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Gregory Boyington

Flying Tigers Blood Chit Worn by the Flying Tigers during WWII states in several Chinese dialects to take care of the wearer and return him safely to U.S. forces, and offers a reward for doing so.

One of the most colorful and controversial members of a unique fraternity was Gregory Boyington. Boyington discovered a new world in combat aviation after several years as an instructor pilot in the U.S. Marine Corps. The combat experience he accumulated over China and Burma was nearly wasted by a bureaucracy that failed to comprehend the necessities of the new war-and was often willing to shelve talented individuals whose skills were sorely needed at the front. Boyington's methods of circumventing rules and regulations as well as his often outrageous personal conduct often proved that he was, as he admitted in retrospect, his "own worst enemy."

I had been in the Corps since 1934 and flying since 1935, and I became an instructor for both basic flight school and instrumentation. That was where I met many of my friends, including Joe Foss. I resigned my commission and accepted the job with the AVG in September 1941, since rank was slow in coming and I needed the money. The AVG was paying $675 per month with a bonus of $500 for every confirmed scalp you knocked down. In 1941 that was the same as making $5,000 a month today. And with an ex-wife, three kids, debts and my lifestyle, I really needed the work. Besides, the government knew damned well what we were doing. They set it up. That was when I learned that Admiral Chester Nimitz maintained files of all of the Navy and Marine pilots and ground crews going over. The only catch was that we had to be secret about the whole affair. We went to San Francisco, where we boarded a Dutch ship, Boschfontein, that was carrying 55 missionaries, men and women, to China. That was our cover, and it stated this in our passports, although my personal cover was that I was going to Java to fly for KLM. It was the same kind of setup the Germans had for going to Spain, and it didn't fool anyone, especially the real missionaries on board. Dick Rossi and I were pegged immediately. This is amazing, considering that I was not the only one hardly sober enough to remember our cover story and not too careful with his language.

I met Claire Chennault many times. The first time was in a village called Toungoo, right outside Rangoon, Burma. He was very impressive in appearance and commanded respect, although some of his decisions later alienated him from many of us. He was less than pleased with some of our antics, such as shooting down the telephone lines with our .45s on the train to our billets, holding water buffalo races and rodeos in the street, or shooting up the chandeliers in a bar when they quit serving us. Some of the ground crew had been caught smuggling guns for profit, and that went over like a mortar round. Our radioman had even purchased a wife from her father, and we tried like hell to keep Chennault from finding out. Once before we left for good we began having target practice by shooting at a wall, and it created a problem. A civilian representative from Allison was almost hit by a ricochet, and his report was less than glowing. One of our last stunts was to fly the Chiangs on an escort mission. Before this we were told to give an airshow, a fly-by for the benefit of the Chiangs, Chennault and some other dignitaries. We passed by so low in a rolling turn that they all fell flat on the deck. Our relationship with the RAF [British Royal Air Force] boys was also somewhat strained, since they did not think much of us on the whole. I wondered why they were so snobbish, since they were losing the war. I received more than my share of threats of court-martial, although technically we were civilians, so those threats went in one ear and out a Scotch bottle.

My opinion of Chennault began to go downhill following his orders for a greater effort in ground attack missions-missions that were costing us in aircraft and pilots for no appreciable gain. One pilot who was killed was Jack Newkirk. The 3rd Squadron was unusually busy, attacking imaginary depots and "unknown numbers of troops in the field." It was all bull. Chennault just wanted to keep the reports active once we ran out of Jap planes to tangle with. Many of the pilots refused to fly those missions, since there was no bonus in killing a tree. Chennault threatened us with courts-martial, and that really began the tide rolling against him. We were civilian specialists working for a foreign government, not his personal command. Finally, Chennault negotiated extra money for strafing, and I volunteered.

