Chapter Two

“He Was Restless and Lonesome”

A history of the American Volunteer Group—the organization Boyington was about to join—describes “America in the winter of 1941 [as] emerging from behind the blindfold fastened on its eyes by years of peace, of wishful thinking, and isolationist oratory.”¹ The book, written only months after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, has an immediacy that later works lack, for the author viewed events through the shaded prism that only active participation in the events being described can produce.

The prewar world that Boyington inhabited offered a strange concoction of idealism and realism mixed with a touch of Alice in Wonderland. For much of the 1930s, while Adolf Hitler was threatening to drag Europe into war, the Japanese were quietly embarking on their quest to dominate the Pacific. Franklin Roosevelt, although not unaware of events in the Far East, was hamstrung by the need to wrest his nation out of the Great Depression and hampered by a vigorously isolationist Congress. Prior to December 7, 1941, his available courses of action were few.

Sources of friction between Japan and the United States existed long before the war between the two nations actually began. As early as the late 1800s, American politicians were proclaiming America’s “manifest destiny” to expand beyond its continental borders into the Pacific. They viewed with greedy eyes the lucrative natural resources in the Orient, and intended to implant and maintain an economic presence in the region. American manufacturers longed to have a ready market for the vast amount of goods their factories churned out.

Japan’s role in the Pacific and Far East was far more complex than that of the United States. Japan yearned to be the dominant nation in the region, but Great Britain and other colonial European countries controlled many of the area’s natural resources. Only Japan stood as an Asian challenge to European mastery in the region. Many Japanese believed that achieving a leading position in the Orient would guarantee the nation’s survival, while accepting an inferior status would relegate Japan to the world’s backwaters.

Unlike the United States, which enjoyed spacious land into which its population could spread, Japan existed inside a tiny area about the size of Montana framed by enormous expanses of water. Approximately 80 million people lived in Japan in the 1920s. The more its population increased, the less space became available. Continued growth would have to occur at the expense of other nations. China, with its vast stretches of land, stood as the obvious choice.

“The people are filled with disquiet”

The initial aggression that culminated in World War II in the Pacific occurred on September 18, 1931, when a bomb exploded along the Japanese-controlled South Manchuria Railway near Mukden, Manchuria. Officers of the Kwantung Army, as the Japanese force in the region was called, immediately launched an invasion to overrun all of Manchuria, which they quickly seized and renamed Manchukuo. The Japanese threat to China’s existence had taken stark and violent form.

Other nations, including the United States, condemned the move. When the League of Nations refused to recognize the puppet state of Manchukuo, Japan withdrew from the organization in 1933 and continued to exploit its new possession. Military force against Japan was not an option because many nations were battling the severe economic problems stemming from the 1929 Wall Street crash. The leaders in Japan, as well as Hitler and Mussolini in Europe, saw this refusal to take action as timidity and embarked on a bolder strategy as the decade unfolded.

A more serious incident occurred on the Asian mainland on July 7, 1937, when Japanese soldiers opened fire on Chinese troops at the Marco Polo Bridge near Peking, China. Who fired first is unclear, but the Japanese army used the incident as justification to unleash a huge offensive against Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese army. Chiang’s army faced nearly insurmountable obstacles. Within weeks the Japanese army had pushed the poorly trained and underequipped forces toward the interior of China, leaving many key Chinese coastal cities open to Japanese invasion.

Relations between the United States and Japan worsened in December 1937 when a squadron of Japanese aircraft attacked the U.S. gunboat Panay as it was removing the last of the American embassy staff from the besieged town of Nanking. Though American flags clearly marked the sinking Panay as belonging to the United States, the Japanese pilots continued their assault. Two American sailors and one Italian journalist were killed in the attack, which a news reporter filmed as it was occurring.

Politicians and citizens in the United States reacted angrily to the incident, and for a while the two nations appeared on the verge of warfare. Franklin Roosevelt, knowing that he could do little to assert America’s power in China, wanted to avoid engaging in hostilities over a single vessel. The Japanese government likewise hoped to avoid conflict with the United States for two reasons: Japan was already embroiled in China, and the United States might halt the shipment of valuable scrap iron and oil to Japan. With neither side looking for a scrape, a peaceful solution emerged. When Roosevelt demanded that Japan offer a public apology and pay more than $2 million in damages, Tokyo agreed, and Roosevelt diplomatically accepted the explanation that the Japanese pilots had incorrectly identified the Panay as a Chinese boat. Though both sides avoided war at this time, the affair soured relations between Japan and the United States.

Chiang Kai-shek steadfastly refused to negotiate surrender terms with the Japanese, even though his troops were faring poorly in the field. In October 1938 he withdrew farther into China’s vast interior, moved the country’s capital from Peking to Chungking, and created an alliance with his Communist opponent, Mao Tse-tung. The two bitter enemies—battling for control of their homeland—united in the common cause of repelling the invading Japanese. Despite being impeded by inferior weaponry and training, the Chinese fought admirably. The Japanese reacted to the resistance swiftly and brutally. Though they stalled at Shanghai, where Chinese forces fought for three months and inflicted 40,000 casualties, the Japanese army quickly overran other major cities. Bombers roamed the skies almost at will against the outnumbered Chinese air force. “Japanese bombing goes unchallenged,” moaned Chiang Kai-shek, “and the people are filled with disquiet.”²

The United States protested these criminal acts against a nation with whom it shared sentimental bonds developed by American missionaries who had long worked in China. Since no nation was willing or able to mount military action to deter the Japanese, however, the protest achieved nothing. The Japanese continued to plunder China at will.

By the late 1930s Roosevelt had almost irrefutable evidence that sooner or later the United States would be engaged in war with either Germany or Japan. Beset by economic problems and leading a nation whose citizens wanted to avoid overseas entanglements, Roosevelt had to adopt a cautious approach in which he could gradually awaken his fellow countrymen to the existing dangers and in which he could slowly build America’s military might.

With Hitler’s speedy defeat of France and the Netherlands in 1940 and his invasion of Great Britain imminent, Japan saw an opportunity to seize European possessions in the Pacific and gain control of their valuable resources. In September 1940 the Japanese signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy. The agreement bound each party to declare war on any nation not currently involved in a war against one of the three should it launch an attack against a signer of the pact. The trio hoped this alliance would deter the United States from entering the conflict.

Tokyo then pressured a weakened France into allowing the presence of Japanese troops in Indochina, ostensibly to protect their southern flank in China. In fact, Japan was hoping to gain possession of Indochina’s vast natural resources and a base from which to push westward and southward against British-held Burma and Malaya. When Japanese troops moved into Indochina in July 1941, President Roosevelt cut off all trade with Japan, including the flow of oil, vowing to maintain the embargo until Japan withdrew from both China and Indochina and renounced the Tripartite Pact.

In the hope of acquiring more aid, China dispatched a delegation to the United States that included Claire Chennault, a former Army Air Corps captain who had resigned to become a colonel in the Chinese air force and air adviser to Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang knew that if he was to continue the fight against the Japanese, who by now had seized roughly one-third of China, he had to maintain the vital flow of supplies that entered the nation along the southern road that meandered through Burma and into China. Badly needing an air arm to protect the Burma Road, Chiang ordered his delegation to seek planes and pilots that might be employed in such an endeavor, certain that with modern bombers and fighters in his possession he could not only defend his homeland but launch strikes against Japan itself.

The Chinese believed they were, at least in part, fighting America’s war. The U.S. public, however, was not prepared to accept Chennault’s ardent arguments that current Chinese military strikes against the Japanese would preclude the need for future American action. Many civilians simply could not accept that the Japanese, whom they considered a nearsighted, short-statured, inferior Oriental people, could pose any significant risk to a Western power. Despite his most passionate statements against such stereotyping and extolling the superiority of the Japanese-made Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter over anything the Allies had to offer, Claire Chennault could never overcome the prejudicial views that blinded his countrymen. In any event, Americans believed that the most serious threat to the United States came from the other side of the world, in Europe, where Hitler and his Nazis threatened to topple democratic governments.

