“Flying Tigers New Emblem”
Through the Office of War Information, 14th Air Force Headquarters issued this press release titled “The Flying Tigers New Emblem”:
“The Flying Tigers, famed nickname of the American volunteer Group which wrote air history in China before the United States entered the war, has been adopted as the official emblem of the AVG’s successor. The Flying Tigers of the U. S. Army 14th Air Force in China. The emblem is shown here as it was presented to Major General Claire Chennault, Commanding General, 14th Air Force, center, by Sgt. Howard Arnegard, its designer, and Sgt. Robert Naves, Hampton, N. J. It consists of a winged Bengal tiger, with bared teeth and outthrust claws, on a circular field of blue, beneath the star of the U. S. Air Force.” — National Archives and Records Administration photograph published on Fold3, used by permission
In early October of 1943, newspapers across the US announced that the 14th Air Force had officially sanctioned a new “Flying Tigers” emblem. It was adopted with Maj. Gen. Claire Lee Chennault's approval and endorsement. Distributed to wire services via the Office of War Information (OWI), the story was accompanied by a photograph of the smiling general displaying the new insignia on his leather flying jacket.
Former commander of the renowned American Volunteer Group that gained fame as the original “Flying Tigers,” Chennault now served in command of the 14th Air Force. Constituted on March 5, it had been activated on March 10, 1943, in Kunming, China, by special order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The 14th, a numbered air force of the United States Army Air Forces, went on to establish a record of excellence, serving primarily in China until the end of the war.
Chennault already had extensive military experience in China. Retired with the rank of captain from the United States Army Air Corps in 1937, he had accepted an invitation from the Chinese Nationalist leader, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, to go to China for the purpose of surveying the ineffectual Republic of China Air Force―and thus began Chennault's second military career for which he became best known.
When he arrived in China soon afterward, Chennault discovered that invading Japanese forces were committing atrocities against its defenseless civilian population that matched the brutality of Hitler's Nazis in Europe, systematically plundering, torturing, raping, and killing with impunity. Japanese planes bombed Kunming and surrounding area almost daily for target practice, and the Chinese Air Force could do little to deter them. It became Chennault's mission to transform the ROCAF into an effective fighting force capable of fending off the invaders. Under paid contract, he became Chiang Kai-shek's chief air adviser, training Chinese pilots according to the American model as well as participating in occasional scouting missions.
He returned to the US in 1941 and recruited a group of men from the Army Air Corps, Marines, and Navy to form the American Volunteer Group (AVG) for the purpose of aiding the Chinese in their fight for survival. The mission of this small band of mercenaries based in Burma was to fly P-40s, using Chennault's innovative tactics of "defensive pursuit" to shoot down Japanese aircraft. This was a new strategy that was met with great resistance by many military leaders at a time when bombers were generally faster than pursuit planes.
It was not until after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 that the AVG’s three squadrons went into action in earnest. Within days, Chennault’s airmen began attacking ground targets and engaging enemy aircraft throughout the China-Burma-India (CBI) Theater. Their primary objective was to protect the vital Burma Road, but the unit also guarded Rangoon and other strategic locations in Southeast Asia and western China against Japanese forces. The AVG proved to be enormously successful and racked up a series of impressive victories over the invaders.
Two weeks after their first mission came the earliest news reports praising Chennault and his fearless flyers, and soon Chinese newspapers, followed by the American press, began referring to them as "Flying Tigers.” The AVG’s exploits quickly assumed legendary proportions, and Chennault became a hero as their daring leader. To reflect the new nickname, their P-40s soon bore the image of a cartoonish, leaping tiger with wings. *
John H. Yee, AVG interpreter, was likely the best authority on the name. He explained its origin soon after the initial combat missions of the American airmen in December 1941: “For the first time in their lives, the people of Kunming witnessed something beyond their wildest dreams as the Japanese killer bombers were shot down before their own eyes. They clapped their hands and jumped for joy. A local news reporter, so inspired by this unprecedented heroic event in reporting the air combat, described the AVG planes as acting like ‘Flying Tigers in pursuit of a Japanese flock of sheep.’” **
Taken from the Chinese newspaper article, the term Fei Hu was used as a simile to praise the prowess of the American pilots and was not originally intended as a proper name applied to any specific unit, although that is how it came to be perceived by some.
The AVG launched missions against the Japanese for seven months. Chennault, who returned to active duty in the USAAF in April 1942 with the rank of colonel, was promoted to brigadier general. Opposed to inducting his Flying Tigers into the Army, he feared that turning his group into a regulation military unit would reduce its effectiveness. However, top brass had no intention of supporting a private air force that functioned outside military channels after the US entered the war.
