Flying Tiger Poster

Flying Tigers was the popular name of the 1st American Volunteer Group (AVG) of the Chinese Air Force in 1941–1942. The pilots were United States Army (USAAF), Navy (USN), and Marine Corps (USMC) personnel, recruited under Presidential sanction and commanded by Claire Lee Chennault; the ground crew and headquarters staff were likewise mostly recruited from the U.S. military, along with some civilians. The group consisted of three fighter squadrons with about 20 aircraft each. It trained in Burma before the American entry into World War II with the mission of defending China against Japanese forces. Arguably, the group was a private military contractor, and for that reason the volunteers have sometimes been called mercenaries. The members of the group had lucrative contracts with salaries ranging from $250 a month for a mechanic to $750 for a squadron commander, roughly three times what they had been making in the U.S. forces.