'War history as it should be written!' -- The Hook

Flying Tigers: Claire Chennault and
His American Volunteers, 1941-1942

"During the dark, early days of World War II, when the Imperial Japanese army, navy, and air force were running roughshod over Asia and the Pacific, it seemed that nothing could stop them. Only a small band of American mercenary fliers based in Burma and known as the Flying Tigers, led by a leather-faced fighter named Claire Chennault, seemed able to challenge and defeat the Japanese....

"The exciting story of this legendary fighting force that wore American uniforms but Chinese insignia is told in Daniel Ford's definitive history of the legendary Flying Tigers. Every page contains a new tidbit of information and rich, long-forgotten detail. -- World War II magazine, November 2007

• Read the preface
• Read Chapter 3: 'Too Good To Be True'
• Bibliography and chapter notes
• Additions and corrections
• See the cover up close
• Order of Battle tables for the Burma campaign
• What the reviewers are saying
• About the author
• Chris Shores on the subject of AVG victory claims

Earlier this year, Jon Guttman wrote in Aviation History: "The honest intentions behind Ford's scholarship have also quelled some of the surviving Tigers' fury, a suggestion in itself that the upgraded Flying Tigers is worth having."

Ah, if only that were true! There's a comical exchange on the AVG veterans' message board, in which one Richard Barthel announces that he has found a "false fact" in the book: "He claims the Japs had 754 or 745 aircraft at the start of the air war." In fact, the Japanese had nearly 2,600 warplanes in the first week of December 1941, as I write on page 90. Mr. Barthel's numbers are totally bogus; he must have plucked them out of the air, since they appear nowhere in the book. What can one do in the face of such solemn ignorance?

On December 7, Asahi News in Tokyo will broadcast a "Scoop Special" about how the US planned to bomb Japan from China, thus proving that the Pearl Harbor attack was purely in self-defense. Tomoko Nagano, meet Richard Barthel! You two will have much to talk about.

Blue skies! -- Dan Ford