When I arrived the AVG was organized in three flights. The 1st Squadron was "Adam and Eve," which I was assigned to. The 2nd Squadron was the "Panda Bears," commanded by Jack Newkirk, while the third was the "Hell's Angels," led by Orvid Olsen. My squadron saw the least combat and was the last to really get involved. Each squadron had 20 pilots and was completely staffed with ground crews, including mechanics, avionics and weapons specialists. The rest of the staff included a top-heavy Asian administration section, whose purpose was never made quite clear to me. They always seemed to just screw things up. The only time we ever saw them was at meal time. The greatest thorn in my side personally was the executive officer, Harvey Greenlaw. This clown was not a friendly type, and he prepared the paperwork for a court-martial on me and a fellow named Frankie Croft for "conduct unbecoming officers," all because we had been holding rickshaw races with the locals. He saw us pulling these two rickshaws with the drivers sitting in luxury as our passengers. The bitch of it is we had to pay these drivers for the privilege of pulling their rickshaws. Greenlaw was still a pain in the ass even after we transferred to Kunming, China.

I simply told Greenlaw that if he made any problems for me I would introduce him to a few rounds of good old hooking and jabbing. I think I also mentioned the fact that accidents happened, and sometimes those Japanese bombs that lay around unexploded had the habit of going off unexpectedly-you never knew who might get hit. He finally got the message.

The conditions where I was staying were absolutely the worst shit-holes you could imagine. People did their toilet business right in the street. Sanitation was unheard of, and the various diseases that we witnessed were enough to convert even the most adventurous of Romeos. There were these dogs, real nasty mongrels that were wild and fed off of the dead and dying people. They were the best-fed inhabitants, but they were never really a danger to anyone, I suppose.

I began flying familiarization with the Curtiss P-40s that we had been issued, as well as the P-36 types that were around. All of us went through this training evolution. This was in November 1941. The P-40s were aircraft that we had Lend-Leased to Britain, and which had been loaned from the RAF to us again. We got the idea to paint shark mouths on them after someone found a picture in a magazine showing an RAF P-40 in North Africa painted that same way. My first flight in a P-40 was something of a show, since I had always preferred to make three-point landings in the planes back in Florida. I had the cockpit check and took off, and when I tried to land I bounced, so I slammed the throttle forward for another go around. The result was a manifold gauge that ruptured, and when I landed I was given a stern reprimand about gunning the Allison engines. I started flying combat with Adam and Eve in December, and I remember thinking when we heard about Pearl Harbor that it was only a matter of time before we would be brought back into the U.S. military.

First off we were lied to about everything. The aircraft were garbage, with spare parts a virtual unknown and the tired engines barely able to get us off the ground. Every takeoff-let alone flight-resulted in a serious pucker factor. The maps we were supposed to use were the worst I had ever seen. Whoever made the maps had either never even been to those places or was more drunk than I was when they sat down to create those worthless objects. Some points of reference were more than 100 miles off, and the magnetic declination was worthless. I remember one of the maps had a major road listed not far from a river. Flying over it, we saw that not only was there no river, but the "major road" turned out to be a series of paddy dikes. Go figure. The weather could also get you into trouble, and we had no meteorological reports, not like today, and not even as good as what we had during the Pacific campaign. At Kunming we had a 7,000-foot runway that seemed to never get completed, even after five years of constant work, not until our military came in well into the war.

Now take into account the greatest lie of all, that the Japanese pilots were pathetic and lacked good vision. I can tell you from firsthand experience that the best men ever to fly a plane in combat were the Japanese, especially the Imperial Navy pilots. Those guys were no joke. If you screwed up you were done for, end of story. We also never had radar or a modern air warning system. However, we did have a series of visual lookouts and a system of telephone relays, and-considering the hundreds of dialects and different languages on this massive line system-things still got done. Anyway, we were ordered down to Rangoon, and I managed to get there with the squadron on February 2, 1942.

The Zero was legendary in its agility, due to its light weight and turning radius. No one could turn inside a Zero, but the Zero could not catch us in a dive, which proved to be a life insurance policy. However, most of our fights were against other aircraft, like the I-97 [Nakajima Ki.27]. We developed the tactics of hit and run. Dive down from higher altitude and strike, continue the dive and convert air speed into altitude for another attack. The other plus for us was the fact that we flew three element flights, with the top cover waiting until the other two had attacked. Once the Japs scrambled to intercept us, the top cover would swoop down and pick them off. We also had the advantage of heavier armament-two .50-caliber and four .30-caliber machine guns, with later versions having all 50s against their two 7.7mm machine guns. We also had armor plate in the cockpit and self-sealing fuel tanks. The Japs had none of those, and it cost them dearly throughout the war.

