Did the RAF "sell" victories to the Flying Tigers?

Somehow I managed to spend five years researching the 1st American Volunteer Group without ever running across rumors that they'd "bought" some of their victories from the Royal Air Force squadrons that flew alongside them in Burma and China. It wasn't until 1993 and the publication of Bloody Shambles: Volume Two: The Defence of Sumatra to the Fall of Singapore that I read Christopher Shores's account of these rumors. I spell them out in more detail below, but here I'll put the accounts in chronological order.

Boris's tale

Three years ago, Brad Smith sent me a page from Tiger for Breakfast: The Story of Boris of Kathmandu by Michel Peissel (Dutton, 1966). It seems that Boris ran the 300 Club in Calcutta. "The most colorful of the pilots who frequented the 300," Peissel wrote, "were those of the AVG, the famous Flying Tigers.... One of their great sports was swapping planes shot down with the pilots of the RAF and the Tenth Air Force, who could thus benefit by a percentage of the bonuses given the AVG men." This is a second-hand account, or perhaps third-hand, and I can't think of a bonus paid to a Flying Tiger that could possibly have been "bought" from a 10th Air Force pilot. Nevertheless, the casual mention does show that the rumor was current in India at the time.

John Fischer's tale

More recently, Brad tipped me off to an article by John Fischer in Harper's Magazine. It ran as part of the monthly "Easy Chair" column. Entitled "War as Theater of the Absurd," it appeared in the magazine in March 1970. I delved into the stacks of the local university library and found the piece, which is a collection of black-humor stories from WWII (the opening is pictured at left). Says a footnote to the article: "Mr. Fischer is former editor in chief of Harper's. In 1943-44 he served as an economic intelligence officer on the staff of General Stilwell in the China-Burma-India theater." That's presumably where he heard the story he relates here. Google tells me that Fischer was also a Rhodes Scholar, newspaperman, and bureaucrat in the Board of Economic Warfare before joining Harper's in 1944. So it's not as if he were a sensation-monger: he must be retailing gossip from Stilwell's staff.

The problem with his version of events is that the RAF and the AVG put in their claims separately, and the two outfits had very little to do with one another. (The Tigers' victory credits were later vetted by the British air commander for Rangoon.) And they couldn't have "split the loot" next morning, because there was no loot to be had: the bonus system wasn't confirmed until March, after the fall of Rangoon, and even then the payoffs were handled by CAMCO in New York. As far as I know, they were paid directly into a pilot's bank account in the U.S.

Christopher Shores's tale

In Bloody Shambles, the prolific and respected British aviation writer Chris Shores found himself compelled to explain how it was that both the RAF and the AVG claimed to have raided Japanese-held Moulmein on Thursday, Feb. 26, 1942, with substantially identical results. This is how the conflicting stories went:

* Seven Hurricanes led by Wing Commander Frank Carey took part in the British attack. As they approached Moulmein, they saw a squadron of Ki-27 "Nate" fighters returning to the airfield. Carey claimed three shot down; Pilot Officer G. W. Underwood claimed another, shot off his leader's tail; and Flight Leader "Bush" Cotton claimed a fifth--all air-to-air victories, with possibly some others destroyed on the ground. Underwood was shot down and taken prisoner, and Cotton and Carey were then chased out over the Gulf of Martaban with substantial damage to Carey's Hurricane.

* About the same time, seven Tomahawks of the AVG 1st Squadron attacked Moulmein's satellite field at Mudon. They claimed two Nates destroyed on the ground, then flew on to the main airfield, where they saw three Japanese fighters in the act of taking off, with others jockeying for position on the runway. In the ensuing scrap, George Burgard claimed two Nates shot down, and Dick Rossi and Joe Rosbert were each credited with one. (There were other claims for the day, but Shores appears to be wrong in attributing them all to the scrap at Moulmein.) And Bob Neale was chased out over the Gulf of Martaban, with substantial damage to his Tomahawk!