Chennault’s proposal for increased aid to China initially faced stern opposition from George Marshall and other top military officials, who felt that the United States would be best served by retaining every one of its trained aviators. America faced a potential war of its own, and sending aircraft and skilled pilots to the Far East would only weaken the nation’s ability to respond. But with the support of Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau and Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, who sided with Chennault, Roosevelt secretly agreed to send one hundred Curtiss-Wright P-40 fighter planes to China. In April 1941 he also signed an executive order that authorized officers and enlisted men to resign from the military to fly in Burma against the Japanese.

Roosevelt resorted to subterfuge to make the aid possible. Since the United States was not then at war with Japan, he could not openly support active programs helping one side. Instead of sending U.S. military personnel to run the operation, Roosevelt worked through an intermediary. William Pawley, an airplane salesman who owned an aircraft factory in China, suggested that the government secretly utilize his company as a way of shifting skilled pilots and planes to the Far East. The pilots would resign from the U.S. military and accept posts with the American Volunteer Group (AVG), a unit that would fly for a dummy corporation set up by Pawley. That way, should any pilot be captured in action against the Japanese, Roosevelt could deny all knowledge in the matter. Thus was born the Central Aircraft Manufacturing Company (CAMCO), a New York-based corporation outwardly involved in Far East trade but actually serving as a cover for American aid to China. To attract pilots, CAMCO offered an astounding salary plus a bonus for each Japanese aircraft destroyed.

Gen. Hap Arnold, head of the Army Air Corps, and Rear Adm. John Towers, chief of the Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics, still objected to the program, which removed one hundred top aviators from the military’s rolls when they were most needed at home, but they could do little in light of President Roosevelt’s support for the AVG. Some base commanders likewise protested when Chennault’s recruiters suddenly showed up at their airfields and swiped their top pilots, but their objections were quickly shunted aside.

“I would be certainly free of debt”

The situation seemed ready-made for Boyington. He needed money and longed to escape the pressures of family and the military; the AVG offered both. The summer of 1941 had been one of the lowest periods of his life. With a touch of exaggeration and a large amount of self-pity, he later stated that the only friend he had left was his dog, Fella. “Many people wondered why the dog and I were so inseparable. As I look back on this, I realize that I was down to my last friend.”³

That attitude would not work in Asia, though. He was about to join an organization that, while it handed him the means to ease his financial crisis, also placed him among a group of superb pilots to whom self-pity was anathema. Performance, not words or attitude, was all that mattered. The other AVG men knew nothing of Boyington. His time in the Marines and his love of aviation meant little to these experienced pilots. Boyington would gain their acceptance with what he did in the skies over Burma and China, or not at all.

During the spring and summer of 1941, Colonel Chennault dispatched recruiters to seventeen air bases throughout the country. He instructed his recruiters to accept only men with at least two years of flying experience, preferably in the military; between the ages of twenty-two and twenty-eight; who could display initiative and leadership within the restrictions of discipline; and who loved combat. Armed with the dual enticements of an ample salary and prospects for combat, the recruiters scoured air bases for individuals matching that description. To groups large and small the recruiters explained that the men they hired would embark on a mission shrouded in secrecy—they were, after all, Americans heading into battle for another nation while their own country remained neutral—but with the approval of top government officials. They described the fighting in China, where Japanese forces had pushed Chiang’s military deep into the interior, seized most of the important cities along the coastline, and devastated the outmatched Chinese air force. With the aid of men like themselves, however, volunteers eager for aerial combat, the Chinese could halt the Japanese advance in China, ensure that vital supplies continued to pour into the nation along the Burma Road, and tie down Japanese forces that might otherwise be used elsewhere. In the process the men would gain valuable experience in combat flying that would be priceless when the United States entered the fighting. Not only would they form a cadre of experienced pilots, these men would be able share their talents and knowledge with other, less experienced aviators at a time when they would most be needed.

The lucrative financial inducements proffered by the recruiters gained everyone’s attention. Pilots would receive the fantastic sum of $600 a month—double and triple what most of the men made—a stipend that rose to $750 for squadron commanders. In addition, travel expenses and living quarters would be provided, and each man would receive one month of paid leave. In what should have made Boyington and the other volunteers wary, recruiters added that pilots would receive an additional $500 for each Japanese aircraft they destroyed. The sole negative feature, besides the secrecy, was that Chennault could dismiss any man for insubordination or excessive use of alcohol or drugs.

Like Boyington, most of the men who joined the AVG signed on for the money and the adventure, although some volunteered out of a desire to help the Chinese or to take advantage of the opportunity to defend democracy. Joseph Alsop, a writer, thought he could find his next big story in Burma. Charles Bond jumped at the chance to gain combat experience that would help him acquire a regular commission when the time came to return to the U.S. military. Chuck Baisden wanted a crack at the Japanese. Though Baisden admitted to a lack of knowledge about world affairs in the book he later wrote about his adventures, he also noted, “I did have the feeling that the Japanese were the bad guys. I also knew this was a great opportunity to have an adventure and get paid for it, so I decided to sign up.”⁴ Recruiters even signed up four women—two nurses and two administrative assistants.

After listening to a presentation at Pensacola’s San Carlos Hotel by Richard Aldworth, a veteran of the famed Lafayette Escadrille, a similar volunteer organization that operated during World War I, Boyington joined the AVG on August 4, 1941. Aldworth’s sales pitch was not entirely accurate. He told Boyington and the other recruits, for instance, that “if we ran into any enemy military planes and fighters, that we would have better equipment than they had, much faster, and much more maneuverable, higher rates of climb, more speed, and that Japanese pilots were not mechanically inclined like the American pilots.” What Aldworth said next was obviously based on the common stereotypes that then existed about the inadequate flying skills of Japanese aviators: “The Japs are flying antiquated junk over China. Many of your kills will be unarmed transports. I suppose you know that the Japanese are renowned for their inability to fly. And they all wear corrective glasses.”

Boyington doubted the veracity of Aldworth’s statements about the Japanese, but it did not matter to him whether he faced the best or the poorest pilots in the world. The nature of the competition paled in light of the true attraction for him—money. “It was about three times as much as I was making in the service as a monthly salary plus the fact that we would be rewarded with a $500 bonus for every plane that we shot down. I could mentally calculate in a very short time that I would be certainly free of debt and have a nice little nest egg.” Boyington signed for no other reason than the dollar, a compelling motivation in light of “fatal gap between his income and accounts payable.”

Boyington agreed to serve for one year, with the proviso that at the end of that time he could return to the Marines without loss in rank. Since the United States was not then at war with Japan, he and the other military personnel had to leave the service. “If we had not resigned, this would have been committing a war-like act on Japan to send military pilots over,” he later said. He was told that his records and those of the other AVG members would be kept in a safe, and “that we would be reinstated without loss of [rank], meaning if there was an advance in rank while we were gone, that we would be put right back where we would have been had we not gone on such a mission. So, this all sounded good.”⁵

Boyington officially tendered his resignation on August 8, then spent the next month making arrangements for his departure. On September 12, 1941, two and a half months before the bombing of Pearl Harbor stunned the nation into war, Boyington left for San Francisco, where he joined other AVG men for the long ocean voyage to Burma.

“Appointments of the ships are excellent”

Although the program was supposedly kept secret, few things pass through Washington, D.C., unnoticed—by domestic or foreign sources. Time magazine had already begun reporting on the AVG, and the day the first collection of pilots left California aboard a Dutch ship, Japanese radio reported the departure of American pilots for China. The radio commentator boasted that despite the dearest hopes of Chennault and Chiang Kai-shek, the Japanese navy would sink the ship long before it reached Burma’s shores. As often occurred in the war, however, Tokyo’s boasts failed to materialize, and the first and second groups safely found their way to the Far East.

