Flying Tigers

released 1942 by Republic Pictures, black and white 35mm negative, Academy 1.33:1 screen ratio, mono sound, 102 mins.. DVD released 2000 by Artisan in black and white with Dolby Digital 2.0 sound re-mix.

Claire Chennault, from Life 1942/08/10

John Wayne, from Ricci

Production:

Directed by David Miller
Written by Kenneth Gamet and Barry Trivers
Produced by Edmund Grainger
Original music by Victor Young
Cinematography by Jack A. Marta
Film Editing by Ernest J. Nims
Art Direction by Russell Kimball
Set Decoration by Otto Siegel
Special Effects by Howard Lydecker

Cast:

John Wayne as Jim Gordon
John Carroll as Woody Jason
Anna Lee as Brooke Elliott
Paul Kelly as Hap Davis
Gordon Jones as Alabama Smith
Mae Clarke as Verna Bales
Addison Richards as Colonel Lindsay
Edmund MacDonald as Blackie Bales
Bill Shirley as Dale
Tom Neal as Reardon
Malcolm 'Bud' McTaggart as McCurdy
David Bruce as Lt. Barton
Chester Gan as Mike
Jimmy Dodd as McIntosh
Gregg Barton as Tex Norton
John James as Selby
Charles Lane as Mr. Raffkin
Tom Seidel as Barratt the new flyer
Richard Loo as Dr. Singh
Richard Crane as Airfield radioman
Willie Fung as Jim the waiter

Notes:

"Recruited with other Americans as an instructor and adviser for the Chinese Air Force, Chennault was forty-four when Japanese marines landed at Shanghai in September 1937. (He was born September 6, 1893, three years after the birthdate generally ascribed to him.) He seemed a generation older, his faced seamed and his hearing dimmed from years of flying open-cockpit fighter planes, and his lungs wracked by bronchitis -- the penalty for a two-pack-a-day addiction to Camel cigarettes. The U.S. Army had forced him to retire, supposedly because of his health, but more likely because of his gadfly insistence -- against the wisdom of the time -- that fighter planes could destroy incoming bombers before they reached their target. Though only a captain in the army reserve, who had never served at a rank higher than major, Chennault in China gave himself the honorific of "colonel." He became a favorite of Chiang Kai-shek's Wellesley-educated wife, the beautiful, clever and unscrupulous Soong Mei-ling. And Chennault was captivated by Madame Chiang, "who will hereafter be 'The Princess' to me," as he pledged in his diary. Chennault's theory of "defensive pursuit" was quickly proved in the air over Hangzhou and Nanjing, as Chinese fighter pilots cut a murderous swath through unescorted enemy bomber squadrons. As Chiang's chief of staff for air, Chennault could call upon a small cadre of Americans who knew and loved him from their service in the U.S. Army Air Corps -- most notably, "Luke" Williamson and Billy McDonald. They had been Chennault's wingmen in the Flying Trapeze, an army precision-flying team that prefigured the Thunderbirds of today." (quote from Annals of the Flying Tigers)

Sources:

Credits from the IMDB for the title Flying Tigers
American Volunteer Group the official home page of "The Flying Tigers"
Annals of the Flying Tigers
Flying Tigers from USS Kidd Maritime Center in Baton Rouge LA
Fei Hu: Story of the Flying Tigers TV dcoumentary from PBS aired February 22, 1999.
George Burgard's Flying Tiger diary
John Wayne from Kevin Dolph
Ricci, Mark. The Films of John Wayne. Secaucus NJ: Citadel Press, 1970

A Chinese soldier guards a line of American P-40 fighterplanes, painted with the shark-face emblem of the "FlyingTigers," at a flying field somewhere in China, 1942, from NA

One of the redoubtable "Fliying Tigers" ready to take off from an Alaskan point in a Curtiss P-40 (Warhawk) fighter plane., from NA

Landing wheels recede as this U.S. Army Air Forces Liberator bomber crosses the shark-nosed bows of U.S. P-40 fighter planes at an advanced U.S. base in China, from NA

Flying Tigers, from NA

AVG in Burma, from ILN, 1942/04/25

map of Japanese attack in Burma, threat to Burma Railroad to Lashio and to Burma Road to Chungking, from ILN, 1942/02/28

revised 3/10/02 by Schoenherr | Filmnotes | World War II Timeline