Pappy Boyington and 6 P-40's in China ?

[Versatile]

I read years ago that Boyington was leading a flight of 6 P-40's and ran into weather and they landed on some moutain top. Chenault was not very happy and said Pappy had to fly them out himself. Boyington flew two out and that pissed of Chenault even more and stopped him from the rest.
Any truth to the story and what happened to the AC left behind?

That is how I remember the story YMMV

[TonyM]

I read years ago that Boyington was leading a flight of 6 P-40's and ran into weather and they landed on some moutain top. Chenault was not very happy and said Pappy had to fly them out himself. Boyington flew two out and that pissed of Chenault even more and stopped him from the rest.
Any truth to the story and what happened to the AC left behind?

That is how I remember the story YMMV

Yes, you can read about the incident in "FLYING TIGERS" by Daniel Ford.

TM

[CWBuff]

Been a while since I last read Ford's book, but I seem to recall that the flight in question was a VIP escort for the Chiangs. Will dig out the book and take a looksee.

Edit: In the meantime, here's an excerpt from Pappy's book which describes what happened up to their landing.

http://liverputty.blogspot.com/2008/08/ ... cheks.html


Fade to Black...

[marine air]

Seems Pappy was selected to escort the Chinese President's VIP transport. They joined up and flew alongsde. THe problem is no one told Pappy when to break off and come home, or where the transport was going. Plus the P-40's didn't have the range of the transport and so eventually ran out of fuel.
THey descended and found a clearing on the top of the mountains. Turns out it was a cemetery. They lost 6 airplanes and Pappy got the blame. Gen. Chennault was so mad he sent Pappy up there with a contingent of workers to jack them up, extend the gear, and straighten the prop blades using sledgehammers, and then Pappy was commanded to fly them out of the grave yard and back to home base.
Pappy actually flew two of them out of there and back to base, on fumes, before Chennault stopped the process because Pappy was becoming a "folk hero" amongst the AVG. crews. He ordered the remaining aircraft dismantled and brought back via truck.

[SaxMan]

Wasn't the Ford book generally considered a revisionist history of the Flying Tigers, bordering on slander? It basically underplayed the achievements of the Flying Tigers and trumped up the Japanese pilots flying in China. Perhaps I'm thinking of another book. I recall it came out about 20 years ago and was very ill received by those who served with the AVG and were still alive at the time.

Boyington recalls the incident in Baa Baa Black Sheep, and while he never mentions Chennault by name, he does say he volunteered to fly the planes out and was later told to stop flying them as he "may be saving too much face".

[hang the expense]

Wasn't the Ford book generally considered a revisionist history of the Flying Tigers, bordering on slander? It basically underplayed the achievements of the Flying Tigers and trumped up the Japanese pilots flying in China. Perhaps I'm thinking of another book. I recall it came out about 20 years ago and was very ill received by those who served with the AVG and were still alive at the time.

Boyington recalls the incident in Baa Baa Black Sheep, and while he never mentions Chennault by name, he does say he volunteered to fly the planes out and was later told to stop flying them as he "may be saving too much face".

YOU BET.

[John Dupre]

After years of seeing that debate over Ford's book on the internet I did finally read the book. It has been a while but I think the main revisionism was over kill claims. Ford claims to have researched Japanese losses and the admitted losses don't match the claims the AVG was credited with. This seems to be on par with the research done on fighter claims world wide and to my mind does not detract from what the AVG did. Surviving AVG members did not take kindly to Ford's research as they believed it made them out to be liars thus detracting from thier accompishments. My only quibble is with the veracity of Japanese records. In a society where "face saving" was so important I wonder if a commander would really admit all the losses his unit was suffering or would some of them be classified as "operational non combat" losses. I also believe that some of the records were lost and then "recreated" post war through interviews with surviving Japanese officers. If that is true then there was another opportunity for face saving by the Japanese. Since the Chinese were paying cash for each confirmed victory I would think they would have been diligent in confirming victories and that was a long time claim by the AVG. I also remember that Ford did not clearly define or use "claimed" versus "confirmed".

