THE WARBIRD'S FORUM

I have published a third excerpt from Poland's Daughter as a short ebook for Amazon's elegant Kindle reader. The Sky Was Green covers the deportation of tens of thousands of Polish women and children to the steppes of Kazakhstan in April 1940, their only crime to be the families of the 22,000 soldiers and civilian leaders who were murdered in the Katyn Forest massacres. Download it from Amazon stores in the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Spain or Italy. The story is more or less self-contained, but really ought to follow the earlier excerpts: War Comes to Potocki Street and A Death in the Forest. (If you don't own a Kindle, you can download a free app to read it on your computer, smartphone, or tablet.)

I've only had a chance to flip through the pages, but this looks like a splendid read: China's Wings: Intrigue, Romance, and Adventure in the Middle Kingdom During the Golden Age of Flight. Gregory Crouch has spent a good number of years researching the history of CNAC, the national airline of China in the 1930s and 1940s. It's of great interest to Flying Tigers buffs because Claire Chennault knew many of these men when he was a trainer and adviser to the Chinese Nationalist air force from 1930 to 1940, because CNAC was the transport arm of the American Volunteer Group during its year in Burma and China, and because many more AVG pilots chose to fly for the airline than volunteered to join the U.S. Army Air Forces when the AVG was disbanded in July 1942. More about it here.

And here's another: Forgotten Aviator: The Adventures of Royal Leonard by Barry Martin. As it happens, Leonard wrote an engaging account of his life in China as the personal pilot for the "Young Marshall" and later for Chiang Kai-shek. Mr. Martin reprises this story and carries it forward to the formation of the American Volunteer Group. The 1st AVG became immortal as the Flying Tigers. Few know about, and even fewer remember, the abortive 2nd AVG, a bomber group that was recruited and equipped in the fall of 1941. (The pilots were scheduled to fly long-range Lockheed Hudson lights bombers from Burbank to Rangoon on December 10. The flight was canceled, and the men and planes taken back into U.S. service, following the Pearl Harbor attack.) Royal Leonard was supposed to take command of that group, as Mr. Martin tells us. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford