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ANNALS OF THE FLYING TIGERS

A war hero we've never heard of?

"A Native American war memorial is coming to Washington," writes Dana Hedgpeth in the Washington Post, slyly adding: "Here are six Native veterans you've never heard about."

Whoa! What's Greg Boyington doing in that list? We've all heard of Pappy, the rebellious Flying Tiger who became Black Sheep One and a Marine Corps ace in the Pacific War. The link is to the biography by Bruce Gamble, to whom I naturally turned for comment about Boyington's wink and nod toward Indian ancestry. (In my own history of the Flying Tigers, I contented myself with saying he had "the moody face of a Cherokee setting out on the Trail of Tears.")

Boyington's mom had married young and pregnant, and the marriage soon became a battleground, with her husband accusing her of infidelity. So the child's parentage was a bit of a question mark. His Wikipedia entry makes no mention of Native American heritage, though oddly it is linked to another Wiki article about "Native Americans and World War II" -- which article, in turn, makes no mention of Pappy Boyington.

"I tried twenty years ago to find anything definitive about the heritage of his mother, Grace Gregory," Bruce Gamble emailed me. "One of her nieces claimed that Grace used to boast about being part Hunkpapa Sioux, but I never did uncover anything." The Hunkpapa lived in what is now Montana, and were among the victors in the Battle of the Little Bighorn, aka Custer's Last Stand. Again, Wiki has a list of Hunkpapa notables, which does not include a Boyington -- who in any event probably wouldn't have passed muster as a member of the tribe. "Even granting Pappy a liberal percentage of Native American heritage," Bruce concluded, "he would be no more than 1/4" -- that is, his maternal grandfather might have been a tribal member.

That would place him safely ahead of Elizabeth Warren in the Native American stakes, but since one can't be a member of a tribe without documenting that fact, Pappy was just a typical American mixture of bloodlines. Until one of his descendants comes up with DNA evidence that shows otherwise, I'm inclined to think of the Hunkpapa story as just one of those family legends born out of a desire to make oneself more interesting -- a fairly common desire, as Senator Warren has proved. Blue skies! — Dan Ford

A 'Special Air Unit' for China:

'Procurement of Personnel for China': the Navy memos
Recruiting the 1st AVG: Bruce Leighton's memo
Recruiting the 2nd AVG: the Chennault-Soong cables
Greg Boyington resigns from the Marine Corps
Sergeant Charland Down Under
Bob Klemann signs on to fly a Lockheed Hudson for China
Another chaplain? 'Jimmy' Stewart's odd story (Time magazine)
FDR orders the navy to release men for the 3rd AVG
Six B-25s for Chennault, bombing Lashio en route
Lauchlin Currie: a spy at the heart of the AVG?
Meet Olga and Harvey Greenlaw
About those 'engineering helpers'
See also the Annals of the Chinese Air Force

The Tigers forge a legend:

Questions you asked: the Flying Tigers FAQ
Roster of the 1st American Volunteer Group
Lacy Mangleburg writes home from Hamilton Field
'Your resignation is accepted' (George Burgard's scrapbook)
'He has crashed up three planes in the first week'
AVG fliers who crashed in U.S. Army service
An AVG identification card
Lew Bishop writes home from Burma
Three who died: the graves of St. Luke's
Status of the AVG at the outbreak of war
Layout of Mingaladon airport, Rangoon, December 1941
Aircraftman Wilf Jepson of the AVG
Bob Neale in Rangoon (from his diary)
'What Odds They Faced in Burma's Sky!'
Jack Newkirk, down in Thailand
On the tactics used by AVG pilots (Erik Shilling)
Bert Christman: life imitating art (Andrew Glaess)
Greg 'Pappy' Boyington, Flying Tiger
Arnold Shamblin writes home from Yunnan-yi
Melvin Woodward's memories of the AVG
Some of the lads at Kunming (Clare Boothe Luce's photo)
AVG pilot losses, December 1941 - July 1942
AVG victory credits, air and ground
Nineteen Flying Tiger aces

The P-40 files:

Joe Baugher's articles on the small-mouthed Curtiss models
Pilot's Notes for the AVG Tomahawk
A Russian view of the P-40 Tomahawk
100 Hawks for China: the planes shipped to Rangoon
Assembling and testing P-40s in Burma (Byron Glover)
On spinning the Curtiss fighters (Erik Shilling)
Number 80 does a ground loop at Toungoo
Christman's nose art for the 2nd Squadron Tomahawks
R.T. Smith's iconic photo of Tomahawks on patrol
Is this Tomahawk Number 23?
Some AVG 'veterans' in Kunming, c. 1943
About those small-mouthed P-40 survivors
Mac McGarry's Tomahawk in Thailand
Recovering that P-40 from Lake Kunming

The Bill Pawley files:

Bill Pawley and the Flying Tigers
The CAMCO/AVG factory and airfield at Loiwing
Layout of the CAMCO operation
The fall of Loiwing, April 1942

Books, movies, comics:

The Flying Tigers: Claire Chennault and His American Volunteers
The Lady and the Tigers
Remains: A Story of the Flying Tigers
Tales of the Flying Tigers
An AVG bibliography
A short guide to AVG films, past and present
Wow! Bam! Flying Tigers Comix! | Les Tigres Volants

A good myth never dies:

Anna Chan Chennault, 1923-2018
Three Tigers home again, from Toungoo to the Punchbowl Cemetery
John Armstrong comes home, 76 years after leaving it
Billy McDonald, the Hawk 75, and Chennault's combat victories
Ajax Baumler, the 100th Flying Tiger
No, sorry, the AVG never met the Zero in combat
Did the RAF 'sell' victories to the AVG?
1,500 planes shot down? The ultimate AVG myth
Chris Shores on the subject of AVG victory claims
Ed McClure: The Last Flying Tiger Ace (Zeke Striker)
The exfiltration of Mac McGarry (Bob Bergin)
The strange journey of "Little Olson"
Not a Tiger: an imposter 'fesses up
What about that 'phantom P-40' shot down in China?
It's official: the AVG fought for the U.S.
The multiple weddings of Olga Greenlaw
Harvey Greenlaw in Baja: a friend remembers
Erik Shilling, off on his last flight
Hostel Number One and the Hump Bar, Kunming
Tiger Yee of Aurora, Colorado
Preserving the Flying Tiger Heritage (Bob Bergin)
Heroes—but were they legal? (Richard Dunn)
A ghostly airfield in Yunnan province (Bob Bergin)

Question? Comment? Newsletter? Send me an email. Blue skies! — Daniel Ford