At midnight on July 4, 1942, the American Volunteer Group ceased to exist. Replaced by the China Air Task Force (CATF) and formally inducted into the USAAF, the group continued the Flying Tigers tradition. Its planes bore a winged-tiger image like the AVG’s, but with the addition of an “Uncle Sam hat” that indicated its attachment to the USAAF. It consisted of the 23rd Fighter Group with four squadrons: the assigned 74th, 75th, and 76th (former AVG 1st, 2nd, and 3rd) Fighter Squadrons and the attached 16th Fighter Squadron, and the 11th Bomb Squadron. Stationed in India, the task force (flying P-40s and B-25s) operated under Chennault's command as part of the 10th Air Force, which controlled supplies, personnel, and operations. Because of the Japanese occupation of Burma in early April, the mission of the CATF was to defend the air supply route over the Himalayas between India and China―known as "the Hump"―as well as to provide air support for Chinese ground forces.
The CATF was tasked to defend half of China, from Chongqing to Chengdu as far south as the Salween River and as far west as Tibet, and the Japanese could put in the air against them anywhere from five to ten times their strength. The handful of planes harassed the Japanese along a 5,000-mile front, making such places as Canton and Hong Kong tremendous drains on the enemy. With few resources available to fight a powerful enemy deployed across a vast front, the CATF achieved a combat record that proved it to be a worthy successor to the AVG. Despite its limited size, the CATF inflicted a disproportionate degree of damage, but its five squadrons were not sufficient to wage aerial war on the scope envisioned by Chennault and Chiang Kai-shek.
The CATF was in existence for nine months. On March 19, 1943, it was disbanded and replaced by the recently-established 14th Air Force, with Chennault, promoted to major general, placed in command. The 14th was significantly expanded to include the 68th, 69th, and Chinese-American Composite Wings, and the 312th Fighter Wing. Other units that brought a greater diversity of aircraft types were also added, some transferred in from the 10th Air Force. . . but it was still smaller than air forces in other parts of the world.
The effectiveness of the 14th Air Force soon earned it the moniker, "the Fighting Fourteenth.” It conducted fighter and bomber operations along a wide front from the bend of the Yellow River and Jinan in the north to Indochina in the south, from Chengdu and the Salween River in the west to the East and South China Seas and the island of Formosa (now Taiwan) in the east. It additionally supplied Chinese forces through the essential airlift of cargo across the Hump. Continuing the Flying Tigers legacy under Chennault’s leadership, the 14th went on to win air superiority in China. However, a "friendly rivalry" always existed between the original Flying Tigers and the Flying Tigers of the 14th Air Force as to who had "bragging rights" to the name.
In his memoirs, Way of a Fighter, Chennault proudly described the accomplishments of his air force that played a vital role in the defeat of Japan. He wrote that in three years of operations, it had grown from 250 men and a hundred planes to 20,000 men and 1,000 planes, “casting the shadow of its wings the length of the Asian continent.” It had lost 500 planes to all combat causes while destroying 2,600 enemy planes and probably destroying 1,500 more; had sunk and damaged 2,230,000 tons of merchant shipping, 44 naval vessels, and 13,000 river boats under 100 tons; killed 66,700 enemy troops and knocked out 73 bridges.
Chennault wrote that his “best testimonial” came from “the man who suffered worst at our hands.” He attributed this quote to Lt. Gen. Takahashi, commander of Japanese forces in Central China:
Considering all the difficulties my armies encountered in China, including guerrillas, ground armies, lack of supplies, difficult terrain, [and] non-cooperation of the Chinese, I judge the operations of the Fourteenth Air Force to have constituted between 60 percent and 75 per cent of our effective opposition in China. Without the Air Force, we could have gone anywhere we wished.
Chennault concluded, “It was a record of which every man who wore the Flying Tiger shoulder patch can be proud.” ***
* The AVG’s “Flying Tiger” emblem, as well as of the CATF that followed it, were designed by the Walt Disney Company.
** John H. Yee, “Memories of the Jing Bao Days and the Coming of the A.V.G. to Kunming in 1941, jing bao JOURNAL, 60 (366), October-December 2006, 5-7.
*** Maj. Gen. Claire L. Chennault, Way of a Fighter: The Memoirs of Claire Lee Chennault (G. P. Putnam’s Sons: New York), 1949, 354-5.
Do you want to learn more about this historic outfit? Find it now in The Spray and Pray Squadron: 3rd Bomb Squadron, 1st Bomb Group, Chinese-American Composite Wing in World War II.