Were they mercenaries or U.S. military pilots?

What about that "secret executive order"?

Were they P-40Bs or P-40Cs?

In 1938, Curtiss sold 200 radial-engined P-36 fighters to the U.S. Army. The company model number was H-75, and many were sold abroad as Hawk 75s. The plane was obsolescent from the first day, compared to liquid-cooled fighters then coming on line in Europe, so Curtiss redesigned it for the liquid-cooled Allison engine. The result was its model H-81, arguably the most handsome American fighter of all time. The U.S. Army bought 200 and put them in service as the plain-vanilla P-40. France ordered 140, which Curtiss built under the company built under a slightly different designation: H-81A. After the fall of France, Britain took over this order and put the planes into service as Tomahawks, Mark I. Because it lacked pilot armor and self-sealing fuel tanks, the British used it only as a trainer.

The RAF asked for armor plate, "armourglass" in the windshield, and self-sealing fuel tanks. Curtiss obliged, but the self-sealing consisted of a rubber coating around the outside of the tank--what the British called "Superflexit." This improved model was known to Curtiss as the H-81A2 and to the British as Tomahawk Mark II or IIA. Still not considered good enough to fight alongside the Spitfire in home defense, these planes were sent to Commonwealth squadrons in North Africa. Only 110 were built, of which 23 went to Russia and one to Canada. The U.S. Army bought 131 with American equipment and put them into service as the P-40B, known to Curtiss as H-81B.

The British next asked Curtiss to improve the gas-tank protection system, and in the winter of 1940-1941 the last and most numerous of the small-mouthed fighters began to move down the assembly line in Buffalo. Curtiss didn't regard the change as significant enough to warrant a new designation, which remained H-81A2 for the British Purchasing Commission and H-81B for the War Department. The RAF took the plane into service as the Tomahawk IIB, while the U.S. Army called it P-40C. (The "C" model had other improvements, notably shackles on the underside of the fuselage for a droppable fuel tank.)

The British bought 930 Tomahawk IIBs, and the U.S. Army bought 193 of the more-or-less equivalent P-40Cs. Most Tomahawk IIBs went to North Africa, but some were sent to Russia after the Germans invaded in July 1941, and 100 were diverted to China to equip the American Volunteer Group.

What were those airplanes in the John Wayne movie?

Did Chennault fly as a combat pilot in China?

The legend grew that he had used the H-75 in combat. Chennault had a sense of humor and did nothing to quell the rumors, and in fact seemed to encourage them. His aide the journalist Joseph Alsop assured me in 1985 that Chennault was the leading American ace of WWII with 50 Japanese aircraft to his credit. Supposedly he was paid $500 and later $1,000 a pop. (The Chiangs did indeed pay him $10,000 on August 30, 1937, but that was before any likely air combat, unless it was a failed attempt to bomb the Japanese flagship Idzumo.)

Chennault's biographer Martha Byrd talked to the American instructors who worked with him in China and concluded that he had indeed been in combat, with unassessable results. But in 1985 I went to Taipei and talked to the Chinese he had worked for and with in 1937-38: General Wang Shu-wing ("Tiger Wang"), General Fu Jui-yuan, and especially Chennault's radioman Lee Cheng Yuan (Henry Lee). These were men with great affection for Chennault, and they all scoffed at the idea that he'd flown combat missions. Henry Lee was with him almost every day that fall and winter, and would surely have known about these missions if they'd taken place.

Possibly Chennault did meet one or more Japanese a/c during his scouting flights in the H-75. If you read his autobiography closely, he as much as says so. (His diary doesn't mention any such encounters.) Maybe he fired at one or two, and maybe he even shot one down--but if he did, why did he deny it to the end of his life in 1958, long after there could have been any repercussions? I'm inclined to think he was pulling his friends' legs. He was 44 in September 1937, at a time when most fighter pilots were in their early 20s, and he was in poor health--a very unlikely candidate for a mercenary ace.