Boyington settled his affairs at home and waited for word sending him and the third detachment west. In early September he received a telephone call explaining that an airplane ticket for San Francisco had been mailed to him. On arrival in that city, he was to register at the St. Francis Hotel. The caller instructed him to say nothing about the AVG. On the hotel’s registration form he was to declare that he was embarking overseas for missionary work. Other AVG members, such as Charlie Bond, listed their occupations as clerks, artists, acrobats, and musicians in attempts to shield the true purpose for their travel.

The group Boyington joined in California formed the third and final collection of pilots and mechanics that CAMCO recruiters were bringing to the Far East. The initial unit had departed in June, with a second following the next month. Once Boyington and his companions arrived in Burma, Chennault would have his full complement on station in the Far East. Boyington and the other nineteen pilots of the third group luxuriated in the amenities of San Francisco until their September 24 departure, often in one of the hotel’s bars or lounges. While they wasted no time enjoying the city as they waited, they looked forward to reaching Burma and joining their brethren, who had already begun learning to fly the fighters the AVG would use against the Japanese.

At 1:00 PM on September 24 Boyington stood on the deck of the Dutch ship SS Boschfontein and watched as the ocean liner steamed beneath San Francisco’s famed Golden Gate Bridge, veered out into the Pacific, and set a course toward Hawaii. The Dutch crew and Javanese stewards and waiters made every effort to ensure that each passenger—AVG men made up only a portion of the ship’s manifest—enjoyed the trip. Exquisite food and abundant alcohol probably did more to guarantee a pleasant voyage, although the large party of actual missionaries—not the fake one Boyington pretended to be—focused on the food rather than the liquor. Few warriors have ever headed into battle in so luxurious a style.

The conditions aboard the Boschfontein helped make the lengthy ocean voyage more appealing. “Appointments of the ships are excellent,” wrote AVG member George Burgard in his diary, “but 35 days of this are in prospect, so there is much time ahead.” Like Boyington and the others, Burgard relaxed aboard the ship, but with a sense of unease. “I’m ready to fly again—the sooner the better.”⁶

Despite the opulent conditions, no member of the AVG could ignore the fact that the group was now steaming into open conflict. As soon as the Boschfon-tein left the United States, nightly blackouts from sunset to sunrise darkened the transport to shield it from prowling Axis submarines. Crew members extinguished all the lights on deck and stretched tarpaulins over the hatches. As a precaution against Japanese submarines, they refrained from dumping garbage overboard until sunset. Any submarine patrolling the area would not spot the trash floating on the surface until daybreak at the earliest, by which time the Boschfontein would have put twelve hours’ steaming time between the ship and the refuse. Officers informed the passengers that ships from the American, Australian, and free Dutch navies were within two hours of the Boschfontein at any time, and the ship adopted a course—usually zigzagging to make it harder for a submarine to track its course—set by the consulates of those three nations. Though the United States had not yet taken an active role in the war, Boyington and the AVG traveled aboard a combatant vessel and had to take extra care.

Despite the wartime conditions, levity trumped gloom and doom aboard the Boschfontein. Boyington faced an uncomfortable, though comical, dilemma when he encountered the real missionaries early in the voyage. “We were out to sea I guess about two days, and one of the younger missionaries hailed me out on the deck as I was heading towards our headquarters for the pilots, which happened to be the bar. He said, ‘Good morning, Reverend.’ I didn’t pay much attention. So, I went, ‘Oh, oh, how are you?’ I started on by again heading to the ultimate destination.”

According to Boyington, a rather uncomfortable conversation ensued. “Well, just a minute. You weren’t at our meeting last night,” said the missionary.

“No, I wasn’t,” answered a flustered Boyington. “I hope you got everything solved and accounted for.”

“Oh yes, we did. You know, we have to have Sunday services at sea.”

“Oh, yes, yes, of course we do.”

“Well, by the way, at the meeting, we decided you would be the one to give the first Sunday services.”

“Oh, brother,” Boyington later reminisced, “I hemmed and hawed, and did everything I could to get out of this assignment.”⁷ He successfully talked his way out of conducting the Sunday service, then took every measure to avoid the missionaries for the remainder of the voyage. The last thing he wanted was to stand in front of a crowd as a minister.

The other activity he planned to avoid—besides family and financial obligations—was military rigidity. He had hoped that as a member of a volunteer group fighting in an out-of-the-way spot for a different nation, he would not be subject to the military rules and strictures he found so annoying, but that paradise did not unfold on the trip across the Pacific. Curtis Smith, an ex-Marine captain who was in charge of the volunteers, insisted that the men maintain a military demeanor. “Smith had plotted the entire trip in minute military fashion, although we were no longer military men,” Boyington later complained. Smith organized duties and watches and drew up a list of infractions deserving disciplinary action. He even gathered the men in formation and called roll. “Jesus, how I dreaded Smith’s formations. I had counted on getting away from it all when I resigned, and hoped for something better instead of something worse.”⁸ Thus Boyington took his turn standing watch in the crow’s nest, peering out to sea from his perch one hundred feet above the deck. At least it gave him a better view of the numerous flying fish and other aquatic life that amused the passengers.

For most of the six-day voyage to Hawaii, the men played deck tennis or sat around in informal bull sessions, sharing scuttlebutt and alcohol in equal amounts. They also discussed reports that the Japanese had sent additional troops to Indochina, which meant more risk for them when they finally arrived in Burma. On September 30 Hawaii’s famed Diamond Head came into view. As soon as the ship docked in Honolulu, Boyington and the other AVG members rushed to the Royal Hawaiian Hotel and Waikiki Beach, in what George Burgard described as “the start of a wide open day”⁹ Unfortunately, their time in tropical paradise was limited to a few hours. Everyone had to be back on board the vessel by 4:00 PM for another lengthy leg across the Pacific—this time to Java.

“He has... been well oiled since the trip hegan”

Once the ship was beyond Hawaii, the war drew closer yet, at least in the minds of everyone on board. On October 1 the U.S. cruisers Northampton and Salt Lake City joined the Boschfontein to escort it across the Pacific. The passengers listened to an English-language broadcast from Tokyo that described the ship and its passengers, and explained why the men were headed to the Far East. The broadcast concluded with a stern warning that the Boschfontein would never reach its destination.

Facing a long stretch at sea, the American fliers relaxed into a routine of a few chores sprinkled amid much relaxation. Curtis Smith gave most of the men buzz cuts. According to Ed Overend’s diary, Boyington’s new haircut made him look like “a combination of Mussolini and Gargantua.”¹⁰

The lightheartedness continued on October 6 when the ship crossed the International Date Line and jumped from Sunday to Tuesday. “Monday—This day’s entry is a trifle hard to write—for today is a day that isn’t,” George Burgard scribbled in his diary. “Sunday night we went to bed, and then woke up Tuesday morning. The catch is that we crossed the International Date Line during the night. One bright feature is the fact that we still get $20 pay for the day even though it doesn’t exist. I wish to goodness there could be about a half a dozen of these things each month.” Despite the extra twenty dollars, Burgard also recorded feelings that he, Boyington, and the rest shared—boredom and eagerness to reach Burma. “The time seems to be passing so slowly as to be almost painful—but this will probably be corrected once we get to Rangoon and start flying. That can’t be too soon to suit me. And so good bye to the day that never was.”¹¹

When the Boschfontein reached the Coral Sea off Australia’s coast the following week, the old salts on board conducted the traditional King Neptune ceremony, an initiation rite for those crossing the Equator for the first time. Although the ceremony is normally held the day a ship crosses the line, poor weather delayed the celebration by a few days. With Lewis Bishop dressed as King Neptune, Charlie Bond as his queen, and Dick Rossi serving as the barber, everyone from CAMCO, including Boyington, suffered through a series of humiliating activities. Enjoying the festivities as much as anyone, Boyington had to approach and kneel before Neptune’s Court; avoid gagging from the rotten fish stuffed in his mouth; drink salt water; remain still as men who had already crossed the Equator covered him with a mixture of flour, water, and rotten fish soup—described by Charlie Bond as a “horrid-smelling goo”—and then sit in the barber’s chair while Rossi shaved off the paste with a wooden sword.¹² Afterward, the old salts tossed each initiate into the swimming pool and held him under water until the hapless target thought he would drown.

