In at least a half a dozen places in a half a dozen of my works scattered throughout the internet I mention Terry and the Pirates, some in conjunction with the Curtiss-Wright P-40, some not. Generally, however, any mention by me of Terry and the Pirates is typically made to draw an analogy to whatever I am writing about and the exotic-like underbelly-type milieu, real or not, that exemplified the Asian atmosphere Terry and his companions, pirates or otherwise, operated in. I have always carried a certain fondness for that type of milieu and because of that fondness have been drawn to such odd-ball fictional characters and stories like Dan Duryea in China Smith and of course Terry and the Pirates as well as real life places such as Rangoon, Burma; Bangkok, Thailand; and Chiang Mai.[1]
The biggest draw for me to Terry and the Pirates besides the milieu and perhaps being in love with the Dragon Lady, was that the characters were eventually drawn into the events surrounding the China-Burma-India theater during World War II --- and especially so the Flying Tigers and the use of the Curtiss-Wright P-40.
In the below scenario a person that was thought to be a male French military officer named Captain Midi is discovered in reality to be the onetime circa 1938 female Axis spy Sanjak in disguise, now feeding information to the Japanese via secret code. Former Red Cross nurse turned Army nurse Taffy Tucker, caring for Midi in lieu of a doctor, learns the secret of the French pilot, the result ending in a duel between P-40s. As the story picks up below Captain Midi --- come Sanjak --- has eluded those in her pursuit and is shown in the first panel just getting into the cockpit of a P-40:
The above mentioned Army nurse Taffy Tucker was the romantic interest for another Terry and the Pirates character, Flip Corkin. Corkin was based on a real life pilot of then Major Philip G. Cochran. Milton Caniff, the artist that created and drew the Terry and the Pirates comic strips and comic books, in a tribute to Cochran hand-produced the following watercolor depicting him as his alter ego Flip Corkin. Please note the aircraft in the background as well as the two in the air are P-40s. As the Japanese occupiers of China moved more and more into the area known as Indochina with all of it's European dominated territories and it looked more and more as though the Americans would be drawn into the conflict, especially so as had been done with the A.V.G., the American Volunteer Group, more commonly known as the Flying Tigers, the Terry and the Pirates story line shifted accordingly --- hence the dominating allied fighter aircraft in the strip became the P-40.
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While it is true I followed the adventures of Terry and the Pirates a lot during the period P-40s were a major part of the strip, I was aware of and knew about P-40s starting from a very early age. However, most of my heavy duty interest in P-40s stemmed from three specific incidents. First, while the war was still raging, my interest set in solidly from as expected, a comic book. The comic was given to me by a man in a train station well before I even reached eight years old. Inside the comic book was a story called "The Goose Shoot" wherein a group of 46 P-40s shot down 77 German planes in a single outing as they were fleeing North Africa.(see)
Secondly was right after the war when I read a hard cover book published during the war written by Olga Greenlaw, the wife of the second in command of the Flying Tigers, titled The Lady and the Tigers (1943). And third, also after the war, the 1942 black and white movie staring John Wayne titled "Flying Tigers."[2]
It was, however, several years after the war before I saw the movie Flying Tigers for the first time. I was living in the West Adams district of Los Angeles under the auspices of my Stepmother and had gone to the Adams theater near the corner of Western and Adams I think around the first week or so of August 1948 to see it along with its co-billed film The Fighting Seabees or possibly Back To Bataan. Often when commenting about P-40's I mention a guy in high school I met named Kent that went on to be the main person responsible for the restoration of the only fully flight worthy surviving Pearl Harbor P-40B Tomahawk.
