burma Road in exchange for a promise to try to settle all Anglo-Japanese difficulties. The road was opened again in October, but the lesson was not lost on the Chinese. And, finally, the German attack on Russia in June 1941 removed another source of supply. Every Russian bullet, tank, and plane was needed under the Red banner; and no more red-starred supplies came by camel over the old Sinkiang silk road to help China’s fight thousands of miles away.

The only source of foreign supply left to China in 1941 was the funnel with the wide mouth at the Rangoon docks and a long, narrow neck in the Burma Road. After the seizure of Indo-China, American freighters had to make the long passage around Singapore through the Straits of Malacca to Rangoon, where their cargoes were added to the burden already carried by the Burma Road, now the only hole in the Japanese net around China.

The Burma Road is a monument symbolic of modern China. It was originally planned by Sun Yat-sen as an overland link between China and the commerce of India. It was completed by order of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek to meet the threat of economic strangulation by the Japanese. Ever since Sun Yat-sen had established the Chinese Republic in 1911, sporadic efforts had been made to build a modern highway over the ancient caravan route between Yunnan and Burma. By the beginning of 1938 the highway had been pushed as far south as Kunming and as far north as Lashio in the Shan States of northern Burma. The Burma railroad system had also been built as far as Lashio, and surveys were being made to extend it into China.

The titanic effort to close the 688-mile gap between Kunming and Lashio began at the end of the monsoon season in 1938. Construction of this stretch was a monumental task. The road wound around the slopes of 10,000-foot peaks, then plunged into the steaming, malarial valleys of northern Burma. It crawled up the faces of sheer 6,000-foot rock cliffs, spanned roaring mountain rivers, and wandered through mile after mile of rice paddies on the plateaus. It traversed a wild country populated mainly by hill tribes long isolated from the world, ignorant of the war and indifferent to the purpose of the road. Thousands of men, women, and children volunteered for labor on the great road. Other thousands were conscripted from the hill tribes. Before the job was finished, more than 200,000 Chinese workers were toiling between Kunming and Lashio. They literally clawed the road out of rock and soil with their bare hands. No modern road-building equipment was available, and digging was done with crude spades and picks. Grading was done with handmade hoes and woven baskets full of earth carried on the coolies’ backs. For blasting they used bamboo tubes filled with black gunpowder. Special crews built two huge suspension bridges across the Salween and Mekong river gorges.

The first traffic began to trickle northward into China toward the end of 1939. The Southwest Transport Corporation was established by the Chinese Government to control traffic over the road. Sporadic convoys turned into a steady parade of Mack, White, and Dodge trucks hauling ammunition, gasoline, road-maintenance machinery, guns, and raw materials. They went back to Burma laden with tung oil, hides, and silk. By the beginning of 1940 the truck convoys were averaging five days for the journey from Lashio to Kunming.

When the British reopened the road in October, Japanese bombers took up the task of closing it where the stubby little silk-hatted diplomats from Tokio had left off. Traffic had hardly begun to flow in quantity again before Japanese bombers ranged over the Salween and Mekong gorges and blew up the new suspension bridges. The Chinese took to ferries, but the Japanese continued to plaster China’s lifeline. There were no pursuit squadrons left in the Air Force, and the only opposition to the bombers came from a few antiaircraft batteries scattered along strategic stretches of road. Aerial defense of the Burma Road became one of China’s most critical problems.

As the shadow of Japanese air power lengthened over the Burma Road, the United States took her first hesitant steps toward abandoning her attitude of strict neutrality toward the Sino-Japanese war. In March of 1941 Lend-Lease aid was extended to China, and the Burma Road suddenly became an American problem. Two American transportation experts were sent to increase the flow of traffic over the road. John Baker, veteran organizer of Chinese transportation systems, was appointed administrator of the road; and Daniel Arnstein, Chicago trucking expert, was sent to untangle the traffic snarl and boost the tonnage of American supplies trucked into China.

During the summer of 1941, diplomatic circles buzzed with rumors that the United States was also taking over the aerial defense of the Burma Road. Tiny items appeared in the writings of political columnists that a secret force of volunteer pilots was being recruited from the American air services. Gossip had it that a mysterious American from China was to command this shadowy force.

Then came Pearl Harbor and the unbroken chain of Japanese victories against the bastions of Anglo-American power in the Orient. Could China expect much help from a United States which had lost Guam and Wake and was still trying to supply a beleaguered army in the Philippines? What could Britain do for China while losing Hong Kong and defending hard-pressed Singapore? The Japanese moved into Thailand and occupied the chain of air bases long since built by Japanese engineers against the day of occupation. From Chieng-mai in the north these bases stretched along a 300-mile line paralleling the Chinese supply line from Rangoon to Lashio. All of them were within 250 airline miles of Rangoon and the Lashio railroad. The monsoon had ended in November, and soon Japanese bombers would be able to blast the Burma Road from Rangoon to Kunming, blotting up the last thin trickle of foreign supplies moving into China.