Some of the men became ill during the procedure, either from the foultasting mixture and rotten fish, too much alcohol, or both. Boyington, as drunk as anyone, somehow managed to remain on his feet, but his natural belligerence, fueled by liquor, almost ignited a fight with another AVG member, Robert Keeton. Despite a few scrapes and bruises, everyone had fun. Burgard recorded it as “a shindig that will long be remembered.”¹³ Few members of the AVG made it to breakfast the next morning.

The levity of October 13 proved to be but a break in the tedium that marked a Pacific voyage that was straining already frayed nerves as each day brought the men closer to combat. “Same old routine,” wrote Charlie Bond; “breakfast, reading, Chinese lesson, bull sessions, rolling dice for drinks, lunch, nap, shooting dice with Jim and George for a dime, deck tennis, sun bathing, shower, reading, evening formation, dinner, lounge, discussions, and watching the setting sun.”¹⁴ Bond ate so much that he gained twelve pounds. Other bored AVG members engaged in fights over card games and other trivial matters. Boyington believed that the short tempers were partly due to the fact that the American cruisers were no longer escorting the ship. “Four weeks out the tension mounted still higher,” he later wrote, “as we were unescorted and zigzagging all over the Pacific Ocean, it seemed. The pilots had begun to snarl at each other in earnest. A few had lost too much in card games.”¹⁵

Inevitably, the drinking gained steam, with Boyington leading the way. With time on his hands, an available bar, and facing nothing but endless days on a universe of water, Boyington could frequently be found with a glass in his hand. Though the other AVG men freely participated, Boyington’s drinking astonished his compatriots. “He has, incidentally been well oiled since the trip began and only stays sober long enough to apologize to the missionaries whom he has insulted,” remarked Ed Overend in his diary. “He is strong as an ox and when he is three sheets to the wind, insists on wrestling—with the result that the surrounding territory often resembles Coventry after a blitz. He is a good fellow with all that, and a red hot flyer.”¹⁶

The lengthy trip also gave the men time to reflect on their situation. They often gathered in clusters to chat about aviation, why they had joined the AVG, and what they expected conditions to be like in Burma. Some of the pilots, undoubtedly including Boyington, boasted of their past accomplishments, but most remained silent on that point, preferring to let their flying speak for them.

At last, on October 19, the Boschfontein reached Surabaja, Java, an important Dutch navy port. Delighted finally to reach land, the disembarking pilots exchanged tales with a group of CAMCO men who, frustrated with the poor conditions in Burma, had given up and were returning to the United States. They told Boyington and the rest that Chennault’s setup lacked organization and equipment and that the AVG would never pose a significant threat to the Japanese. Most of the new arrivals dismissed the information as nothing more than the bitter exaggerations of disgruntled men, but the angry chatter put doubts into Boyington’s mind and doubtless caused others to wonder if they had made the right decision.

During the time in Java, Boyington joined a group of men for a two-day visit to legendary Bali, a lush island two miles off Java’s eastern coast. On October 21 they drove to the port through native villages and around perilous hill roads at such reckless speed that they ran over two goats and a handful of chickens. Finally arriving at their destination without further carnage, the men hopped into a fifteen-foot sailboat for the jaunt across to Bali and a stay at the luxurious Kuta Beach Hotel on one of Bali’s most stunning beaches. “After a good drink we buzzed off to bed,” wrote George Burgard. “I was so worn out after the wild ride that I could hardly stand.”¹⁷

The next day offered both repulsion and delight for Boyington. He could not deny the island’s beauty, he later said, but he “got a little sick” when he saw a beautiful young Balinese girl in one of the villages being held on the ground “while a priest was filing off her teeth. And even now, today, I can still hear the sound of that file. I had to hurry away” Whether it was a religious ceremony or some other rite, Boyington knew he preferred the indignities of King Neptune to that tooth-filing ceremony. Fortunately, the island’s other abundant pleasures helped him to forget the sight. The men rode bicycles for much of the morning, swam in the warm waters off the beaches, attended a cockfight, observed a native dance, and stared at the gorgeous females—“No brassieres and so forth,”¹⁸ Boyington explained—who seemed to be everywhere.

Their sojourn in paradise ended much sooner than they would have preferred, but the Boschfontein was scheduled to depart Java on October 23. The group started out on the return to Surabaja, but a delay at a ferry crossing caused them to arrive after the ship had left. The men pooled their money, checked in at a local hotel for the night, and then boarded a train the next morning to meet the Boschfontein at Samarang.

The war that had once seemed so distant suddenly drew near. While the AVG men frolicked about Java, crew members installed 3-inch guns on the bow of the Boschfontein. Once the ship had steamed beyond Java and headed toward Indochina, the prospect of encountering the Japanese multiplied exponentially. The time for celebrating had ended; the time to prepare for action had commenced. “I guess these people are getting serious about the Japanese,” wrote Charlie Bond in his diary. “It made me feel closer to war.”¹⁹

“An entomologist’s paradise”

On November 4 the Boschfontein arrived at Singapore, the powerful base for the British Far Eastern fleet and the final stop before Burma. Boyington and the rest of the AVG headed for the Raffles Hotel, a five-star institution famed for pampering its customers but now on the lookout for American pilots. It seemed that an earlier group of raucous AVG pilots had done substantial damage to their rooms, and management was in no mood to endure further mayhem from Boyington’s crowd. The men were allowed to check in nevertheless, and the accommodations far surpassed their expectations.

In his five days in Singapore Boyington was struck by how the residents maintained a balance between their daily lives and a war that was conspicuously absent in the United States. On the one hand, pilot Dick Rossi arranged an invitation for the men to visit one of the world’s most sumptuous places, the palace of the sultan of Jahore, where Boyington marveled at the banquet hall that seated four hundred people while the sultan’s lush green golf course awaited the group’s enjoyment. On the other hand, signs of war were everywhere. Camouflaged gun fortifications blanketed the nearby hills, concrete walls shielded building doors and windows, air raid shelter signs were everywhere, and war bulletins covered walls and poles. The men read in English-language newspapers that the Japanese had warned the U.S. State Department that any American pilot captured while flying for China would lose all rights and be shot without delay. “Some of the boys are worried,” George Burgard noted; “others getting a trifle scared.” He added later, however, “Soon, very soon, we’ll be flying and probably fighting. Suits me 100 percent.” He ended with a feeling Boyington shared. “Let’s get going.”²⁰

On November 9 the Boschfontein pulled out of Singapore and set a northwesterly course for the Bay of Bengal. At 11:00 AM on November 11, Armistice Day, everyone paused to honor the Great War’s end, a moment that undoubtedly focused their attention on what lay ahead for them. Later that night the AVG men shifted gears and hoisted glasses of champagne to mark their final stint of sea travel.

After fifty days at sea the ship steamed up the Irrawaddy River and docked at Rangoon. Ed Pawley, representing CAMCO, greeted the men and arranged for them to receive their first payment, which many used to pay the enormous bar tabs they had amassed on board the ship during the trip. A 4:00 PM train whistled the men to their final destination, 170 miles north to the airfield at Toungoo, Burma. Boyington at long last had reached the war front.

Russell Whelan’s book about the Flying Tigers calls Toungoo “Burma at its worst.”²¹ To block out the stench wafting about the town from refuse and rotting vegetation, Boyington walked with his mouth tightly closed lest the smell make him ill. The suffocating heat and humidity bathed the men in sweat around the clock. Depending on the rains, which could be torrential, they either walked through irritating clouds of dust or tried to pull their shoes free of sucking mud that stained their clothing. The continuous stream of cargo trucks that bounced through the town’s main street ferrying valuable supplies to the city of Lashio and the Burma Road into China either kicked up dust or splattered mud. A bustling marketplace offered shops on one side of the road and open market stalls on the other.

