Interviewing Flying Tiger ace and CNAC stalwart Joe Rosbert

Looking back, I knew less than I thought about the story that would become China’s Wings when I sold the proposal in the spring of 2004, but one thing I did recognize was that my immediate priority was interviewing AVG ace and CNAC stalwart Joe Rosbert.

I’d heard other CNAC veterans talking about Rosbert’s scarcely-believable survival at reunions, and I’d read the “Only God Knew the Way” story that appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in February, 1944, but because aspects of the Saturday Evening Post version didn’t sit right with my writerly intuition, I wanted to hear it from the man himself. I also knew that Joe Rosbert wasn’t in good health, so as soon as I could fix the details, I flew to Houston to interview him.

[image error]We met in the Omni Hotel in Katy, Texas, and, as usual, I arrived early. I stood up to greet Joe as he shuffled across the lobby on the arm of his son, Bob. He looked very fragile, and it took a long time to get him settled.

Rosbert had volunteered to help China fight the Japanese in the year before Pearl Harbor, when few others Americans were willing, and his gnarled, veined hands that struggled to steady a coffee cup had once gripped the controls of an AVG P-40 as he battled the Japanese in the skies of Asia in the first half of 1942. He joined CNAC when the Flying Tigers disbanded, and he helped pioneer the Hump flying until he crashed into the Himalayas in April, 1943.

And then Joe Rosbert proceeded to lay on me the very best survival story I have heard in my life.

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I started writing as soon as I got back to California. Joe and I did a series of follow-up telephone interviews, and when I’d finished my draft, we did several fact-checking sessions over the telephone.

Here’s a photo of Ridge Hammell and Joe after they staggered out of the mountains, 47 days after their crash — long after they’d been given up for dead.

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Sadly, we lost Joe Rosbert not long after I’d completed writing his story.

I was very happy to receive an email a few days ago from Joe’s son, Bob, in which he passed along the Omni photos above (I’d never seen them) and also said how much he and his son Cameron, (Joe’s grandson) have enjoyed China’s Wing, and he wrote that he “felt quite honored by the respect you showed toward the patriarch of the Rosbert family. My Father would be very proud of you!”

Bob told me that started one afternoon and read throughout the night until he finished.

(BTW, should you ever want to make a writer feel good — that’s how it’s done.)