I was drawing in class one day like I always did instead of doing anything that vaguely resembled anything close to a class assignment or schoolwork, only this time I was drawing a P-40 Flying Tiger. Kent, spending time throwing rolled up balls of notebook paper out of a small gap in the open window across the room and never missing, thinking, after he ran out, he would just take some of mine. He stopped short after he noticed my drawing. Seems that ever since seeing the black and white 1942 John Wayne movie Flying Tigers, P-40s became, like with me, his favorite airplane. After that things were cool between us. People knock the movie as being pretty much cornball stuff, but like Kent, as far as P-40s go, and probably a whole generation of others, it was big and big in my life too --- although I myself, like I mention in a couple of places, I didn't actually see the movie until well after the war and having read Olga's book. The following, from an interview with Kent that appeared in the L.A. Times, makes reference to our closely related early experiences and can be found at the source so cited:
"To a child growing up in wartime Los Angeles, the world--with its wailing sirens, blackouts, and palpable fears of invasion--was a frightening place. Torrance resident Kent Lentz remembers that when he was 6, a John Wayne film called 'The Flying Tigers' temporarily eased his anxiety about World War II, holding out hope that the United States would win what was then a losing fight.
"The 1942 movie chronicled the exploits of a band of maverick American fighter pilots battling the Japanese over the skies of South China. For Lentz, the film's most memorable feature was the aircraft the American pilots flew --- the P-40 Tomahawk."
(source)
I remember perfectly my very first formal introduction to the Flying Tigers on an intellectual non-comic book reading level. As stated above, it was just a few years after the war. I was around 8 maybe 9 years old and for the very first time just met the woman who would eventually become my Stepmother. I was waiting to meet her in what I would call her library when I came across the book "Lady and the Tigers" that had on its cover a picture of Flying Tigers. When my soon-to-be stepmother came into the room she was so impressed that I was reading she let me take the book with me when I left until the next time. I must have read that book a hundred times.
Of course, then there is the movie "Flying Tigers." Almost everybody I know who has any sort of an interest in P-40s or Flying Tigers mentions that the movie was a major co-factor in their interest.
However, with newspaper comic strips like Terry and the Pirates, all kinds of comic books along with a few hard cover books tied in with World War II movies of all types, there was still one other major impact, at least for me. That impact was learned much later, not unlike the Flying Tigers movie and Greenlaw's book, a learning that came upon me after the war. The funny part it all was that the impact directly involved a comic strip cartoonist just like Milton Caniff and the Flying Tigers --- however the cartoonist involved was a real life fighter pilot for the Tigers --- and was killed in a strikingly foul way because of it.
The cartoonist's name was Bert Christman. Before the war he drew a comic strip called Scorchy Smith. The plots and drawings of Scorchy were similar in execution to that of Caniff's Terry and the Pirates, with Scorchy being a pilot and having many of his adventures circulating around China, Southeast Asia, and warlords. Christman, to learn more about aviation, took flying lessons then joined the Navy becoming a pilot and serving on the aircraft carrier USS Ranger all prior to World War II. When the AVG, soon to become better known as the Flying Tigers, started recruiting flyers, Christman resigned his commission and along with two other Ranger flight-mates, Ed Rector and David Lee "Tex" Hill, joined the AVG. When it comes to the history of the Flying Tigers, Tex Hill, and rightly so, gets the lions share of credit. Nobody mentions Bert Chirstman to any degree.
But, when it comes to Christman, what goads me the most involves Olga Greenlaw, a major Flying Tigers hero or heroine of mine as the case may be that I otherwise hold in fairly high regard. In the above text I say that I read "The Lady and the Tigers" by Greenlaw over-and-over so many times that for me it almost became like a bible or handbook on the Flying Tigers during my formative years. However, in the end, much to my dismay, she mentions Christman only twice, both times glossing over him in a brief few-word sentence, and neither time using his first name, only initials. The thing is he died a horrific death in the line of duty flying for the Tigers and I didn't learn about his death and how until years later, especially so, he being a cartoonist and all. Christman had his P-40 basically shot out from under him over Rangoon right in the middle of a serious dog fight with the Japanese, and on the way down, still in the air and in his chute, they machined gunned him to death, killing him dead bigger than shit:
"On Friday, January 23, 1942, 72 Japanese aircraft attacked Rangoon. Christman was one of the 18 planes that were launched to intercept them. He would never return. Christman's plane had come under fire and been hit in the engine. He was forced to bail out once more. This time, however, as he hung in his parachute and decended to the ground, a Japanese pilot strafed him. Bert was hit in several places and probably died as a bullet passed through the back of his neck. He was buried the next day at the church of Edward The Martyr in Rangoon. His remains were returned to Fort Collins after the war, where he was laid to rest on Saturday, February 4, 1950."