Swarms of insects blanketed plates of food, flew up noses, and assaulted mouths and ears. Centipedes, scorpions, and cobras made it necessary for the men to take flashlights with them in their nighttime visits to the latrine, and they quickly learned to check their socks and shoes in the morning before putting them on lest an unwelcome visitor sting or bite them. When Boyington forgot to shake out his shirt one morning before donning the garment, a hidden scorpion stung him and caused a lump the size of a cantaloupe to swell up on his back.

“I can brush Toungoo aside with a few well-chosen expletives,” Olga Greenlaw, the wife of AVG executive officer Harvey Greenlaw, wrote in her memoirs. She explained that Toungoo and the surrounding region offered “all the bugs God created to fly through the air or crawl on the ground, floors, walls, ceilings, into your food, down your back, up your legs and in your hair—beetles, lice, spiders, flies and fleas, moths, mosquitos [sic], centipedes, bedbugs, ticks and a lot more you never heard of. The place was an entomologist’s paradise.”²²

None of the men with Boyington had expected to live in the lap of luxury, but these harsh conditions taxed even the sturdiest among them. The airfield at which they were based, Kyedaw Aerodrome, sat seven miles from Toungoo in a valley ringed by thick jungle. Heavy rains gave momentary relief from the sweltering heat, but as soon as the rain stopped, the humidity returned sevenfold. Claire Chennault said that the nearby jungle produced “a sour, sickening smell,” and the humidity gave “the atmosphere the texture of a Turkish bath.”²³ The mold that covered everything did not help to make the atrocious food provided by a Burmese mess contractor any more palatable.

Nor did the barracks offer much relief. The teakwood structures featured thatched roofs, screenless windows, and woven rattan walls. Men slept on beds made from rope springs and thin mattresses. Netting provided some relief from the insects, but no matter what precautions Boyington and the others took, lizards still managed to plop onto the sleeping men from above. “Breeze was more important than anything else,” Boyington recalled, and “there were nightly attacks of millions of squadrons of mosquitoes.”²⁴ Mosquitoes hardly confined themselves to the nighttime, however. So many swarmed through the windows and doors that Charlie Bond complained that “eating proved to be something of a challenge; the insects fought us for dinner and sometimes won.”²⁵ The latrines were little more than holes dug outside the shacks.

Despite a few luxuries, such as native housekeepers and a nine-hole golf course constructed by the British, life at Toungoo could in no way be considered a pleasure. The lack of mail from home and female companionship did nothing to ease the situation.

“Two strikes against him”

Boyington had not traveled around the world to sightsee and relax, though. He would have appreciated better conditions, but he was there to fight, not on vacation. More than anything he looked forward to his first combat mission against the Japanese.

The United States had to agree to certain stipulations before the British allowed them to use their airfield at Kyedaw Fighting its own war of survival with Nazi Germany but not yet involved in combat in the Pacific, Great Britain did not want to anger Japan by openly aiding China. The British let Chennault train his pilots at Kyedaw with the stipulation that he would move his base of operations to China as soon as the men were adequately prepared in the P-40 fighters. By taking that precaution Great Britain hoped to avoid an open clash with the Japanese, but events quickly dashed those aspirations. “Little did they realize that within weeks they would be clamoring for the AVG to remain in Burma,” wrote Charlie Bond.²⁶

Kyedaw was only one of the airfields the British maintained in Burma. Three others were positioned at Mingaladon near Rangoon, and a fourth was northwest of Toungoo at Magwe, 250 miles north of Rangoon. In addition to these bases Chennault and CAMCO arranged for facilities inside China, including an aircraft factory at Loiwing and airfields at Paoshan, Yunnanyi, and Kunming. Chennault intended to deploy his forces from each of these spots.

Kyedaw impressed Boyington, although after Toungoo anything would have been an improvement. One hundred pilots trained in the P-40s while two hundred support personnel battled a shortage of parts and the weather—the humidity rotted tires and caused radio equipment to deteriorate—to keep every available aircraft in the sky. One large hangar and additional maintenance and supply buildings stood beside a macadamized four-thousand-foot runway with a shorter runway close by. As a control tower Chennault used an open-sided hut eight feet square that rested on five-foot-high poles. The facility lacked a hospital, but a small infirmary with two doctors and two nurses took care of their health needs.

Boyington loved the lack of military rigidity that greeted him. Since each man had resigned from the service, no one walked around with signs of rank adorning his shoulders, although everyone knew what rank each man had previously held. Discipline largely depended on the individual. If a man treated the others with respect, he received respect in return. If not, the men had their own ways of dealing with an offender.

The pilots in the first two groups had eagerly awaited Boyington’s arrival. They knew he had been a good pilot for the Marines but wondered why a man of his advanced age—in comparison with their own, anyway—would wind up in such a godforsaken spot as Burma. Had he been forced out of the Marines? Had money trouble or an angry spouse driven him away? Above all, why would a man relinquish an officer’s commission with the Marines to fly as a volunteer for Chennault? Most concluded that Boyington was fleeing from some personal problem and decided they had best keep a close watch on the new arrival. Olga Greenlaw thought that “the boys placed two strikes against him before they ever saw him.”²⁷ Boyington reacted to this guarded reception as he had always handled awkward relationships—he shut himself off from the other pilots and used anger and rage to maintain a safe distance from them.

Olga, with whom Boyington would develop what other AVG members diplomatically recalled as a close relationship, would come to understand Boyington’s complex makeup far better than Chennault or any other AVG member. Boyington first met Olga at a bridge game at her home on the outskirts of Toungoo to which Olga’s husband, Harvey, had invited him. Boyington made an instant impression on Olga when he strutted arrogantly up to the house whistling “The Halls of Montezuma.” Olga later described the cocky Marine she saw that night as “not too tall, dressed in rain-soaked khaki shorts and unbuttoned shirt which exposed a barrel chest and bull neck supporting a square-cut face with powerful jaws, thick lips, flattish nose, broad forehead and protruding, heavy-lidded eyes. His waist and hips seemed much too slender for his massive torso and shoulders and his curly hair was wet.” She added, “There was life and vitality in every line of his face; tenderness and humor too, and his eyes sparkled alertly.” She claimed that Boyington “was the toughest of the lot and most of them were a little afraid of him.”

The beautiful and charming Mrs. Greenlaw was instantly captivated. She sensed Boyington’s unhappiness and frustration and astutely divined that what he most sought was acceptance. That understanding—especially when combined with ardor—allowed Boyington to relax in her presence over the coming weeks. He sensed that she understood him. “He became a frequent caller after that first visit,” she explained, “popping in at odd times for coffee or whatever. He was restless and lonesome.”

After many conversations Olga realized that Boyington was upset because he had not been named a squadron commander, a post commensurate with his former rank. By the time he arrived with the final group, all the top spots had been taken, thereby shutting off Boyington from a command. “I think this ruffled him,” Greenlaw wrote. “His rank and experience entitled him to something better.” Olga sensed, though, that something more was contributing to Boyington’s misery. One day she noticed Boyington staring somberly at a photograph of Olga’s nieces. “You didn’t know I had three youngsters, did you?” he asked Greenlaw. He then explained that his wife had divorced him, and that he couldn’t bring her and the children the happiness he felt they deserved. Though his ex-wife certainly had her faults, Boyington placed much of the blame on himself. “I’m no bargain to get along with, anyway,” he confided to Greenlaw.

Despite his apparent scorn for the military-many AVG members remarked that Boyington was the most unmilitary man in the group—when he was with Olga he often spoke of the Marine Corps and displayed the pride he took in being a Marine. “He’d talk by the hour about the Marines and what a great outfit it was,” she remembered. He frequently whistled the Marine Corps Hymn as he walked to his aircraft. She saw through the surface mask that Boyington wore for everyone else and realized that what he said and did often conflicted with his inner feelings, and that he loved those very things he outwardly treated with disdain.