We had three Curtiss Wright CW-21 Demons, designed for high-altitude interceptor duty. All three of those ships flew into a mountain on December 23, with only one pilot surviving, Eric Schilling. We had a P-40 come down during a night mission in conjunction with the RAF. It crashed into a parked car that was giving headlight visibility, and a man sleeping in the back seat was killed. The prop tore the car apart, and the other men bailed out, forgetting the guy in the back. There was also an incident where I was escorting a [Douglas] DC-2 carrying General and Madame Chiang, the same day as the airshow with a flight. We were never told the destination, so we had to shadow the transport. All six of us ran out of fuel and landed belly-up in a Chinese cemetery. We drove out in an old American truck driven by a guy who knew nothing about driving-a real odyssey, during which we were nearly shot by mountain bandits. These were feudal lords who would rather fight each other than fight the Japanese. We later recovered the aircraft, and no pilots were lost.

Once, during an air raid, while we were at the Silver Grill, a bar we used to frequent where the chandeliers became targets, I had been talking to Wing Commander Schaffer. Schaffer, who had been in the Battle of Britain, was doing some experimental night flying in a Hurricane, which was a serious boost to the Brewster Buffaloes they had in the RAF day squadron. As the bombs began to fall, we bolted out and headed for the trenches. I remember hurdling a high railing and landing in a ditch. Somehow I had unconsciously managed to grab two bottles of Scotch that survived, and I considered it an omen. Another event occurred on February 7, 1942, when Robert "Sandy" Sandell, the group leader, was killed test-flying his P-40. RAF witnesses said he inverted and appeared to be stalling, but that he recovered. It would appear that he pulled back on the stick too hard and half-rolled into an inverted crash. That was a sad day-he was a great guy. The next day only a few of us could attend the funeral due to duty requirements.

Once, during an air raid over the strip, I jumped into my P-40. To make a long story short, the maintenance had not been carried out, and I crashed, really banging myself up. I tore up my knees, and my head was split from the gunsight. I managed to crawl out of the wreckage, since I was afraid of fire, but I was barely able to make it. Meanwhile, an entire group of Chinese stood around watching, never offering to help. I was really pissed at the time, but you have to understand that these were poor people, who believed once you saved a man's life you were completely responsible for him. To make matters worse, we had a wedding one evening-one of our guys from 3rd Squadron, John Petach, got married to a beautiful lady. During the wedding I sat next to Duke Hedman, the AVG's first ace, since I could not really stand up very well. During the ceremony the air raid sounded, and I was left alone. I decided to hobble out and jump into a trench. I actually jumped off a cliff in the dark, further injuring myself and undoing the repair work that the doctors had already done. After this I was flown to Kunming and placed in the hospital. Within a few weeks I had my knees tapes up real good and began flying again. This was when Chennault had converted some of the P-40s into dive bombers, and I had had enough.

Right after we arrived in Rangoon. We took off on a "bogey" call on January 26, 1942, and we ran into around 50 to 60 Japs. We were severely outnumbered by the enemy, who were flying I-97-type fighters. They were about 2,000 feet above us and diving down. Pretty soon I was all alone, as everybody else had decided to run for the deck. I pulled over to the right to avoid the crowd, and I spotted two I-97s and closed with them. As I fired at one, the other pulled a loop over me, so I had to break off and compensate for the maneuver. I just gave up and followed suit, heading for the deck. Then I pulled up and climbed. I spotted another fighter and decided to drop the nose and close in, firing as I gained on him. Suddenly, as he was almost filling the windscreen, he performed a split-S that any instructor would have envied, and I then noticed that I was not alone-his friends had joined in. I got smart real fast and again took a dive and ran for home, no claims. When I landed I found a Jap 7.7-millimeter bullet in my arm, an incendiary that gave me a nice scar. I also found that I had been reported shot down. This first crack at the Japs was a disaster, and all of us were seriously upset with our dismal performance, especially since Cokey Hoffman had been killed. The first kill came two days after this. I got two, and the flight scored a total of 16 with no losses to us. The next kills came soon after. We had already taken off on two false alarms. Finally, on the third hop, I saw a lone I-97 and took him out over the bay at the Settang River. I got three more on one mission, two close together. The third was an open-cockpit fighter, and took a long time to go down, even after I popped a lot of shells into it. I pulled up next door and saw the pilot was dead, his arm just flapping in the breeze. I fired one well-placed burst to collect the money. At that point I had six confirmed with the AVG. [In actuality, the AVG credited Boyington with 3.5 victories.]

