Mere months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D.
Roosevelt sent a volunteer group of American airmen to the Far East,
convinced that supporting Chinese resistance against the continuing
Japanese invasion would be crucial to an eventual Allied victory in
World War II. Within two weeks of that fateful Sunday in December 1941,
the American Volunteer Group -- soon to become known as the legendary
"Flying Tigers" -- went into action. For three and a half years, the
volunteers and the Army Air Force airmen who followed them fought in
dangerous aerial duels over East Asia. Audaciously led by master
tactician Claire Lee Chennault, daring pilots such as David Lee "Tex"
Hill and George B. "Mac" McMillan led their men in desperate combat
against enemy air forces and armies despite being outnumbered and
outgunned. Aviators who fell in combat and survived the crash or bailout
faced the terrifying reality of being lost and injured in unfamiliar
territory.
Historian Daniel Jackson, himself a combat-tested pilot, recounts the
stories of downed aviators who attempted to evade capture by the
Japanese in their bid to return to Allied territory. He reveals the
heroism of these airmen was equaled, and often exceeded, by the Chinese
soldiers and civilians who risked their lives to return them safely to
American bases. Based on thorough archival research and filled with
compelling personal narratives from memoirs, wartime diaries, and dozens
of interviews with veterans, this vital work offers an important new
perspective on the Flying Tigers and the history of World War II in
China.