Above all else, though, Olga understood that to be at his best, Boyington had to be in a cockpit, where only he and the plane mattered—no superiors, no debts, no unhappy wife—just Boyington alone in the skies, flying free as a bird. Without the sense of self-value he gained whenever he took to the skies, without the feeling of being needed and of contributing to something larger than himself, Boyington was a man adrift, a lost soul searching for meaning. “For quite a time he was tempestuous and unruly,” Greenlaw recalled, “and for a brief period he was nothing more than a bad boy who had to hit bottom before he could zoom back into the skies where he wanted to be—and where he belonged.”²⁸

“A person who commanded respect”

Boyington could hardly have selected a worse location than Burma to straighten out his life, or a sterner commander than Chennault. In between what would be for Boyington too few moments of aerial excitement, Burma offered mostly boredom. Claire Chennault’s stubbornness matched Boyington’s, but he was at least guided by a determination and focus the Marine aviator lacked. A gifted pilot who had once performed daring feats with a popular aerobatics team called Three Men on a Flying Trapeze, Chennault’s crusty demeanor and weathered face had earned him the appellation “Old Leatherface” from the press.

“The lean, heavily lined cheeks and forehead, tanned, sunburned, speckled, seemed to be made of worn-out leather,” wrote Eve Curie, the daughter of famed scientists Marie and Pierre Curie, of her encounter with Chennault during her world travels. “His could have been the face of a buccaneer, of a great condottiere of centuries past, or that of a sailor having spent all his life on the high seas, between the sky and the water.” Chennault was not unlike Boyington in possessing a love of adventure tinged by a pinch of the outlaw—but he differed in crucial ways. Curie noted that Chennault “hardly moved at all—but in his black, sparkling eyes, there was enough will power and enthusiasm to lift the world. What was spellbinding about him was his entire concentration on his task—on what he wanted, on what he planned.”²⁹ Curie could not have said the same of the undisciplined Boyington.

Boyington fashioned a favorable opinion when he first met Chennault, who “looked as though he had been chiseled out of granite” and “seemed to be a person who commanded respect.”³⁰ The good feelings would soon subside, though, as the two obstinate individuals butted heads. A bit of a maverick himself, Chennault realized that he commanded an unusual group of men who required a method different from military formality. While he insisted on tight discipline in the air, he took a more democratic approach when dealing with conditions on the ground and potential disciplinary issues. Thus he permitted the men to wear almost anything they preferred as opposed to requiring a common uniform. A visitor to Kyedaw might glimpse pilots and mechanics in cowboy hats and boots, silk scarves, or Russian astrakhans. Chennault often wore shorts, a sports shirt, and a mangy hat as he moved from man to man, offering advice or listening to suggestions.

He had not counted on encountering anyone as stubborn as Boyington, however, who arrived in China burdened by the heavy baggage of personal problems. Chennault could be a fair man, but he bristled at blustery, impetuous men who failed to take their duties seriously. As soon as the headstrong, independent Boyington stepped foot in Burma, a clash with Chennault was inevitable.

Boyington would be small potatoes for the former Army captain who had taken on the military establishment in the 1930s. At a time when many aviation experts believed that fighter planes should do little more than provide support for ground troops, Chennault promoted fighters as an effective air arm. Breaking with prevailing doctrine holding that bombers flying in tight formation could handily repel attacks by fighters, Chennault argued that when trained and used properly, fighters could attack and disrupt bomber formations. Chennault intended to employ fighters in groups, as opposed to the romantic World War I image of a solitary flier scouring the air for an opponent. He believed that formation tactics, in which fighters worked in pairs or teams, would be far more effective than individual dogfighting. Fighter pilots enjoyed greater firepower and maneuverability when working together, a tactic that would better enable them to swoop down on the larger, slower bombers as they lumbered toward their targets.

Top commanders in the Army Air Corps dismissed his notions, countering that the diminutive fighters had little chance against a formation of bombers. Chennault’s strategy relied on disrupting those formations. He argued that if fighters received speedy notice of approaching aircraft through radio intelligence or an advance warning system, they would have time to intercept and disrupt the enemy formations. Chennault even proved his assertions during a 1933 war game in which his fighters “destroyed” an opposing bomber formation. He gained the praise of a few air proponents, but most air generals continued to spurn his ideas.

Chennault resigned from the Army in April 1937 to accept a three-month mission to study the Chinese air force. While he was visiting Chinese airfields and factories in July, the Japanese struck Chinese forces near the Marco Polo Bridge. Soon thousands of Japanese soldiers streamed into China. Chennault, sensing an opportunity to prove his theories in actual wartime conditions, and believing that the United States would one day be pulled into the war, quickly offered his services to Chiang Kai-shek.

“My postgraduate school of fighter tactics”

Boyington’s rude awakening to the realities at Kyedaw began on his first day when the Burmese barracks servant, Joseph, awakened the new arrivals at 5:30 AM by beating loudly on a gong. Chennault had a long day planned and wanted to get the men started early. He realized that he had to work faster with Boyington’s group to bring them up to speed with the earlier arrivals, who had already enjoyed weeks of lectures and flight training in the P-40s. Upset that the new group arrived in such poor physical condition after their long, alcohol-fueled ocean voyage, Chennault intended to pound them into peak shape, in part by banning car or truck travel from Kyedaw to Toungoo and forcing the men to either walk or bicycle the seven miles. He scheduled calisthenics, baseball, and volleyball for the flabby pilots. Five men quit and returned to the United States rather than abide by the regimen. Boyington, who loved to show off his muscular physique, relished the intense activity.

Chennault had expected CAMCO to recruit more experienced pilots, but when he realized that only half had flown a fighter, and almost none a P-40, he decided to install what he called his “pilot kindergarten.” He considered it foolhardy, almost criminal, to send his men into the air against experienced Japanese pilots until they had exhibited proficiency with the P-40 and familiarity with the tactics and machines of the men they would face. During seventytwo hours of ground instruction and sixty hours in the air, Chennault and his instructors hammered the basics of flying the P-40 into his men. Boyington and his fellow arrivals sat in classrooms each morning and then climbed into P-40s in the afternoon for training flights. Chennault held his breath each time a plane lifted off. Stuck in faraway Burma, distant from supply lines, Chennault could not afford to lose a single P-40 or pilot.

Chennault’s emphasis on the basics irritated some of the pilots, especially those like Boyington who came with a solid air resume. A few bristled because Chennault thought he knew more than they did about aviation and considered them so deficient that they had to attend “kindergarten.” Boyington, fresh from his duty as an air instructor at Pensacola, chafed at being treated like a schoolboy.

“It was a rude shock to some of the A.V.G. pilots when they matriculated in my postgraduate school of fighter tactics at Toungoo,” Chennault wrote later. “Most of them considered themselves extremely hot pilots. After a long sea voyage bragging to fellow passengers about their prowess as fighter pilots, many of them were convinced they were ready to walk down the gangplank at Rangoon and begin decimating the Japanese Air Force. Some were highly skeptical of what a ‘beat-up old Army captain’ who had been ‘buried in China’ for years could teach youths fresh from official fonts of military knowledge.”³¹ His words aptly depicted Boyington, who dismissed his new commander as an oppressive tyrant. After sitting through some of Chennault’s lectures, though, the men began to realize that he knew what he was talking about and based his information on facts rather than supposition. Chennault handed out copies of captured Japanese flying manuals, sheets of tactical doctrine, information collected from interviews of seized Japanese pilots, and notes on Japanese aircraft that had crashed in China and been repaired and tested.

Charlie Bond, recognizing both Chennault’s intellect and his value to his own survival, immediately warmed to his superior. “Our key advantage was Chennault’s knowledge of Japanese Zeros and Japanese tactics, as a result of being in China for so long. He personally taught the first contingent that was sent over and then he used them to teach us. Yet at times he would come in and give us talks. Chennault was the ‘father of fighting in pairs.”’³²

Chennault’s first major obstacle was overcoming the vaunted superiority of the Mitsubishi A6M, the Japanese Zero that had performed so spectacularly in the Chinese conflict. He assured the men that each aircraft, including the Zero, possessed strengths and weaknesses. He emphasized that it was their duty to understand not only their own aircraft, but also the planes they would face in combat, so that they could utilize the P-40’s strengths and take advantage of the Zero’s weaknesses.

