Shantih (peace) to Edwin Janski, who died in Florida last month. He had one of those jobs that civilians have a hard time getting their minds around--he was a 'propeller specialist' for the AVG. I'm told that's Ed standing in the prop blast on the near side of the cockpit in John Shaw's painting Shark Sighting of a Tomahawk being sighted-in at Toungoo in the fall of 1941. Ed was among the ground crewmen commissioned in China after the AVG was disbanded, and he served through the Korean War and rose to lieutenant colonel in the reserve. There's a recent article about him on the AVG veterans' website, and here's an obit in the St Petersburg Times.

How many Tigers still with us?

The American Volunteer Group was a unit of the Chinese Air Force, serving in Burma and China from December 1941 until mid-July 1942, when it was replaced by the 23rd Fighter Group, U.S. Army Air Forces. Its members were drawn mostly from the prewar military, so they were a bit older than most of the WWII generation. Several were prisoners of the Japanese, and of course almost everyone smoked and drank in those days. So it's a pretty exceptional man (and one woman) who's still with us from that group. Here are the 18 Flying Tigers (including 4 pilots) still around and, I hope, doing well:

Charles Baisden (armorer)
Charles Bond (pilot)
Carl Brown (pilot and CAF flight instructor)
Michael Callan (ground crew)
Edwin Fobes (clerk)

Emma Jane Hanks (nurse; surnamed Foster 1941, married Petach 1942)
David Harris (headquarters staff)
Kenneth Jernstedt (pilot)
Albert Kaelin (clerk)
Robert Keeton (pilot)

Frank Losonsky (crew chief)
Kenneth Moss (weatherman)
Kee Jeung Pon (engineering specialist)
Joseph Poshefko (armorer)
* Randall Richardson (weatherman)

Rolland Richardson (communications)
Edward Stiles (crew chief)
Morgan Vaux (communications)