After the summer of 1938, Chennault ran the flight school in Kunming and had no further opportunity for air-to-air combat.

Where did those Allisons come from?

American warplanes were purchased "less GFE" (government-furnished equipment including engines, guns, radios, and gunsights). For service in North Africa, the British wanted engines and fifty-caliber nose guns, but no wing guns, radios, or optical sights. (These would be supplied from stocks already in North Africa or cannibalized from war-weary aircraft.) So Curtiss-Wright installed engines and nose guns as part of the assembly process and shipped them in the same crate as the fuselage assembly. However, the British (and the Chinese, in the case of the Tomahawks diverted to them) paid for these items as a separate transaction. In the case of the AVG Allisons, 31 engines came from French contract F-223 (an order that had been taken over by the British) and 69 from British contract A-196. These were the same V-1710-C15 engines installed in the Tomahawk IIBs bound for North Africa. (In U.S. Army service, this engine was designated V-1710-33.)

The Chinese also bought 50 spares, and this is where the story gets complex. Allison apparently hand-assembled the engines from rejected parts, setting up a separate assembly line in Indianapolis so the off-specification parts wouldn't contaminate engines intended for the U.S. Army or Royal Air Force. According to Daniel Whitney, the rejected parts were hand-machined, with the result that the Chinese spares actually exceeded specifications. He goes on from there to speculate that the AVG's success in part stemmed from the fact that its engines were better than those installed in British and American warplanes. Allison designated these engines V-1710-15A.

There are two things wrong with this argument. First, Whitney says that the AVG got no more than 38 such engines, and that not all of them may have been installed. (Greg Boyington spent his last weeks in the AVG flying "slow time" on newly installed engines in Kunming in April 1942, so most of the spares didn't see service until after the P-40E Kittyhawks had begun to reach China and to bear the brunt of the AVG's combats.)

Second, Whitney contradicts himself on the question of how many engines were "hand-built." For lack of better evidence, I conclude that the lot of engines designated C15A was limited to the 50 spares, or perhaps as few as 33.

This conclusion is supported by the fact that the 100 engines installed by Curtiss came from identifiable French and British contracts, and therefore couldn't have been jury-rigged from rejected parts. Furthermore, these engines were on hand in Buffalo when the Tomahawks were finished, crated, and shipped to New Jersey. Like the airframes, they bore random serial numbers, fairly low in sequence--three known AVG Allison serial numbers are 899, 963, and 964. By contrast, the hand-built spares bore serials from 2998 to 3032 and perhaps above. (Or else there were only 33 engines in this lot, which would go far to explain the AVG's inability to account for all the spares.)

Why isn't Colonel Scott on the AVG roster?

He soon got half his wish, when Chennault agreed to loan him one of the Curtiss P-40E "Kittyhawks" being ferried in from Africa. This he used for free-lance missions over Burma, as well as for the escort duty for which it had been diverted. In time, Chennault began to consider him for the command of the 23rd Fighter Group that would replace the AVG when it was disbanded in July 1942, and Scott actually went on a mission with the AVG into Vietnam--a U.S. Army colonel flying as wingman to Lew Bishop, who depending on how you defined his status was either a civilian or an officer in the Chinese Air Force!

On July 4, Colonel Scott took command of the 23rd FG headquarters and the remnants of the AVG 3rd Squadron (now the U.S. Army 74th Fighter Squadron) at Kunming, while Robert Neale commanded a mixed band of AVG holdovers and U.S. Army pilots at Guilin. Not until July 17 was the transition complete: Neale set out for home, like most of the AVG pilots and ground crews before him, and Scott flew down to Guilin and took working command of the 23rd Fighter Group.

The Army pilots who replaced the AVG in China continued to call themselves Flying Tigers, and by virtue of living long and writing prolifically, Scott eventually succeeded in making himself as famous as Chennault. But he was never a member of the American Volunteer Group.

Were 14th Air Force men Flying Tigers, too?