Chennault admitted the Zero’s obvious advantages—it could outfly and outrace almost anything then available to Chennault’s men. It could climb faster, fly higher, turn more sharply, and featured superior maneuverability. Its two 20-mm cannon and other machine guns gave the Zero a potent punch, and a Japanese pilot had boasted of the aircraft’s speed, “When we chase the enemy, we must be very careful not to get in front of him!”³³

Chennault pointed out, though, that the Zero and the Japanese aviators also had weaknesses that his pilots could exploit. He stressed that while Japanese pilots exhibited courage aplenty, they lacked initiative. The Japanese always seemed to enter battle with a set plan, and never diverted from it even when it appeared to be working to their detriment. Bombers always remained in formation, no matter how many enemy fighters descended on them, and fighter pilots invariably employed the same tactics. Chennault explained how his pilots could use these shortcomings in their favor. He emphasized that they should always attempt to throw approaching Japanese pilots into confusion, break up their formations, and make them fly by American tactics instead of their own. Once outside their comfort zone, Japanese pilots were vulnerable. Chennault also pointed out that the same lack of armor plating that made the Zero faster and more maneuverable than the P-40 made it more susceptible to bullets. The AVG pilots simply had to learn how to get close enough to inflict damage.

The unit’s chaplain, Paul Frillmann, claimed that a few volunteers left the AVG and returned home after listening to Chennault outline the Zero’s superiority, but most, including Boyington, were only more intrigued. Chennault presented a challenge; if they were the skilled aviators they claimed to be, they would not shrink from it. Besides, Chennault offered ways they could defeat the Zero. “One great service the A.VG. did for all Allied fliers was to explode the myth of the great superiority of the highly touted Japanese Navy Zero,” noted Olga Greenlaw. “Japanese tactical weaknesses were drilled into them constantly —and then drilled into them again.”³⁴ In Chennault’s hands, the Zero’s vaunted invulnerability diminished.

Time magazine recognized Chennault’s genius in an early article about him. Titled “Magic from Waterproof,” the piece described how Chennault

carried model airplanes with him. At mess, at recreation, on the field, he fished them out, put them through fighting maneuvers, figured out play after mass play to outsmart the Jap. He analyzed the enemy’s crack Zero fighter, reduced its performance to ten or eleven categories (climb, speed, firepower, etc.). Beside that record he set the performance of the old P-40, decided the P-40 was superior in two or three categories. He concentrated on these categories, and no A.V.G. man thenceforth tried to compete with the Zero except in power plays Chennault laid out for his ships.³⁵

‘What’s the matter, Captain?”

In his classes Chennault focused on the advantages offered by the P-40 while never downplaying its weak points. The plane’s lengthy nose, for instance, obstructed the pilot’s vision on takeoffs and landing, and that led to rough landings and minor accidents during aerial training. He taught the men to weave from side to side while taxiing down the runway so they could look for other aircraft. The P-40’s heavier armor plating and greater array of gun power meant that the plane could not climb and maneuver as well as a Zero, but Chennault reminded his pilots that the armor plating provided protection superior to the lighter Zero’s armor, and the additional firepower made the P-40 a lethal machine. Two .50-caliber and four .30-caliber machine guns rattled bullets at a rate the Zero’s two 7.7-mm machine guns and two 20-mm cannons could not equal. The heavier weight also enabled the P-40 to execute significantly faster dives than the Zero could make. Chennault urged his pilots to use their higher diving speed to make fast passes on the enemy, fire quick bursts, and get away. He instructed them to start their attack from a higher altitude than their quarry, dive quickly on the Japanese formation to break it up, single out one target, and shoot in short bursts. After executing the attack, the flier should then dive away, quickly regain altitude, and repeat the process.

If an enemy appeared on his tail, the pilot should immediately veer into a split S power dive, utilize the greater dive speed to elude the Zero, then regain altitude for another attack. Chennault admonished the men never to engage a Zero in a horizontal dogfight, where the Zero’s superior maneuverability gave it the upper hand. “Hit and run!” emphasized Chennault. “Hit and run, dive, and then come back to altitude.”³⁶ Above all else, Chennault told his men to fly in pairs, so that one pilot could look out for the other. If he found himself alone, which frequently happens in the mad scramble that is dogfighting, the pilot should immediately search for another flier to team with.

Chennault also cautioned his fliers against wasting their ammunition. They were to hold off firing until close in, where short bursts at vulnerable points brought down an opponent faster. “Your plane carries a limited number of bullets,” he warned. “There is nothing worse than finding yourself in a fight with empty guns.”³⁷ He added that while he recognized and valued the talents of his own pilots, “I want to pass along one warning. Do not underrate the Jap pilots. They have had four years of combat experience.” Pilot James H. Howard noted that Chennault’s early training immediately won over most of the AVG fliers, who recognized a skilled commander when they saw one.³⁸ Chennault’s tactics, which he saw as a novel way of negating superior numbers, did not gain universal acceptance from his allies, however. An officer in the Royal Air Force, which considered diving from an opponent an act of cowardice, placed an announcement on a bulletin board stating that any pilot carrying out such a tactic would be court-martialed. Likewise, a Chinese pilot risked being executed for diving away from his opponent.

Boyington largely sided with Chennault’s detractors. During a lecture in which Chennault explained his method of having three P-40s attack a single bomber, for instance, Boyington openly disagreed. “We had almost a daily lecture on tactics for the enemy if and when we got in contact with them or if they came over and attacked us,” reminisced Boyington of his first days in Toungoo. “This particular lecture was on flying in formation by three.... We had a leader and a plane on each wing. He [Chennault] gave the advantages of fire power and his lesson that day was how the three planes fly in formation and pass on a Japanese bomber and what the advantages of mobile fire power would happen to be.” Boyington believed that the three-plane formation bunched the planes too close together, lessened the effectiveness of their fire, and restricted his ability to operate. True to form, he added his two cents’ worth.

“On the way over here,” he said to Chennault, “I dropped by the line out there where they were bullet-sighting the P-40, and they told me they will be bullet-sighted to 250 yards. Is that correct, sir?” Chennault indicated the information was true. “Well then,” replied Boyington, “the thing that bothers me is if you fly in a formation with a distance of 250 yards, and you open up on a bomber, how in the world if I am flying in formation do I keep the wingman’s wing tips out of my cockpit?” According to Boyington, Chennault turned livid at this challenge to his authority. He brushed off the remark, but he never forgot what Boyington had done in front of the assembled pilots. “I never got to really officially ever ask a question of the gentleman again,” Boyington claimed.³⁹ Boyington’s departure from the AVG was only a matter of time now, as the headstrong Marine aviator would never be able to avoid a clash with his superior, a man who could match Boyington’s stubbornness with obstinacy of his own.

Despite the harsh feelings between the two, Boyington absorbed more than he let on. That cavalier attitude and nonchalance masked an intense intellect, especially when it came to matters pertaining to flying. Boyington might not have liked the man who propounded the notions, but he recognized good ideas when he saw them, and he intended to find out how they worked in combat. He had plenty of opportunity, as Chennault had his men in the air as often as possible. “We practiced these tactics for weeks over the skies of Burma,” recalled Charlie Bond, who practiced landings and takeoffs, loops, and air tactics with the other AVG fliers.⁴⁰ The men gradually learned the P-40’s characteristics. Bond noticed that the plane tended to yaw to the left during dives, and the men discovered that the heavy P-40 was difficult to land because of its tendency to loop.

