WRIGHT PROPOSITION

"Planes were a tough problem. China had been a long-time, profitable customer for Curtiss-Wright, so my old friend, Burdette Wright, Curtiss Vice-President, came up with a proposition. They had six assembly lines turning out P-40's for the British, who had taken over a French order after the fall of France. If the British would waive their priority on 100 P-40B's then rolling off one line, Curtiss would add a seventh assembly line and make 100 later-model P-40's for the British. The British were glad to exchange the P-40B for a model more suitable for combat.

"The P-40B was not equipped with a gun sight, bomb rack or provisions for attaching auxiliary fuel tanks to the wing or belly. Much of our effort during training and combat was devoted to makeshift attempts to remedy these deficiencies. The combat record of the First American Volunteer Group in China is even more remarkable because its pilots were aiming their guns through a crude, homemade, ring-and-post gun sight instead of the more accurate optical sights used by the Air Corps and the Royal Air Force.

"Personnel proved a tougher nut to crack. The military were violently opposed to the whole idea of American volunteers in China. Lauchlin Currie and I went to see General Arnold in April of 1941. He was 100% opposed to the project.

"In the Navy, Rear Admiral Jack Towers, then Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics and later Commander of the Navy's Pacific Air Forces also viewed the A.V.G. as a threat to his expansion program. . .

". . . It took direct personal intervention from President Roosevelt to pry the pilots and ground crews from the Army and Navy. On April 15, 1941, an unpublished ????utive order went out under his signature, authorizing reserve officer and enlisted men to resign from the Army Air Corps, Naval and Marine air services for the purpose of joining the American Volunteer Group in China.

"Orders went out to all military air fields, signed by Secretary Knox and General Arnold, authorizing bearers of certain letters freedom of the post, including permission to talk with all personnel . . .

SALARIES OUTLINED

" . . . Their offer was a one-year contract with CAMCO (Central Aircraft Manufacturing Company) to 'manufacture, repair and operate aircraft at salaries ranging from $250 to $750 a month. Traveling expenses, 30 days leave with pay, quarters, and $30 additional for rations were specified. They would be subject to summary dismissal by written notice for insubordination, habitual use of drugs or alcohol, illness not incurred in line of duty, malingering, and revealing confidential information. Before the end of the A.V.G., I had to dismiss at least one man for every cause except revealing confidential information. A system of fines was initiated for minor offences.

"There was not mention in the contract of a $500-bonus for every Japanese plane destroyed. Volunteers were told simply that there was a rumor that the Chinese government would pay $500 for each confirmed Jap plane. They could take the rumor for what it was worth. It turned out to be worth exactly $500 per plane. Although initially the five-hundred-dollar-bonus was paid for confirmed planes destroyed in air combat only, the bonus was soon applied to planes destroyed on the ground - if they could be confirmed."*

The first contingent (of pilots) of the American Volunteer Group left San Francisco on July 10, 1941, aboard the Dutch ship Jaegersfontaine. Just before leaving, Chennault received confirmation of Presidential approval for the second American Volunteer Group of bombers with a schedule of 100 pilots and 181 gunners and radio men to arrive in China by November, 1941, and an equal number to follow in January, 1942.
Upon returning to the Orient in the summer of 1941, Chennault arranged with the British for the use of the Royal Air Force Keydaw airdrome at Toungoo, Burma. Arrangements were made by the Chinese with the British for the assembly and test flying by the A.V.G. of its P-40's. The A.V.G. P-40's were assembled at Rangoon, and all radios, oxygen equipment, and armament were installed by A.V.G. group mechanics at Toungoo.

Speaking of the combat training routines of the A.V.G. at Toungoo, Chennault states:

"Our Toungoo routine began at 6:00 a.m. with a lecture in a teakwood classroom near the field, where I held forth with black-board, maps, and mimeographed textbooks. All my life I have been a teacher, ranging from the one-room schools of rural Louisiana to director of one of the largest Air Corps flying schools, but I believe that the best teaching of my career was done in that teakwood shack at Toungoo, where the assortment of American volunteers turned into the word-famous Flying Tigers, whose aerial combat record has never been equaled by a group of comparable size.

GEOGRAPHY LESSONS

"Every pilot who arrived before September 15 got seventy-two hours of lectures in addition to sixty hours of specialized flying. I gave the pilots a lesson in the geography of Asia that they all needed badly, told them something of the war in China, and how the Chinese air-raid warning net worked.

"I taught them all I knew about the Japanese. Day after day there were lectures from my notebooks, filled during the previous four years of combat. All of the bitter experience from Nanking to Chunking was poured out in those lectures. Captured Japanese flying and staff manuals, translated into English by the Chinese, served as textbooks. From these manuals the American pilots learned more about Japanese tactics than any single Japanese pilot ever knew."*

In describing the results of such combat training, Chennault says:

"Later there was ample opportunity for comparison. The A.V.G. and R.A.F. fought side by side over Rangoon with comparable numbers, equipment, and courage against the same odds. The R.A.F. barely broke even against the Japanese, while the Americans rolled up a 15 to 1 score. In February, 1942, the Japanese threw heavy raids against Rangoon and Port Darwin, Australia, in the same week. Over Rangoon five A.V.G. pilots in P-40's shot down 17 out of 70 enemy raiders without loss. Over Darwin, 11 out of 12 U.S. Army Forces P-40's were shot down by a similar Japanese force. A few weeks later a crack R.A.F. Spitfire squadron was rushed to Australia from Europe and lost 17 out of 27 pilots over Darwin in two raids. The Spitfire was far superior to the P-40 as a combat plane. It was simply a matter of tactics. The R.A.F. pilots were trained in methods that were excellent against German and Italian equipment but suicide against the acrobatic Japs. The only American squadron in China that the Japanese ever liked to fight was a P-38 squadron that had fought in North Africa and refused to change its tactics against the Japanese.

"During the first year of the war the A.V.G. tactics were spread throughout the Army and Navy by intelligence repots and returned A.V.G. veterans. At least one Navy Commander in the Pacific and an Air Force colonel with the Fifth Air Force in Australia were later decorated for "inventing" what were originally the A.V.G. tactics."*

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, an agreement was worked out between the Chinese and the British whereby one squadron of the A.V.G. would assist the R.A.F. in the defense of Rangoon with the other two squadrons to be stationed at Kunming, the China end of the Burma Road, where there was an adequate warning net and dispersal fields.