With Pearl Harbor the Japanese loosed a new propaganda among the war-weary Chinese. Asia for the Asiatics was its theme; separation of China from the United States and Britain was its aim.

China is not our real enemy, blared the Tokio radio in Chinese. China, too, has been a victim of British greed. Hong Kong was stolen from China by the British in the midst of foul opium smoke.

China must destroy the age-old aggression of the United States and Great Britain, spouted Wang Ching Wei, a Chinese puppet used by the Tokio radio. The Japanese Army is not the enemy of the innocent Chinese people. The United States and Great Britain are the real enemies. Will you Chinese sacrifice your lives and property to save face for the British? Think it over and balance British face against your life and property. It is time for co-operation with Japan. The sooner, the better for the future of China.

Other Tokio broadcasts claimed dissension in Chungking and growth of pro-Japanese sentiment in the Chinese Government. General Yo Ying Ching, Chinese Minister of War, was quoted as saying that China could not continue the war, owing to lack of aid from the United States and Great Britain. One broadcast said:

The spirit of the Chungking Government is growing weaker and weaker. The Chinese leaders are leaning more and more toward co-operation with Japan in the sphere of Greater Asia. The sooner they realize the mistakes of their past policy, the better for the people of China.

Japanese Naval Minister Shimoda and Premier Tojo boasted of Japanese victories in the Pacific and the weakness of the white men. Forsake your helpless white allies, the people of China were urged. Join with Japan to rule Asia." Japanese-controlled newspapers in China echoed the theme, and leaflets bearing the same message fluttered about in Free China.

This Japanese propaganda fell on fertile soil. Some Chinese had seen too much war, others not enough. Many in the conquered provinces were weary of the never-ending slaughter, rape, starvation. Among the people of the interior who had seen no Japanese soldiers and felt no bombs, the war seemed hardly worth the effort. The spectacle of graft, still prevalent after nearly five years of war, damped the ardor of many patriots. The specter of inflation meant starvation for more millions.

What help could China truly expect? Had not the powerful Japanese Naval Air Force, trained by Admiral Isokuru Yamamoto, broken the back of the American Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor? Had it not wrecked British sea power in the Orient by sinking the Prince of Wales and Repulse off Malay? Were not the armies under General Yamashita pressing through the Malay jungle toward Singapore? Were not other armies under General Homma overrunning the Philippines? Was there any effective resistance to the Japanese anywhere except in China? And look at China! For years she had fought the Japanese alone while the United States and Britain continued to supply Japan. Now that she had allies, they were powerless to help her. Wouldn’t it be better to give up the hopeless struggle? Wouldn’t it be better to join the conquerors while there was still time? Wasn’t the Tokio radio right?

These were the questions millions of Chinese were asking in the dark December of 1941. In Chungking Generalissimo and Madame Chiang Kai-shek stood firm. They would carry on the war to the end, bitter as it might be. But the pro-British and pro-American elements in the government were rapidly losing prestige after Pearl Harbor. The voices of peace grew louder. The Chinese masses felt that they had been left in the lurch by their white allies. Reports from American diplomats in Chungking warned Washington that China was on the verge of making a separate peace. The situation was critical.

To lend force to the peace propaganda of its agents, the Japanese High Command ordered renewed aerial assaults on the Burma Road and Kunming. If the Burma Road could be choked off at the same time that Japan was victorious over the Philippines, Malay, and the Dutch East Indies, it would be a convincing demonstration of Japanese power. The Chinese might lose what little hope still remained. More than 200 Japanese Army Air Force planes were moved into Indo-China bases for the task. Kunming was to bear the brunt of the assaults, and mid-December saw the first raid.

On the morning of December 20, the Hanoi airdrome bustled with preparations for another sortie. Ten twin-engined Mitsubishi Type-97 bombers were lined up before the corrugated iron hangars, taking on gas, bombs, and ammunition. While the combat crews squatted in field headquarters getting final instructions for the raid, mechanics were warming up the 20 big radial engines, all built in Japan under license from American aircraft manufacturers.

The crews filed out of headquarters and piled into their planes. Pilots and co-pilots squeezed behind the controls. Gunners and radio men hunched at their posts in the fuselages. The bombardiers crawled into the noses of the two squadron leaders’ planes. Long, beautifully made Samurai swords were stowed in the planes flown by squadron officers. A wave from the squadron leaders, and one by one the big, heavily loaded planes lumbered down the runway and took off. They climbed in great circles until they reached the rendezvous altitude, then at 8,000 feet they swung into a loose V formation and settled down to the long grind over the mountains to Kunming, 300 miles away.

Before the last bomber had faded into the distance, news of the raid was flashing over an intricate radio warning network to the headquarters of the Chinese Air Force