GENERAL CLAIRE L. CHENNAULT:
NIPPONESE NEMESIS
If you notice in the fourth panel on the next to the last page above you will see a reference to a Flying Tiger pilot named Scarsdale Jack that reads like:
"On Feb 9, 1942 flying at 18,000 feet, a squadron of American Volunteer Group planes led by Scarsdale Jack Newkirk make a startling discovery!"
Then in the first panel of the last page Scarsdale Jack is mentioned again:
"Scarsdale Jack sends two planes crashing to the ground --- then he and the Tigers return to their base."
Scarsdale Jack Newkirk was indeed a member of the Flying Tigers, unfortunately meeting an early demise on March 24, 1942, a little more that six weeks after the above event. He was making a second pass at a target when a hidden Japanese anit-aircraft gun took him out. Below is a brief illustrated synopsis as presented in Wings Comics, August 1942, No. 24, during the height of the war. For the complete Jack Newkirk story including some clarification on some minor controversy surrounding his death, please go to the link just beneath the illustrated version below:
The photo below showing several men dressed in khaki military-like garb sitting in a jeep in front of a Flying Tiger adorned P-40 is from an article published in Life Magazine dated March 30, 1942, Vol. 12, No. 13. I cite the same article in my page on Flying Tigers and use the photo as the opening graphic at the top of the page for THE BOY AND HIS JEEP: Adventures In The Desert. It just so happens the man sitting on the shotgun side is Jack Newkirk.
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JACK NEWKIRK OF THE FLYING TIGERS
FOR COMPLETE FREE PDF VERSION OF CHENNAULT'S BOOK CLICK IMAGE
While Claire Chennault and his men were waging real life battles against the Japanese in the air over China and Burma with their P-40 Flying Tigers, "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell was doing the best he could in the malaria ridden jungles of Southeast Asia with his outnumbered and ill-equipped ground troops against the more powerfully equipped Japanese forces. Back at home, in the United States, a groundswell of patriotism was urging them ever onward with what little they had while America's war machine was ever increasingly expanding with promises of being delivered eventually in full strength. Part of that groundswell of patriotism was being driven at the bottom by movie, radio, and comic book heroes trying to shine a light of hope during an otherwise dismal time. I've cited many examples in my works of the era, and although totally minor in the overall scheme of things, added together they breathed hope with small drip-by-drips into the hearts and minds and souls of many of those at home and abroad. The illustrated contents of this page done in comic book style you are reading right now is just one example of those attempts by people on the home front trying to buoy the spirits of an America caught in tough times. There were of course, many hundreds that could be cited, but two of which I've chosen to exemplify find the heroes, both females, switched from their usual habitat in Europe fighting Germans to fighting Japanese in Asia, more specifically connecting up with the Flying Tigers in the air over and in Burma and China. They would be the red haired firebrand Jane Martin, War Nurse and the more demure, albeit girl commando, Pat Parker, War Nurse.
P-40 WARHAWK
PEARL HARBOR SURVIVOR
THE FLYING TIGERS
COL. ROBERT L. SCOTT, JR.
FLYING TIGER P-40 DOUBLE FLYING ACE
DR. MARGARET 'MOM' CHUNG
FLYING TIGER RECRUITER, ADVOCATE, PHYSICIAN
TAKING OUT THE FIRST MEATBALL
KENNETH M. TAYLOR, PEARL HARBOR, AND THE P-40
THE FLYING TIGERS BOMB HANOI: 1942
CURTISS P-40: THE OBSOLETE WAR HERO
TANGO SQUADRON AIR MUSEUM, CHIANG MAI
P-40: FIGHTER IS A REBUILT PIECE OF WWII HISTORY
PEARL HARBOR P-40 GHOST SHIP
GROUND VS AIR ADVERSARIES STILWELL AND CHENNAULT
(for more on Stilwell click image)
CLICK
HERE FOR
ENLIGHTENMENT
ON THE RAZOR'S
EDGE
THE WANDERLING
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SO, DID THE WANDERLING FLY?
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CONGO BILL JOINS THE FLYING TIGERS
As to the subject of donations, for those of you who may be interested in doing so as it applies to the gratefulness of my works, I invariably suggest any funds be directed toward THE WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT and/or THE AMERICAN RED CROSS.
CHRISTMAS DAY 1941 AS FOUND IN: CLAIRE CHENNAULT AND HIS FLYING TIGERS
On that exact same Christmas day in 1941 that the Flying Tigers were being attacked, back in the United States just a few miles off the coast from where I, as a young boy lived in Redondo Beach, California, a giant Imperial Japanese Navy long range aircraft equipped submarine, the I-19, under the command of Lieutenant Commander Narahara Shogo, off Point Fermin California, between Catalina Island and the mainland near San Pedro, torpedoed the McCormick Steamship Company's 5,695-ton American lumber carrier SS Absaroka. The subchaser USS Amethyst (PYC-3), on patrol off the Los Angeles Harbor entrance, depth charged the I-19, but without success, the I-19 escaping unharmed.
The I-19 went on to kill again before its ultimate demise on November 25, 1943. It is officially recorded as racking up considerable damage and sinking a number of other vessels prior to that demise --- and not just unarmed freighters. For example, on September 15, 1942, the I-19 fired a half dozen torpedoes at the aircraft carrier USS Wasp, two of which hit and sank her. The remainder of the four torpedoes hit and damaged the battleship USS North Carolina as well as the destroyer USS O'Brien which sank later.
JUNIOR AIR RAID WARDENS
ATTACK ON THE SS ABSAROKA
WORLD WAR II COMES TO REDONDO
I-9 SINKING OF THE SS LEWIS CASS
WW II PLOT TO UNLEASH BUBONIC PLAGUE AGAINST LOS ANGELES
WATCH VIDEO OF THE FLYING TIGERS INTERCEPT JAPANESE BOMBERS ON CHRISTMAS DAY 1941
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