Research Catalog

Title

The Flying Tigers : the untold story of the American pilots who waged a secret war against Japan / Sam Kleiner.

Author

Kleiner, Samuel M. (Samuel Miller), 1987-

Publication

• New York, New York : Viking, [2018]
• ©2018

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

v, 294 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, map; 24 cm

Summary

"The thrilling story behind the American pilots who were secretly recruited to defend the nation's desperate Chinese allies before Pearl Harbor and ended up on the front lines of the war against the Japanese in the Pacific. Sam Kleiner's Flying Tigers tells the story of the group young American men and women who crossed the Pacific before Pearl Harbor to risk their lives defending the embattled forces of Chiang Kai-Shek's China. These 300 individuals were effectively paid mercenaries, secretly recruited by a mysterious shell company that the federal government had created to circumvent its official stance of non-intervention in the war. Drawn from across the armed services by the prospect of seeing the world and earning a good salary, they traveled to Burma under false identities in the late summer and fall of 1941 and began training there under legendary and leathery general Claire Chennault. The pilots first saw action twelve days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and for the next seven months performed an invaluable strategic service by keeping the Japanese occupied in China and thus enabling the United States to build up its armaments before fully engaging in the conflict. For their daring exploits and remarkable string of victories, they became known as the Flying Tigers"--

Subject

• 1937-1945
• Chennault, Claire Lee, 1893-1958
• China. American Volunteer Group > History
• China. American Volunteer Group
• Military operations, Aerial
• Military participation > American
• Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945)
• Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945 > Aerial operations
• Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945 > Participation, American

Genre/Form

History.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 241-284) and index.

Contents

Dancing in the sky -- Meeting the princess -- The Rape of Nanking -- The international squadron -- Exile in the Chinese hinterland -- An air unit for China -- Training in Toungoo -- Wartime -- Legends in their own time -- Christmas in Rangoon -- Burmese days -- Aerial guerrilla warfare -- Last stand -- Black sheep down.

ISBN

• 9780399564130
• 0399564136

LCCN

2018013214

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library