Morgan Vaux

Shantih (peace) to Morgan Vaux, AVG radioman, who died August 3 at the age of 92. He joined the American Volunteer Group from the U.S. Army Air Corps, and afterward served as a Marine in the Pacific theater. Postwar he worked for the U.S. Navy, the Air Force Materiel Command, and finally Delco Electronics, from which he retired in 1980 as a production engineer. His death leaves ten or eleven survivors of the original Flying Tigers. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

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 individual who's still with us from that group. Here are the Flying Tiger pilots and ground crew still with us and, I hope, doing well:

• Charles Baisden (armorer)

• Carl Brown (CAF flight instructor; fighter pilot)

• Michael Callan (ground crew)

• David Harris (headquarters staff)

• Kenneth Jernstedt (fighter pilot)

• Robert Keeton (fighter pilot)

• Frank Losonsky (crew chief)

• Kee Jeung Pon (engineering specialist)

• Joseph Poshefko (armorer)

• Edward Stiles (crew chief)

Some AVGs went home early, got a "dishonorable discharge," and for that reason aren't recognized by the Flying Tigers Association. One such was Randall Richardson, an AVG weatherman, who was still with us a few years ago, though I haven't seen mention of him lately.