Flying Tigers: Other Squadron Aircraft

[TAdan]

Thanks for posting those links Doug they make for some very good reading.

[marine air]

A friend asked if we had a relative that served with the AVG. I said I didn't know of anyone. Then he presented a book with the names of the lost and a pilot with my same last name that had crashed in a PT-22/ Maybe it was actually a Ryan PT-20 or PT-21, Anyway, I always thought a cool restoration paint scheme would be one of the "not a P-40 or P-51" aircraft used in that unit.

[shrike]

Back in Ye Olden Dayes of Usenet, Erik was a regular on a few of the boards. I second the nice guy part, but also remember him being merciless with know-it-alls.

I remember one ...uhhh disagreement.... he had with Dan Ford - author of a book on the AVG - over which version of the P-40 the AVG flew and whether or not they had self-sealing fuel tanks.

The CW-21, by the way, did not have self-sealing tanks according to Shilling.

I ran across this archive of Usenet postings a long time back (circa 2001-2004) that have some posts by Erik Schilling. Some of which appear to be parts of the discussions you reference.
https://yarchive.net/mil/p40.html
https://yarchive.net/mil/ford_book.html
https://yarchive.net/mil/avg_record.html
https://yarchive.net/mil/avg_tactics.html

Some other postings that were archived:
https://yarchive.net/mil/kill_claims.html
https://yarchive.net/mil/bell_yfm1_horrors.html

The CW-21 sounded like an interesting aircraft. Too bad there don't appear to have been any survivors or much readily available information on how it actually stacked up against its contemporaries.

Doug

That's a trip down memory lane. I recall one quick exchange (clouded by the years perhaps) where someone was talking about, "This airplane was this pilot's, and that plane was so-and-so's" when Erik gently corrected him, pointing out that while they may have flown one or another more often, no one was actually assigned to a given airframe, and availability and pilot rosters meant that they often flew whatever was handy.
The OP claimed to have read every book ever about the Flying Tigers, 'What the hell do you know?'
The reply was simply, "I had to sign for them", followed by an expanded signature with most of his career spelled out.

[Dave Hadfield]

I get that all the time; people telling me things about the airplanes I'm actually flying -- and it ends up being authors quoting authors quoting authors quoting authors...

And even the veterans' autobiographies can make large mistakes. Last night I was re-reading Bud Anderson's To Fly And Fight; in it he borrows a Spitfire and relates how he had to apply left rudder to correct for yaw on takeoff because the prop turned the other way than a Mustang. (And it was a Spitfire II, not one with a Griffon.)

Dave