TP,
Any surviving members of the
Flying Tigers may take issue with your thread title
"
Flying Tigers was the popular name of the
1st American Volunteer Group (AVG) of the
Chinese Air Force in 1941-1942. They were mostly former United States
Army (USAAF),
Navy (USN), and
Marine Corps (USMC) pilots and ground crew, recruited under
Presidential sanction and commanded by
Claire Lee Chennault. The group consisted of three
fighter squadrons with about 20 aircraft each. It trained in
Burma before the
American entry into
World War II with the mission of defending China against
Japanese forces. Arguably, the group was a
private military contractor, and for that reason the volunteers have sometimes been called
mercenaries.
The members of the group had lucrative contracts with salaries ranging from $250 a month for a mechanic to $750 for a squadron commander, roughly three times what they had been making in the U.S. forces."