Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1531401 in Books
• Published on: 1995-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 464 pages

From the Author
Some second thoughts about "Flying Tigers"
The Tigers were the heroes of my boyhood, during World War II, and after five years of researching and writing their history, I concluded with the words: "All honor to them."

Imagine my surprise when the survivors (with a few good-hearted exceptions) went ballistic when they read the book. The problem, of course, was that only 110-120 of their 296 "confirmed" victories could be validated in Japanese accounts of these same combats. Incredibly, of 60-odd authors who've written about the American Volunteer Group, not one had ever bothered to ask that most fundamental question: how many planes did the Japanese actually lose to the AVG, in the air and on the ground?

I could write a better history of the AVG today. (Amazingly, new information does keep cropping up, nearly 60 years after the fact.) But I'm so gun shy about the veterans' reaction that I would probably omit some references to the courage of the Japanese airmen, and also skip over some of the AVG's less glorious moments. And what kind of a history would that have been?