Maintaining communications was just one of many problems encountered by the AVG members. Gasoline and spare parts were premium commodities and had to be flown in over ‘the Hump’-the airlift route over the Himalayas from Assam, India, to Kunming-for AVG use. The unwritten law was to make do with what you had on hand, or do without. The unpredictable Chinese weather was another factor that frequently halted AVG offensive missions.

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Donald Whelpley, who served as the AVG’s chief meteorologist, helped John Williams to set up a weather forecasting system as well as the Jing Bow. ‘I joined the AVG in July 1941,’ he recalled ‘At that time my duty assignment was Navy meteorologist to Patrol Squadron 54, Naval Air Station, Norfolk, Va.

‘When the Navy finally realized that I was serious about resigning my commission to join Chennault in China, they released me for a one-year tour with the AVG. Little did any of us realize what we had gotten ourselves into!

‘John would send me around Yunan province to various secret AVG airfields to help our radiomen set up a crude radio network for our air raid warning system. I also helped construct other clandestine emergency airfields and installed our weather forecasting equipment.

‘Chinese operators didn’t need to identify aircraft. They just needed to relay the number of planes sighted, their location and their direction of flight. Back at headquarters in Kunming, John would plot the courses on a wall map. If we didn’t have airplanes up in that area of report, well, they had to be Japanese planes on patrol or a bombing mission.

‘But if they came toward any of our airfields, Chennault would wait until they got within 50 miles of a base. Then he would order the P-40s up to engage them. Because of our radio alert network, we saved many thousands of gallons of aviation fuel. We didn’t have to hunt the enemy; they came to us. The Japs just couldn’t figure out how we knew they were coming. It must have driven them crazy!’

Leo J. Schramm, of Cumberland, Pa., served as a crew chief on one particular P-40 with the fuselage number 92. His pilot was Robert ‘Duke’ Hedman. Looking back over his AVG experiences years later, Schramm recalled the events of one memorable mission on Christmas Day 1941. ‘Pearl Harbor happened about two weeks before,’ he said. ‘We were with the 3rd Squadron, stationed in Rangoon, Burma. We knew the Japanese were going to bomb the city and the roads would be choked with refugees trying to flee the onslaught.

‘When the bombers and fighters came, Duke went up and shot down five Japanese aircraft in one day. He was an ace… in just one day! My pilot! My airplane! You know, that plane was built like a semitruck. It could take a lot of punishment. Not much went wrong with it, either.’

J. Richard ‘Dick’ Rossi, of Fallbrook, Calif., a past president of the Flying Tigers Association, fondly remembers the day he was recruited into what would later be known as the Flying Tigers: ‘I was a young naval aviator stationed at Pensacola, Fla. I recall I cut off all the brass buttons from my uniforms to prevent any association with the U.S. military and turned in my flight gear.

‘A few weeks later, a group of us boarded a ship and sailed from San Francisco. We all had phony American passports…. Our occupations were [listed] as carpenter, sheet metal worker, musician, electrician, stonemason, etc. Heck, you name an occupation and I’m sure someone had it stamped on their passport.’

Rossi had an impressive career with the AVG. ‘My combat record showed that I shot down 6.35 confirmed `kills,’ and six more probables,’ he recalled many years later. ‘I stayed on with the AVG throughout the one-year contract time from July 4, 1941, to July 4, 1942, the day we were disbanded officially.’

The aircraft flown by the AVG members, though called P-40s, were primarily Curtiss Hawk 81-A3s, the export version of the P-40. It was slower than some of its peers, including the British Supermarine Spitfire, the German Messerschmitt Me-109 and the Japanese Mitsubishi A6M ‘Zero.’ It was also heavier and less maneuverable than the Japanese aircraft and could barely function as a fighter above 25,000 feet.

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