A Few Planes for China: The Birth of the Flying Tigers

by Eugenie Buchan

On December 7, 1941, the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor plunged the United States into armed conflict with Japan. In the following months, the Japanese seemed unbeatable as they seized American, British, and European territory across the the Philippines, Singapore, Hong Kong, the Dutch East Indies. Nonetheless, in those dark days, the US press began to pick up reports about a group of American mercenaries who were bringing down enemy planes over Burma and western China. The pilots quickly became known as Flying Tigers, and a legend was born. But who were these flyers for hire and how did they wind up in the British colony of Burma? The standard version of events is that in 1940 Colonel Claire Chennault went to Washington and convinced the Roosevelt administration to establish, fund, and equip covert air squadrons that could attack the Japanese in China and possibly bomb Tokyo even before a declaration of war existed between the United States and Japan. That was hardly the although present at its creation, Chennault did not create the American Volunteer Group. In A Few Planes for China, Eugenie Buchan draws on wide-ranging new sources to overturn seventy years of received wisdom about the genesis of the Flying Tigers. This strange experiment in airpower was accidental rather than intentional; haphazard decisions and changing threat perceptions shaped its organization and deprived it of resources. In the end it was the British―more than any American in or out of government―who got the Tigers off the ground. On the eve of Pearl Harbor, the most important man behind the Flying Tigers was not Claire Chennault but Winston Churchill.

Genres: History, China, World War II, War, Aviation

272 pages, Hardcover

First published November 7, 2017

Reviews

[Ralphz · Rating 2 out of 5]

What a disappointing book.

I hesitate to say “boring,” but I don’t know any other word to use.

To be sure, this author’s take on the birth of the Flying Tiger program is a challenge to the orthodoxy. She says the oft-told tale that Claire Chennault and the U.S. were the driving forces behind the establishment of the program is not true, but that Winston Churchill was instead.

That may be, and I’ll let others wrestle with her assertion (save one comment below). But the tale, as told here, is really a drag.

The author sources a couple of autobiographies plus reams and reams of recently-found documents. And she uses them, seemingly page by page, for the account. But it goes too deep for me.

For instance, did you want to know the serial numbers of the airplanes built in the U.S. and delivered to Britain and then China? Well you have them here. Want to know the dates that memos were sent and then commented on with handwritten notes? You’ve got them here.

What’s missing is interviews – and I realize that many, if not most, of the players are gone now, but maybe other experts could be brought in to give us real quotes. But since the story challenges history, I imagine there are few historians who would agree with her central thesis.

Here is another fact to weigh with this account: The author’s great-grandfather is now portrayed as having an “early and crucial” role in the creation of the Flying Tigers. Take that for what it’s worth.

I want to read about the squadron and its history, but instead we get a deep account of the government red tape surrounding it.

Others gave this book a higher rating than I did. That’s fine by me.

I received this book through Library Thing’s Early Reviews program.

For more of my reviews, go to Ralphsbooks.

[Gregory Crouch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I don’t think the author supported her thesis that Winston Churchill was the man ultimately responsible for the creation of the AVG, I do think she did good, original work in shedding light on the convoluted and complicated happenings that brought the group into existence and in pointing out Britain’s significant role.