[TonyM]

Wasn't the Ford book generally considered a revisionist history of the Flying Tigers, bordering on slander? It basically underplayed the achievements of the Flying Tigers and trumped up the Japanese pilots flying in China. Perhaps I'm thinking of another book. I recall it came out about 20 years ago and was very ill received by those who served with the AVG and were still alive at the time.

Boyington recalls the incident in Baa Baa Black Sheep, and while he never mentions Chennault by name, he does say he volunteered to fly the planes out and was later told to stop flying them as he "may be saving too much face".

As an historian who has actually written history books I would like to add to this--Sometimes people don't like the history that is written. To that I say tough effin' beans. Historians follow the evidence when they write books, even if it contradicts what was generally believed before. They don't write books to please the participants in an event or their families. They follow the evidence. I am not going to debate Mr. Ford's book or what in it some folks find disagreeable but just because some participants or their families disagree doesn't neccesarily discredit Mr. Ford's scholarship.

I have had people who disagree with my writing/scholarship call and write me too. One example was a family whose relative was a Sgt. pilot who was killed in an aviation accident in 1942. His family believed for years that he was a "test pilot" and was involved in some "secret" mission. Well the AAF documents say something different. The AAF Form No. 14 Aircraft Accident Report stated that the guy was a Sgt. pilot who was a target tow pilot who crashed in a simple stall spin accident. When I published what the evidence told me, this family went nuts. The nephew wrote me and told me basically I was full of it. He said that his family was not happy with what I had written and his cousin was really upset and angry. I told them what I had, where the documents could be found and ordered and what the report said. They still did not want to believe it. Well, what can you do? I followed the evidence; I can't help it that the history does not agree with the family's story told over the intervening decades. So just because some one disagrees with what Mr. Ford has written does not neccesarily make Mr. Ford wrong.

TM

[Red Baaron]

So just because some one disagrees with what Mr. Ford has written does not neccesarily make Mr. Ford wrong.

TM

Good post Tony. But at the same time, couldn't it also be said that just because Mr. Ford did write something doesn't neccesarily make it true? Many people still believe Martin Caidin was a cracker jack of a historian! I remember a lot of entertaining articles and letters to the editor about the book in Air Classics at the time. Most of them written by AVG members.

My problem with revisionist history (for the lack of a better name) is that many times the actual participants are pushed aside as a useful source because their recollection doesn't jive with the mission histories, government reports or other "after the fact" versions. I've had lots of friends that are combat veterans, airborne and otherwise and most have related that the "official report" often reflects how things really should have happend instead of how they did happen. What makes the official records so unimpeachable? I used to fly with a guy that was a navigator in the Air Force for many years. He always said that people would be amazed at the stuff that is left out of the after action report and intell briefings just because the crewman writing them didn't want to take the time to put them down. Sometimes they were just too tired, sometimes they didn't care and sometimes they had just flown a vanilla mission that had been flown so many times before that it wasn't worth wasting the words or ink on them. He said many times that the only thing that could be considered reliable on paper, from the airplane, was his navigation log from shooting the stars on his sextant.

Things like that are very hard to prove of course but it seems to be a pretty common theme.

[TonyM]

So just because some one disagrees with what Mr. Ford has written does not neccesarily make Mr. Ford wrong.

TM

Good post Tony. But at the same time, couldn't it also be said that just because Mr. Ford did write something doesn't neccesarily make it true?

Yes, I agree Red; he could be wrong, that is also possible. I was just posing the other side. Thanks. TM

[JOMiller]

AMEN, John Dupre, amen........

[SaxMan]

I think also more than just taking Japanese records at their word, Ford seemed to idolize the Japanese flyers. I recall one excerpt describing a mission being led by a Japanese Colonel as "an example of high level bravado".

