Customer Reviews

With the Tigers over China, 1941-1942

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This slender volume is a bit of a disappointment. It is not really a book about the Flying Tigers, but a book about books about the Flying Tigers. Yet it is not really that either, but more a book about books about the air war in Burma and China in 1941 and '42. Each of the chapters has the read and feel of a term paper done on a specific topic. Oh, yes, there's some history here but it is secondary to the literary critique of books written by participants in the air war in Burma and China. Having read most of the books referenced, I found the author's labored recounting of anecdotes from them rather tedious. The tedium was not even relieved by having a good selection of photos. The photos that do appear are not accurately captioned. The book also suffers from poor editing. In one glaring example, the American Volunteer Group (the true name for the Flying Tigers) is referred to as the "American Volunteer Force," followed immediately by the AVG acronym. How the shark's mouth motif for the P-40s came about is also not accurately told. Further, while aviators in Burma and China showed bias in identifying any Japanese fighter encountered as a "Zero," much as Battle of Britain Me-109 pilots always fought "Spitfires" and not Hurricanes, Zeros (Japanese Navy aircraft) were not fighting there. The true adversaries were Nakajimas, flown by the Japanese Army, as Daniel Ford's excellent history of the Flying Tigers points out. It was nice to have the British contributions to the literature of the theatre quoted and the books by those aviators are some of the best. All in all, this is a literary discussion of contemporaneous war books loosely tied to the Flying Tigers. The title is misleading, but then calling this "A Study and Comparison of Aviation Books Written During the China and Burma Air Campaign of 1941-42," while more accurate would not sell as well. My advice is to seek out the books listed in the bibliography and draw your own conclusions.

What the good professor has done here is sit down and read all the published accounts of the AVG and the RAF in Southeast Asia, then tell the story through the eyes of the participants. He's especially interesting on the British side, since the RAF's accomplishments in the Pacific haven't received much attention from historians. If you don't know anything about the Flying Tigers, this might suggest the books you ought to read, and if you've read them all, this is a helpful review--though the author tends to give all sources equal weight, and (sometimes for that reason) he gets some of the facts wrong.

"With the Tigers over China 1941-1942", by Jerome Klinkowitz, is an interesting perspective on the life of the American volunteers who flew with Claire Chenault in China as part of the famous Flying Tigers. Rather than a book dealing with the "official histories" of the organization, the author chose to study the personal stories of the men to weave a fascinating sociological perspective on the war.

The book is broken up into four major sections. The first two sections look at operations in Burma and China. The third section studies the interaction of the American Volunteer Group (AVG) with the British forces in Southeast Asia as Japanese forces advanced on their former empire. The final chapter "An Adventurer's War" is an olio of personal stories regarding Pappy Boyington and Claire Chenault that didn't quite fit into the other chapters.

For readers looking to learn more about the military exploits of the unit, you will be disappointed. There is only a cursory mention of the political discussions that led to the creation of the AVG; no discussion of the basing decisions (i.e. why was Rangoon the first place the AVG was stationed); a very brief mention of the organizational structure; and only general discussions of any aerial battles that were fought. Klinkowitz does an excellent job examining the personal aspects of living in Burma and China. Not only does he tell the stories of every day life at the bases, he also does an excellent job describing the professional animosity between the AVG and regular US Army Air Forces personnel.

I wouldn't recommend this book for readers looking for an introduction to the Flying Tigers. Instead this is an excellent supplement for readers wanting to fully appreciate the human dynamics behind the organization.