Monday, Feb. 09, 1942

Tigers Over Burma

Last week a young man from Chipley, Ga. fell 17,000 feet through the Burma sky. His Curtiss P-40, shot out of control by a Jap, hurtled past him. At 7,000 feet he pulled his parachute cord. He saw another plane dart toward him, at first thought a Jap was trying to machine-gun him, then recognized a comrade from his squadron, convoying him to earth. The young man and his parachute plopped into a rice field. A Burmese farmer spewed mouthfuls of water on his bloody forehead. Others fed him, sped him back to his airdrome at Rangoon. Said the young man from Georgia: "I got back so late the skipper didn't have me down on the next day's flying schedule. That's how you caught me loafing now."

But the American Volunteer Group in Burma and China did little loafing. At Rangoon, on the ocean entry to the Burma Road, at Kunming, on its inner terminus, at many an airdrome between, A.V.G.'s100-odd U.S. pilots brightened last week's dark record of war in the Pacific with great valor and victories. Outnumbered, their slender stock of early-type P-40s diminished by ground strafing, crashes and a few casualties in the air, they still went by threes and sevens and tens against much larger Jap fighter-bomber formations. Said a spectator in Rangoon: "It looked like a fleet of rowboats attacking the Spanish Armada."

Their bags were phenomenal: 50 Jap planes in one week, according to some accounts. Their casualties were low: five pilots killed, a greater but unannounced number of planes lost up to last week. On their fuselages they daubed their crest: a jut-toothed tiger, flying through a Victory V (TIME, Jan. 12).

Correspondents had to obscure individ ual tales of valor with local pseudonyms: Kirk of San Saba, Sandy and Bill from San Antonio in Texas; Frank from Pensacola, etc.

Last week Pilot Billy bagged his seventh Jap. After one sortie, when Sandy landed his P-40 on the airdrome near Rangoon, a Jap fighter with machine guns spitting came wavering toward him. Sandy jumped into a ditch and the Jap crashed. When U.S. pilots reached his plane they found that the Jap had been wounded, had evidently been intent on a last victory in his crazy dive.

Matthew Kuykendall landed with a bullet crease in his forehead, oil from a smashed feed line on his flying suit. Said he: "Now I'm really mad." Squadron Leader John Newkirk, who had eight Japs to his credit by last week, radioed his wife in Scarsdale, N.Y. : "There were not enough of them to keep us busy."

Chennault's Mercenaries. To no one man belongs credit for organizing and recruiting the A.V.G. But A.V.G.'s spark plug from the start, its commander in Burma now, is a famous U.S. flyer: lean, dark Brigadier General Claire L. Chennault of Water Proof, La.

Claire Chennault flew for the U.S. in World War I, was a major when he retired from the U.S. Air Corps. In the early '30s he organized a fabulous Army team of acrobats ("Three Men on a Flying Trapeze"), thrilled thousands of air-meet spectators.

Leader of this team was, of course, Claire Chennault. His flying partners were two Regular Army sergeants who held temporary lieutenancies in the Air Corps Reserve: William C. McDonald Jr. and J. H. Williamson. Sergeants McDonald and Williamson flunked their academic exams when they applied for permanent commissions, left the Air Corps and went to China. Disgusted Claire Chennault openly protested the Army's failure to keep them: "If we were going into war and I were ordered to the front, I'd choose those two men to accompany me. . . ." Claire Chennault quit the Air Corps (officially he was retired for deafness), and became a consultant to the fledgling Chinese Air Force in 1937. Sergeants McDonald and Williamson served with him there, were with him in A.V.G. last week. Last year Claire Chennault came home and with President Roosevelt's consent began to organize A.V.G. Air Corps and Navy pilots and flying students were allowed to resign to go to the defense of the vital Burma Road. Their promised pay: in action, $600 per month and a $500 bonus for every plane shot down (which with last week's total bag would run their take well past $60,000).

Said Claire Chennault, after one of their first battles over Rangoon: "This isn't target practice. Don't get the idea the Japs are no good . . . don't get cocky."

In tribute to the A.V.G. and R.A.F. pilots in Burma, Winston Churchill said this week: "The victories they have won may well prove comparable . . . with the Battle of Britain."

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