I think one of the other reasons the Ford book was so ill received was that you also have to consider the environment that the book was released. It was really at the height of the political correctness movement at the NASM. For example, the original proposed wording for the Enola Gay exhibit at the downtown museum was revisionist to the extreme, indicating that the United States was in a "war of revenge" while the Japanese were fighting "to defend their peculiar lifestyle". The fact that this book came out at roughly the same time simply added gasoline to the fire. IIRC, Ford's book was published by the Smithsonian press, so it was like a double tweak to veterans at the time.

[Wildchild]

For example, the original proposed wording for the Enola Gay exhibit at the downtown museum was revisionist to the extreme, indicating that the United States was in a "war of revenge" while the Japanese were fighting "to defend their peculiar lifestyle".

Because, you know, the Japanese attacking a large Naval base is just "peculiar"...

P.C. retards. I wonder if they care to study the statistic's of the what-if X-Day invasion... (1,000,000 lives were predicted to have been lost)

Back on topic now, lets get down to the point. Were those P-40's trucked out of there, or are they still there?

[Dave Homewood]

I have read, and I am sure it was on this very forum or maybe the Flypast Forum, that many AVG pilots were claiming kills that were actually shot down by RAF squadron pilots, and the claimant and the actual successful RAF pilots were splitting the Chinese-paid bounty. Is there any truth in this?

As for the debate about what used to be known as commonplace stories about famous pilots/units and the differing views that subsequent historian research has shown, just read recent threads on FlyPast Forum discussing that what has been written about Douglas Bader and Robert Stanford Tuck and others over the years has eventually proven to be propagandist nonsense when properly checked out. The AVG must have been one of the USA's biggest propaganda tools in 1942, so I wonder if anything written about them back then is trustworthy.

[Dudley Henriques]

Wasn't the Ford book generally considered a revisionist history of the Flying Tigers, bordering on slander? It basically underplayed the achievements of the Flying Tigers and trumped up the Japanese pilots flying in China. Perhaps I'm thinking of another book. I recall it came out about 20 years ago and was very ill received by those who served with the AVG and were still alive at the time.

Boyington recalls the incident in Baa Baa Black Sheep, and while he never mentions Chennault by name, he does say he volunteered to fly the planes out and was later told to stop flying them as he "may be saving too much face".

I've known personally more than a few members of the Tiger organization having had them as charter members of the IFPF. Naturally the subject of Ford's book has been the topic of discussion on more than a few occasions. I also know Dan Ford.
When the book was published there was some consternation among the Tigers concerning the way the AVG was presented in the book. As the Tigers were associated with me via the IFPF I was concerned as well.
After discussing the book in detail with Lydia Rossi and Erik Shilling I read it myself.
Ford's approach to the book was in my opinion extremely detailed and meticulously researched.
Reading the work objectively my initial fears concerning Dan Ford were alleviated.
I now see what Dan tried to do was to present as close to accurately as possible, a true accounting of the AVG record. His reporting gored a few ox's for sure, but I'm absolutely convinced that his book was written in good faith and as honestly as his considerable research allowed.
There will probably always remain between the Tigers and Dan Ford some angst concerning his book. There is always angst when truth is sought concerning war history.
The bottom line on all war history is that at best the numbers and figures are not always accurate and ALL combatants are prone to misrepresentation whether intentional or unintentional.
The record of the AVG was exceptional. Of that there is no doubt. Chennault in my opinion has never actually received the credit he was due outside the inner circle that forms the fighter pilot community. There Chennault has always had the respect he earned and so well deserves.
As I said, I've known many of the Tiger organization personally; the Rossi's, Noel Bacon, George Burgard, and Erik Shilling to name a few. Bob Scott, although not AVG was a close friend for many years. A portrait of Chennault, a gift to us from Anna Chennault, hangs in our den. This being said, I don't believe Dan Ford is a revisionist of AVG history but rather a thorough historian who tried his level best to "get it right".