Tigers or sharks, but always true friends

Did you know that the Flying Tigers - the legendary volunteer force that fought the Japanese in defense of China prior the US entry into World War II - should actually be called the Flying Sharks?

I learned that when I met many of the remaining Tigerspilots, nurses and support workers - at a conference near Orlando, Florida, about 13 years ago. Their numbers since have declined to just two survivors.

Turns out that as the squadron flew to and from its base, a Chinese journalist mistook the famous logo for that of a tiger's mouth, and not a shark's. He called them fei hu, which translates as flying tigers. It stuck.

That shark jaw, designed by Walt Disney's staff in California, became well-known on both sides of the Pacific. Disney later created a winged tiger as a logo for the sides of the Tigers' famed P-40 fighter aircraft.

Colonel, and later General, Claire Chennault, who briefly resigned his commission in the US military to recruit pilots and support staff to fight the invading Japanese forces, led the Flying Tigers - officially known as the 1st American Volunteer Group. In all, about 300 pilots, nurses, ground crew and cooks were carried on seven ships to a secret base in Burma, now Myanmar, for training in 1941. By mid-December of that year, the Tigers were based in South China, and they suffered attacks from Japanese forces throughout their deployment.

The squadron helped keep China and Rangoon, now Myanmar, from falling. From December 1941 to July 4, 1942, the unit shot down nearly 300 Japanese and lost about a dozen of their own.

When I met the Tigers, most in their 80s, just 36 remained and only 21 were at the conference. A couple flew with another pilot in a restored fighter, with its powerful Allison V-12 engine.

I befriended a couple of the Tigers during the conference, including one of the two women who served. Both were nurses.

Emma Jane "Red" Hanks, who passed away several years ago, used a wheelchair as she talked about the night before she married one of the pilots - when, as she and Chennault were horsing around, she ended up with a black eye. Her husband, 2nd Squadron pilot John E. Petach Jr., was killed during one of the air battles. She returned to Maryland pregnant, remarried, raised a family and completed a fulfilling nursing career helping inner-city families.

Hanks may have suffered a black eye during the war, but the cooperation between the Chinese forces and the AVG remains legend and was anything but a black eye in China-US relations.

Just last week, researchers with the Yunnan Flying Tigers Research Institute said they found a collection of 10 sites that include remnants of the Flying Tigers' Command, its encampment and the Chenggong airport, built for their use, and a storage facility nearby.

"The discovery is of important... cultural value, and these relics sites are testimony to the friendship and cooperation between the Chinese and US people," the institute's director said.

Contact the writer at keithkohn@chinadaily.com.cn