Two RAF Hawker Hurricane pilots had been flying above 50 Japs of the main force. They saw a P-40 and thought he would join them, but instead the AVG pilot threw himself into the whole group, with Japs all around him, guns blazing and confusion all over the place. The two Brits dropped to assist, cursing the crazy man who had started the melee. They all managed to get out of it, and the Brit I was talking to dropped a 7.7mm slug on the bar. He found it in his parachute after he landed. The American turned out to be Jim Howard, and it figured that he would get the Medal of Honor for doing the same thing against the Germans later. There were other incidents, but those were the most memorable.

They did not come any better than Lt. Gen. Joseph "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell. He was a real fighter. The candy asses sitting in Washington attending cocktail parties second-guessed his evacuation of Burma. The British really harangued Stilwell because Burma fell. They always failed to mention that he had only Burmese, Indian and Chinese troops under his command-no American or British forces-and they were not adequately supplied. Stilwell was a real soldier, and he thought no more of sharing a can of grub with an enlisted man than pulling his boots on. Few people have earned my respect. He's one of them. This was when we were evacuating Burma as well, and we learned that one of our mechanics had purchased a mascot, a tame leopard. We used to play with it, although I was never completely convinced that the animal would not hurt one of us. We played with it anyway to keep it user friendly, and it was always well fed.

The AVG was being disbanded by July 4, 1942, and Chennault informed us that we all were to be inducted as lieutenants in the Army Air Corps, regardless of past affiliation. I did not agree with that arrangement, especially since I was the only regular pilot and the rest were reservists. I had a major's commission waiting in Washington with the Marine Corps, and I was not about to sacrifice my gold wings for dead lead. I mentioned the written agreement, but Chennault was having none of it. Besides, majors make more than lieutenants, and when I heard about this from Chennault, my Sioux-Irish blood began to boil. I was not alone, either. Besides, Chennault had pissed me off when he placed a two-drink maximum on my nights out. He never said how large or small they had to be. He even had spies watching me. He was also less than pleased by the fact that we all enjoyed the company of the local girls, and I was no angel. I suppose we did not pass his morality test or something. Another thing that irritated many of us was when the incompetent administration staff told us that we could not get paid for our kills, or even for our monthly back pay, because they had lost some of the after-action reports. I knew damned well that they were not lost. I just wanted to know who was collecting our money, or if Chiang Kai-shek was too cheap to pay us once he knew we were all going back into American uniforms.

I said to hell with them and caught a plane to Calcutta along with three other AVG men, all of them bound for the Gold Coast of Africa to ferry new P-40s. I was more afraid of dying in that DC-3 over "the Hump" with ice clinging to the wings and propellers than I had been when I had a few dozen Japanese fighters around me. I made Bombay, then found that Chennault had issued an order banning me from U.S. military transports and directing that I be drafted into the Tenth Air Force. Well, not to be outdone, I boarded a ship, SS Brazil, which was headed for New York, via Cape Town. I wish I could have seen the look on Chennault's face when he learned I was Stateside.

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek was a legalized bandit, stealing what was not nailed down while pretending to command the Chinese army fighting the Japs. Madame Chiang was the brains of the outfit. None of us really had much respect for him, but his money was good when it was paid.

I landed in New York Harbor in July, caught a train straight for Washington, D.C., and placed a letter of reinstatement, citing my agreement with Nimitz. I was told to go home and await orders, so I did. After a few months I went back to my job of parking cars, the same job I had in college. I later learned that my orders were delayed, due to a personal grudge held by someone. All 10 of us former Marines who fought with the AVG were in the same boat. In November I finally sent an express letter demanding a resolution to the problem, and three days letter I was ordered to San Diego.

AVG Colours & Markings Created by Gen. Chennault, the AVG was manned by pilots drawn from the peacetime U.S. military. Known as the "Flying Tigers," they fought bravely in their distinctly painted P-40 fighters, facing overwhelming odds in Burma and China. Here photos and documents directly from surviving "Flying Tigers."

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