Much to the chagrin of Chennault, who carefully nurtured his tiny collection of planes and had few replacements, accidents marred the training sessions. One afternoon six pilots overran the runway and damaged their aircraft. Jack Armstrong died when he collided with another aircraft, and Peter Atkinson perished when he failed to pull out of a power dive. Even the cocky Boyington failed to impress Chennault or his companions. During his initial landing attempt his aircraft bounced along the runway and he had to hastily regain altitude for a second try. He subsequently succeeded, but then ignored Chennault’s advice to land on the main gear only by trying a three-point landing. The plane swerved off the runway and spun in circles until the engine died. The younger pilots, who had been eager to see if Boyington was as good as he claimed to be, observed his trouble with glee. After Boyington jumped out of his P-40, one pilot ambled up and sarcastically remarked, “What’s the matter, Captain? Lil old shark get away from you?”⁴¹ Boyington seethed over this rebuke, but with a crowd of witnesses could do nothing but give the heckler a dirty look.

It did not take long for Boyington to gather enemies. He had irritated Chennault by openly questioning him at a lecture, and now the other pilots mocked his flying skills, the one area of his life in which he had previously felt confident. Chennault’s anger and his fellow pilots’ taunts shredded that confidence, and Boyington’s feeling of isolation from the group grew even stronger. He yearned for combat, where he could prove his talents to everyone. For much of his life Boyington would wage a mental battle with himself—a vicious cycle in which he yearned for acceptance to boost his self-confidence but created tension with his words and deeds, which thereby further diminished his confidence. “I was forever going somewhere,” he would write in his autobiography, “but never getting anywhere.”⁴² He would not enjoy the respect he craved until he flew with the Black Sheep. For now, however, he had to make the best of a bad situation in Burma.

“Don’t become too attached to any of these kids”

After the arrival of the third group of pilots and mechanics, Chennault split the unit into three squadrons of eighteen aircraft each. Boyington flew with the 1st Squadron, nicknamed the Adam & Eves and commanded by squadron leader Robert “Sandy” Sandell. John Newkirk commanded the 2nd Squadron, called the Panda Bears, and Arvid Olson led the Hell’s Angels of the 3rd Squadron. The move bolstered morale, as each man now enjoyed a shared identity with a smaller group. At the same time Chennault announced plans to move soon from Toungoo, the British base they had been using during training, to more permanent facilities at Kunming, China.

Another morale booster came in mid-November. At the local Baptist mission, where some of the men had been invited for dinner, Charlie Bond picked up a British magazine containing an article on the war and spotted a photograph of an Australian aircraft with the mouth of a tiger shark painted on its nose. Bond liked the image, and when he returned to Toungoo asked Chennault if the AVG could paint their P-40s with the same menacing teeth. What better way to intimidate the enemy than by flying into combat looking like a shark? Besides, the logo would create an esprit de corps and fashion a unit individuality with which each man could identify.

AVG support personnel painted each fighter with the fierce-looking shark mouth, and CAMCO representatives asked Walt Disney if his artists could create a design for an accompanying insignia. Rather than a tiger shark, Disney produced a winged tiger leaping forward from the base of a large V, standing for victory. These two images—the tiger shark’s mouth and the leaping tiger— became the AVG’s symbols, and before long the press back home was calling Chennault’s pilots the Flying Tigers.

Accidents continued to mar the practice sessions, further enraging Chennault. “We just cannot afford aircraft losses from accidents,” he admonished the pilots, “since we do not have all the P-40s on hand yet.”⁴³ Lack of spare parts added to their woes. Mechanics stripped parts from disabled planes to enable other machines to operate, but when its tires went, the plane was grounded. The frequent accidents caused some of the AVG pilots to doubt the P-40’s capabihties. “Many of the pilots had never flown a P-40;” Boyington later said. ”In fact, most of them had not. None of the ex-Marine Corps or Navy pilots had ever been in one. We had to all check out new planes, fly them around, and some of the boys had never even had any formation flying to speak of. It was kind of a crash training program, and we did not know at the time but we just had a little over a month or so before World War II would start.“⁴⁴ Chennault arranged a November 20 mock dogfight with a British Brewster Buffalo to eliminate their qualms. The P-40 handily outperformed the Buffalo, and that quieted some of the negative comments.

Chennault considered training so important that he scheduled practice flights long after the men had entered combat. Even as late as March 1942 he was working with his pilots to make them more proficient. “No matter how pressing the immediate needs of combat,” Chennault wrote, “I refused to throw a pilot into the fray until I was personally satisfied that he was properly trained. That is probably one of the main reasons Japanese pilots were able to kill only four A.V.G. pilots in six months of air combat.”⁴⁵

The men found plenty of opportunities to enjoy themselves when they were not training. They yelled and whistled so loudly during an undressing scene in Ghost Breakers, starring Paulette Goddard, that they could be heard outside the building where the film was being shown. Frequent softball games pitted squadrons against each other, and men rode their bicycles to Toungoo—where bars and women awaited—to stay in shape.

Separated from home by thousands of miles, the men observed Thanksgiving with extra fervor. “Thursday—We had a partial holiday today as it is Thanksgiving in the States,” George Burgard wrote in his diary. “This afternoon was set aside for an all-state softball game between the pilots and the enlisted men. They picked me to catch the first five innings with Col. Chennault pitching. The enlisted men beat us 8-5, and I did a poor job of hitting. The prize was two cases of Java Beer, but the winners cut us in on that too.”⁴⁶

An alcohol-fueled Boyington generally made a fool of himself at such outings. On one occasion pilot Tex Hill was on his way to Toungoo when he saw something amiss on the road ahead. When he pulled near, he saw an obviously drunk Boyington pulling a rickshaw while the Burmese driver sat in the seat normally occupied by the customer. Hill, who had not yet met Boyington, asked his companion who the man was. “Oh, that’s ‘Pappy’ Boyington. He’s one of the new pilots, a Marine.”⁴⁷ Hill wondered if the AVG had scraped the bottom of the barrel to fill its allotment of pilots.

When Olga Greenlaw told Boyington that his stunt had offended their proper British associates, who believed that a person lost face if he showed such familiarity with natives, Boyington explained. “You see, I missed the last station wagon and hired the rickshaw, and halfway out to the field I began to feel like a heel letting that poor, scrawny, underfed native pull a big husky guy like myself, so I changed places with him. I’m getting too fat, anyway.”⁴⁸

On the way back to Toungoo following a November 29 picnic in the mountains east of the town, Boyington spotted a stray cow wandering in the street. Bolstered with a copious amount of booze, Boyington decided to wrestle it to the ground, and he and the cow engaged in an impromptu match while other drunken AVG men acted as announcers. The University of Washington wrestler won, to the delight of natives and AVG men alike.

These were only two of a long series of outrageous actions Boyington engaged in, mostly to draw attention to himself, and neither involved one of the too-frequent battles he waged with anyone who doubted his talent or questioned his remarks. James Howard remembered that Boyington “was built solid like a wrestler and wasn’t averse to using his fists in an argument. He reminded me of a man just asking for someone to knock the chip off his shoulder.” Subsequent stunts and debacles earned additional contempt from the men in the AVG. Howard dismissed Boyington’s actions as those of a man angry at being passed over for squadron commander. “He became a sorehead from then on and exhibited a high state of cantankerousness for as long as he stayed with the AVG.”⁴⁹

Boyington’s frequent escapes into the bottle also drove away his colleagues. Although he was likeable enough when sober, once alcohol entered the equation a demon appeared from the man. “Pappy’s biggest handicap at that time was the bottle,” said Charlie Bond. “He was a terrific pilot. He just never did get off on the right foot in the Flying Tigers because he arrived drinking and kept on drinking.”⁵⁰

At least combat could not be far away. Swift Japanese advances in China had already placed Kunming, their next destination, within range of Tokyo’s bombers, and events elsewhere indicated that the United States itself was not far from an open conflict in the Far East. Harvey Greenlaw, correctly assessing the situation, warned his wife not to become too fond of the men. “Look, Olga, I’m going to warn you,” Harvey said. “Don’t become too attached to any of these kids. Some of them are going to get killed. We even have a part-time embalmer on the staff.”⁵¹