At midnight on July 4, 1942, the American Volunteer Group (AVG), better known as the Flying Tigers, ceased to exist. They were replaced by the China Air Task Force (CATF), a group that was, in the words of Tiger founder and leader Brigadier General Claire Lee Chennault, ‘patched together in the midst of combat from whatever happened to be available in China during the gloomy summer of 1942.’

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The Flying Tigers were a hard act to follow. The AVG had been formed to defend the Burma Road and Chinese cities from Japanese air attack, and its fliers had won spectacular victories over the Japanese since December 1941.

The Flying Tigers’ replacement–the CATF–had few resources with which to fight a powerful enemy deployed across a vast front. But in the nine months of its existence, between July 1942 and March 1943, the group achieved a combat record that proved it to be a worthy successor to the AVG.

The Flying Tigers had started out flying Curtiss 81A-1s–export versions of the P-40B Tomahawk–in December 1941. Using tactics developed by Chennault, they shot down 297 Japanese aircraft, plus 153 probables, in only seven months of combat, from December 1941 to July 1942. They lost only four pilots and 12 Tomahawks in combat. ‘For a time, the Flying Tigers provided the only victories against the Japanese anywhere in the Far East,’ Duane Schultz, author of The Maverick War, wrote. ‘This handful of men had shown that the Japanese were not invincible.’

As early as December 30, 1941, the U.S. War Department in Washington, D.C., had authorized the induction of the Flying Tigers into the U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF). Chennault was opposed to inducting the Flying Tigers into the Army. He believed that turning his group into a regulation military unit would mean the loss of its effectiveness ‘for a minimum of four months while the change was taking place.’ Chennault also believed he would be put on the sidelines and would sit out the war in the United States.

Chennault lobbied against induction with the help of Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek. With the United States in the war, however, the U.S. Army had no intention of supporting a private air force that functioned outside of military channels. ‘The Army’s excuse for induction was that the paperwork involved in supplying a non-regulation organization was too difficult,’ Chennault recalled. ‘I felt it was criminal to sacrifice the spirit and experience of the group for a mere change of uniform.’

Chennault was also concerned about who would command the new air force units in China. Chiang Kai-shek insisted that Chennault be appointed senior air officer in China–and Chennault certainly wanted the job. ‘I believe I was not immodest,’ Chennault wrote, ‘in assuming that my long experience in China, coupled with the AVG combat record, entitled me to primary consideration for the post.’ He lobbied powerful friends in Washington, D.C., to get the appointment, but his maverick reputation worked against him. Lieutenant General Henry H. ‘Hap’ Arnold, by then chief of the USAAF, insisted that the post be given to Colonel Clayton A. Bissell.

Chennault was called to Chungking, China, on March 29, 1942, for a conference to decide the fate of the AVG. Present at the conference were Chiang Kai-shek; his wife, Madame Chiang; Lt. Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell, commander of U.S. forces in China; and Bissell, who had arrived in early March.

Stilwell and Bissell made it clear to both Chennault and Chiang that unless the AVG became part of the U.S. Army, its supplies would be cut off. ‘Unless the AVG fought in Army uniforms they were to be denied the privilege of fighting at all,’ Chennault wrote. He agreed to return to active duty but, as he later wrote, ‘I made it clear to Stilwell that my men would have to speak for themselves.’

Chiang Kai-shek finally agreed to let the AVG be inducted into the USAAF, after Stilwell promised to replace it with a complete fighter group that Chennault would command. Stilwell and Bissell wanted the AVG dissolved by April 30, 1942. Chennault, wanting to keep the Flying Tigers going as long as possible, proposed the group disband on July 4, when the AVG’s contracts with the Nationalist Chinese government expired. Stilwell and Bissell accepted. ‘And so it was agreed,’ Chennault recalled, ‘with smiles and handshaking from all but me.’

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