WWII: How did you get to be a member of the Flying Tigers?

Scott: I was flying the plane Chennault had loaned us, and that was a start. I had talked to him many times after the first encounter, making it plain that I wanted to join the Flying Tigers. One day I flew to his headquarters at Kunming, and he came out on the runway in a jeep to meet my plane. When I stopped, he motioned to me to get into the jeep with him, and he took me over to a mud hut. I was scared that he was going to take back the plane he had loaned me, but when we entered the hut I could see that I had been taken there for a different purpose. In the hut was a long table, behind which a number of men were sitting. In the middle I recognized Chiang Kai-shek. He was flanked on either side by officers ranking in descending order the farther they got from Chiang. Chiang didn’t speak a word of English and spoke to me through an interpreter. I was clearly there for Chiang’s approval. Chiang spoke for about 15 minutes with various men there. Finally the interpreter, a Major Shu, asked if I would be willing to go full time with Chennault to command the 23rd Fighter Group to be activated on July 4, 1942. I replied in the affirmative, and there followed a long conversation in Chinese. Then the interpreter asked me, ‘Generalissimo say, how long it take you to join Flying Tigers?’ One thing I have always noticed about interpreters is that they cut short a translation. He had summed up Chiang’s long speech in a few words. Anyway, I became commander of the 23rd Fighter Group of the China Air Task Force under Chennault.

WWII: What was your most memorable event with Chennault?

Scott: The greatest thrill was the first time I ever flew with the Flying Tigers before I joined them. You see, they didn’t think much of us regular fliers. I had come in and gone to sleep under the mosquito netting, when a bunch of the Flying Tigers burst into my room. Not knowing what was happening, I grabbed the revolver I kept under my pillow and pointed it at them. They had come to ask if I would go on a mission with them, never thinking that I would. I readily agreed. They were really testing me out. At one point while we were up, someone in the group pointed out a Japanese train below and told me to attack it. I went diving down, strafing the train. I had just assumed that some of them were with me, but as I looked around I realized that I had no wing cover. They had sent me in alone to see what I was made of. From that point on I was in, and they became my best friends. As it turned out, I had taught many of them to fly in California.

WWII: The Japanese had you fellows greatly outnumbered, and they could replace the planes that you shot down. Did they know what a predicament you were in?

Scott: No. We used all sorts of tricks. Every time I flew a mission, I had the nose of my plane painted a different color so that the Japanese would think these were different planes. I got credit for that idea back in America, but really the idea was not mine. It was Chennault’s. When flying over a city, we would split up, two or three going to the right, several over the center, some to the left. The noise created the impression that there were more planes than we really had.

WWII: Do you think it fooled the Japanese?

Scott: Certainly it did. We heard over Radio Tokyo, the only English-language radio station we could get in China, the Japanese belittling our efforts. They were making the point that we were weak because we had only 500 planes. At that time we had only 35!

WWII: When you went after an enemy plane in the air, what did you shoot for as the best way to bring it down? The pilot?

Scott: I tried to kill the plane, not people. We heard that the Japanese shot our parachuting pilots, but I never saw that. We never shot a pilot who had bailed out. Sometimes you would fly near them and they would salute you. As for the planes, it varied. For a fighter, you fired where the wing joined the fuselage. For the bombers, you went for the engines. You didn’t want to get too close because the wounded plane would spew engine oil all over your plane. Chennault saw oil on my plane once and said: ‘Scotty, you’re a good shot. You don’t have to get in that close. Shoot from 600 yards.’ The Japanese Zero was the most manageable aircraft and an excellent plane. It weighed about 4,000 pounds, whereas the P-40 weighed more than 9,000. To kill a fighter, you had to come in behind him.

WWII: In 1943 you were ordered back to the States. Why?

Scott: I had gotten a lot of publicity, especially from an article written for Life magazine by Teddy [Theodore] White, who had called me ‘a one-man air force.’ They didn’t tell me why I was being recalled. I thought that I was being sent to Europe; but on getting back, they sent me around the country to talk to workers in the war industries factories. There was a lot of absenteeism, and they wanted a flier to jack them up. You see, at that point China was the only place we were winning on any front. The Flying Tigers were the only victors. I also spoke in churches. The Army wanted to use my recognition.

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