Shantih (peace) to David Harris, who died December 11 in his home town of Beulah, Michigan. Educated at Governor Dummer Academy and Amherst College in Massachusetts, he dropped out of college to join the Army Air Corps, and after graduating from flight school was recruited as one of a hundred pilots for the American Volunteer Group. After being introduced to the Curtiss P-40 in Burma, and seeing one of his friends die in a crash, he decided he wasn't cut out to be a fighter pilot, and went to work for the headquarters staff instead. After returning to the U.S. in 1942, he became a test pilot for Republic Aircraft and later for Grumman. Postwar, he worked for a time in Oregon but eventually returned to Michigan to work in the family business.

How many Tigers still with us?

The American Volunteer Group was a unit of the Chinese Air Force, serving in Burma and China from December 1941 until mid-July 1942, when it was replaced by the 23rd Fighter Group, U.S. Army Air Forces. Its members were drawn mostly from the prewar military, so they were a bit older than most of the WWII generation. Several were prisoners of the Japanese, and of course almost everyone smoked and drank in those days. So it's a pretty exceptional individual who's still with us from that group. Here are the seven Flying Tiger pilots and ground crew still with us and, I hope, doing well. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

• Charles Baisden (armorer)

• Carl Brown (CAF flight instructor; fighter pilot)

• Kenneth Jernstedt (fighter pilot)

• Frank Losonsky (crew chief)

• Joseph Poshefko (armorer)

• * Randall Richardson (weatherman)

• Edward Stiles (crew chief)

* Mr. Richardson went home early, got a "dishonorable discharge," and for that reason isn't recognized by the Flying Tigers Association. At last report he was alive and well in the U.S. southeast.