William "Mac" McGarry was hit by anti-aircraft fire over Chiang Mai, Thailand, on March 24, 1942. His Tomahawk crashed in the rain forest in northern Thailand, and McGarry spent the rest of the war in a Thai prison. A tip of the virtual hat to John MacGregor of Scotland, who photographed the wreckage at Chiang Mai Air Force Base in Thailand, and who also sent along clippings from a Thai aviation magazine called (yes!) Top Gun. Here's the wreck of McGarry's aircraft as it was discovered in the summer of 1991:
This was just before Flying Tigers: Claire Chennault and the American Volunteer Group was published, and the excitement of the find was what prompted me to write the novel Remains, which begins and ends with the wreckage of a Tomahawk in the rain forest.
Of course there were other AVG wrecks in
Thailand. Jack Newkirk was shot down and killed on the same day that
McGarry lost his freedom. here's a photograph of
Newkirk's P-40, its bits and pieces piled in front of the old Lamphun
police station. The Chinese Air Force recognition
symbol--a white sun with 12 rays--is clearly visible. The photo appears
in Boonserm Satraphai, Chiang Mai and the Aerial War (Bangkok:
Saitharn Publication House, 2003). Nobody now seems to know where this
building was located, or what happened to the wreck--or to Newkirk's
remains if any. A virtual tip of the hat to Hak Hakanson, who
also writes: "there is a persistent local story
here that Newkirk's remains are still in Lamphun: his body was taken
from the crashsite by sympathetic locals to keep it from the Japanese
and was eventually cremated, possibly at Phrayuen Temple in Lamphun, with
location of ashes not now known."
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