Flying Tiger: The True Story Of General Claire Chennault And The U.S. 14Th Air Force In China

by Jack Samson

Overview

The Flying Tigers and the U.S. Fourteenth will be the subject of a huge upcoming film from IMAX and director John Woo. The film is scheduled to start shooting in spring 2011 with no firm release date stated yet. The role of Chenault in the film is likely to be the role of a lifetime for a huge star.

 

When a sickly, half-deaf, forty-seven-year-old retired U.S. Army Air Corps Captain went to China in 1937 to survey Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese Air Force, little did the world know this would be the man to stem the Japanese tide in the Far East. Almost every military expert predicted his handful of pilots of the American Volunteer Group would not last three weeks. Yet in seven months in 1942, the AVG, fighting a rear-guard action over Burma, China, Thailand, and French Indonesia, destroyed a confirmed 199 planes, with another 153 “probables” as well. They did this losing only four pilots and twelve P-40s in air combat and sixty-one on the ground.

In this definitive biography of General Claire Chennault, veteran reporter Jack Samson offers a rare and fascinating inside look at this legendary man behind the Flying Tigers.

Unlike Eisenhower and MacArthur, Chennault was no saintly military leader. He was a chain-smoking, bourbon-drinking, womanizing man. He was the kind of leader his men knew could and did fly better than they—in any kind of plane. But first and last, he was a fighter—a tough, single-minded warrior who was never confused by who the enemy was in Asia, regardless of what the State Department thought.

Following Chennault from this command of the Fourteenth U.S. Army Air Force during World War II to the part of his life that is not well known—the intriguing postwar years in China and Formosa, where his Civilian Air Transport (CAT) became the scourge of the Red Chinese—The Flying Tiger is an extraordinary portrait of one of America’s great military commanders.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780762772834
Publisher:	Globe Pequot Publishing
Publication date:	12/20/2011
Edition description:	Media tie-in
Pages:	488
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Jack Samson, longtime CBS editor and wire-service foreign correspondent, is the author of fifteen previous books. He served with Chennault’s Fourteenth U.S. Army Air Force in China as a navigator and later returned to Asia, where he worked in public relations for the general’s civilian airline, CAT. A private pilot, Samson is official historian of the Fourteenth U.S. Army Air Force Association. 

Read an Excerpt

Excerpt from pg. 77:
In the first few months of training twenty-three men resigned—not only pilots but ground personnel as well. Some were fired for insubordination, drinking too much, or failing to fulfill their duties. Some pilots could not or did not want to fly the P-40s. Some could not adjust to the climate or the life in a strange land. Some were simply afraid of combat. Others missed their homeland and families. Chennault's feelings were summed up in a letter to the Navy requested by Lauchlin Currie. Apparently word had reached the President about resignations and he wanted documentation...
Toungoo, Burma
21 October 1941
The Chief of Naval Operations
The Navy Department
Washington, D.C., USA

Sir:
The enclosed forms cannot, unfortunately, tell the precise story behind the broken contracts of the men who have left the Group. Generally speaking, these fall into two classes. The first, and in my opinion the smaller class, is made up of men either too sanguine or too shortsighted to envisage the conditions of the service for which they were volunteering, although these were carefully explained to them.

Editorial Reviews

"Samson traces the career of this early prophet of air power who fought the Japanese and became involved in a number of controversies. After the war, Chennault continued to serve the Nationalist Chinese Government and, along with his Civilian Air Transport (CAT), provided a number of clandestine and unique air services to Asia. Samson, who served under Chennault in both the 14th Air Force and CAT, writes with affection. Recommended for most collections."
—Library Journal

"Claire Lee Chennault was a fascinating man in a fascinating time in history. This book will go a long way toward ensuring him his deserved place in that history."
—Barry Goldwater, former United States senator, on Chennault (first edition of Flying Tiger)

From the Publisher