Flying Tigers VS Christopher Shores?

[Ruy Horta]

Originally Posted by Frank Olynyk

With regard to "hard bitten mercenaries", I have to say that none of them can be considered "hard bitten". All of the pilots and ground crew were recruited from the active duty US services in the rough period of Spring 1941 to about August. They then had to travel to Rangoon. I don't know when they received their first "pay check"; a fair amount of the financial records are in the Chennault Papers. Certainly none of them had ever acted as a mercenary before joining the AVG.

Perhaps the words "hard bitten" are a bit off, but they certainly deserve to be called mercenaries.

The chance to fly combat, earn good money and visit exotic places would be enough to find candidates who were either at the end of their military career or otherwise had little chance of advancement in the pre-war military, which didn't generate a large income in the first place.

Of course they were doing so with the approval and support of the US government, the whole AVG being part of a covert operation to stop the Japanese.

I can't believe that the AVG and later generation pilots flying for "Air America" and similar were doing so mainly out of love for country (unless you can show original letters that pilot "X" wasn't in it for the money and adventure).

[CJE]

I read somewhere that Boyington was in to avoid paying the rent to his ex-wife (or wives).

When you see the number of WWI and WWII pilots that increased the number of their victories only for glory, it's easy to imagine what others can do for extra bucks.

I have no evidence of what did or didn't AVG pilots, it's just that at my age I'm beginning to understand what my grandfather meant when he talked about "the genuine human nature".