Scratching his head over this seeming duplication, Shores wrote: "There was subsequently much rumour about AVG pilots 'buying' RAF claims due to their system of payment by the Chinese authorities for aircraft confirmed shot down. Had both Allied formations attacked [Moulmein], or had the Americans 'acquired' this attack from the RAF? Certainly, Japanese records note only the one strafe, and identify the attackers as Hurricanes. Or had Carey's formation struck the main airfield and the AVG the satellite strip at Mudon? Much here remains unanswered."

I immediately called Mr. Shores, who said I should talk to Hedley Everard in Canada, Vic Bargh in New Zealand, and a British pilot now living in Australia. I wrote all three. The man in Australia replied that he had no personal knowlege of this question, though he'd heard the rumors. Vic Bargh said I could telephone him on this and other matters; you can read what he said by going to the transcript of that interview. Suffice it to say that Vic didn't claim to have been involved in a cash transaction--and on the day when he recalled "giving" victories to the AVG, the British record shows that the Buffalo pilots did in fact receive credit for shooting down the Japanese planes.

Hedley Everard's tale

That left Hedley Everard, then a Hurricane pilot for RAF 17 Squadron, later a a bush pilot in Canada, and the author of A Mouse in My Pocket: Memoirs of a Fighter Pilot (Valley Floatplane Services, PO Box 444, Picton, Ontario, Canada KOK 270). He didn't answer my letter, but I found a copy of his book. It cites three instances where Everard supposedly sold a victory or part of one:

The first was a Ki-43 Hayabusa at Magwe: "That night [Jack Gibson] slipped me two hundred American dollars, which was my share of a three way split with some unknown AVG pilot who had claimed the 01 victory." (page 170). Yet the Japanese lost only one Hayabusa in the Magwe battle. It was shot down or at least damaged by Parker Dupouy, and it crashed many miles from the scene. No other Tiger claimed a "Type One" that day; Everard couldn't possibly have visited the crash site of the Hayabusa; and there was no body in it, for the pilot made his way back to Japanese lines.

Everard's second "sale" took place at Loiwing and involved a Hayabusa he attacked in a brawl that also included some AVG Tomahawks. Afterward, "Chuck Sawyer quietly put a paperback in my hand and said I would enjoy the contents. In it was two hundred and fifty U.S. dollars and a scrawled note that said the balance had been contributed to Doc Gentry's Hospital Fund" (page 183). Not long after, Everard fired at a "Zero" that was being overtaken by a Tomahawk. He was later approached by R.T. Smith, who "peeled five hundred green-backs from a hefty roll and stuffed them into my bush-jacket pocket," explaining: "That bastard was a goner after you hit him" (page 190). I sent R.T. a copy of the story, but never heard back.

These things are wrong with Everard's tale: his Magwe claim doesn't check out; the Tigers didn't get their combat bonuses on the spot, or in cash; R.T. would have been unlikely to carry a roll from which he could peel $500 (the equivalent of $10,000 in today's much-depreciated greenbacks); and Everard's only hard evidence of the transactions--the money--he conveniently left behind in Loiwing. (Yeah, right!)

* * * *

To conclude: the most likely inspiration for these stories is Vic's chat with the AVGs at Rangoon. Perhaps it became common knowledge among the RAF pilots, and--lubricated no doubt by resentment of the AVGs' fame and fortune--was spun into a system of cash transactions. Or perhaps there even was some sort of swap here and there, though nothing on the scale of Everard's tall tales. (I confess I don't know what to make of the parallels Chris Shores points out between the two squadrons at Moulmein, unless to suggest that that the AVG arrived shortly after the RAF, explaining why the Japanese seemed to be ready for combat, and that both sides inflated their scores, as fighter pilots of the time invariably did.)

I take up this question in more detail in the revision of Flying Tigers: Claire Chennault and his American Volunteers, 1941-1942, which HarperCollins publish last year.