Restored P-40 salutes Flying Hawks division
29 Jan 2014 4:51 AM IST
The aircraft, a P-40E model, is the kind flown by the 1st American Volunteer Group formed in China by Gen. Claire Chennault shortly before the United States entered the war. However, this one never flew for the Tigers; its service was limited to the Aleutian Islands.
Thousands of P-40s were produced during the war and supplied to US allies in every theater. Most were scrapped as advanced fighters such as the P-51 Mustang became available. Today, P-40s are rare.
Having any P-40 is important in telling the Tigers’ story, said Nell Calloway, a granddaughter of Chennault, who organized US volunteer pilots in 1941 as a civilian adviser to the nationalist Chinese government of Chiang Kai-Shek.
‘Because the relationship between China and the United States is so important, we have to do whatever we can do to try to remember that airplane and how they used that airplane to contribute to defeating the Japanese,’ said Calloway, director of the Chennault Aviation and Military Museum in Monroe.
Chennault, a Texas native who grew up in Louisiana, resigned from active US duty in 1937 to become an adviser to Chiang. He designed airfields and a warning network ‘of people, radios, telephones, and telegraph lines that covered all of Free China accessible to enemy aircraft,’ he wrote in his autobiography. He retired as a US Air Force lieutenant general. He died in 1958.
Japan, which had moved aggressively in China since 1931, stepped up its attacks in 1937, and full-blown war broke out.
The museum’s P-40 was painted to match the shark-faced aircraft flown by Robert Lee Scott Jr., commander of the 23rd Fighter Group created by Chennault when the Flying Tigers were brought into the US Army Air Force after the United States entered the war.
Chennault wrote in ‘Way of a Fighter’ that he never knew why the public dubbed his group the ‘Flying Tigers’ when the planes were painted with a shark nose copied from a Royal Air Force squadron.
The Tigers found fame in the air and on the silver screen. The 1942 film ‘Flying Tigers’ put a swashbuckling John Wayne in the cockpit of a shark-nosed P-40 blasting away at Japanese aircraft.
Thousands of P-40s were produced during the war and supplied to US allies in every theater. Most were scrapped as advanced fighters such as the P-51 Mustang became available. Today, P-40s are rare.
Having any P-40 is important in telling the Tigers’ story, said Nell Calloway, a granddaughter of Chennault, who organized US volunteer pilots in 1941 as a civilian adviser to the nationalist Chinese government of Chiang Kai-Shek.
‘Because the relationship between China and the United States is so important, we have to do whatever we can do to try to remember that airplane and how they used that airplane to contribute to defeating the Japanese,’ said Calloway, director of the Chennault Aviation and Military Museum in Monroe.
Chennault, a Texas native who grew up in Louisiana, resigned from active US duty in 1937 to become an adviser to Chiang. He designed airfields and a warning network ‘of people, radios, telephones, and telegraph lines that covered all of Free China accessible to enemy aircraft,’ he wrote in his autobiography. He retired as a US Air Force lieutenant general. He died in 1958.
Japan, which had moved aggressively in China since 1931, stepped up its attacks in 1937, and full-blown war broke out.
The museum’s P-40 was painted to match the shark-faced aircraft flown by Robert Lee Scott Jr., commander of the 23rd Fighter Group created by Chennault when the Flying Tigers were brought into the US Army Air Force after the United States entered the war.
Chennault wrote in ‘Way of a Fighter’ that he never knew why the public dubbed his group the ‘Flying Tigers’ when the planes were painted with a shark nose copied from a Royal Air Force squadron.
The Tigers found fame in the air and on the silver screen. The 1942 film ‘Flying Tigers’ put a swashbuckling John Wayne in the cockpit of a shark-nosed P-40 blasting away at Japanese aircraft.
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