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When Terry and the Pirates were drawn into the events surrounding the China-Burma-India theater during World War II --- and especially so the Flying Tigers and the use of the Curtiss-Wright P-40s --- as I have mentioned above, Caniff also began using those same P-40s to defend the civilian and military cargo and troop carrying transports that were supplying the CBI theater with the men, supplies, and equipment needed to support the fight in that theater.
In real life the Flying Tigers didn't get wholly involved with providing escort or defense for the unarmed transports over the hump per se'. When the transports approached or entered into their territory of operations, and it looked like the Japanese were going to attack or take out a transport or two, typically, if they were not consumed in other battles they would intervene. There was one exception. A C-47 hump pilot by the name of Col. Robert L. Scott. In Scott's case the commander of the Flying Tigers Gen. Claire Chennault had "loaned" him a P-40 more-or-less on a contingency basis to use at his discretion as an escort for incoming transports, of which he did --- that is, after he painted the shark-tooth image of the Flying Tigers on the front of his plane like the rest of the Flying Tigers. Although Scott was never an official member of the original A.V.G., when the Flying Tigers disbanded, Chennault put him in command of the 23rd Pursuit Group, essentially in a round about way, a sort of direct descendent replacement or the original Tigers.
Caniff had Terry, et al, get involved when he had their Flying Tiger marked P-40s swept up in a dog fight against several Japanese Zeros initially trying to take out an unarmed China National Aviation Corporation C-47 transport plane, otherwise known as CNAC. Starting in April 1942, CNAC flew supplies from India into southwestern China over the hump until the end of the war. Below is one of Caniff's strips dated a November 21, 1943 wherein the P-40s stepped in to go up against the Japanese to help a CNAC transport. When the Flying Tigers were at the top of their game and in their hey-day I was just boy. Even so, they still played a major role in my life. Almost in the same way, CNAC, at least relative to how I view it, played a major role in my life as well, especially so as found in Return to the Monastery, a role involving a CNAC mechanic, the OSS, and the crash of a C-47 high in the rarefied air of the Himalayas with the C-47, like hundreds of others during the war, ending up pancaked all over side of the Himalayas along the Aluminum Trail.
CNAC MECHANIC WINGS
TERRY'S P-40 FIGHTS ZEROS ATTACKING A CNAC C-47
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SAME TYPE DOUGLAS C-47/DC-3 SHOWN IN FIRST PANEL. NOTE CNAC INSIGNIA ON BOTH
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THE DRAGON LADY
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Shown above, as found in Terry and the Pirates, is a rendition by Milton Caniff of the Dragon Lady, also known as Lai Choi San. She made her debut in the first Terry and the Pirates strip in 1934, inspired it is said by the 1930s American movie actress Anna May Wong. In the early days of the strip the Dragon Lady was presented more or less as a stereotypically beautiful, seductive and evil Asian woman, but as the strip became more realistic those stereotypes faded as the character grew more complex. In the years leading up to and during World War II, always, cunning, clever, intelligent and dangerous, she became more of a heroic figure, forming an alliance with Terry and his companions as well as supporting the Nationalist Chinese resistance against the Japanese invasion of China --- hence the Nationalist Chinese insignia on her cap.[3]
The name given the Dragon Lady by Caniff, Lai Choi San, was not given by chance, having been adopted by Caniff for use from a notorious female Chinese pirate during the 1920s through the 1930s. Lai Choi San was said to have owned 12 heavily armed Chinese junks not to dissimilar to the one pictured below, all under her direct personal command, and as well, a fleet of several thousand buccaneers independently operating other junks all with sworn allegiance to her authority. Loosely based in and around the Portuguese colony of Macau just outside of Hong Kong her realm covered the Pearl River Delta and coastal shipping routes to all of the South China Sea as far away as Palawan in the Philippines Islands.
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As infamous as Lai Choi San was at onetime, neither she herself nor her notoriety has never seeped into popular lexicon, nor do people ever really think of her when conjuring up thoughts of pirates or piracy. However, interestingly enough, even though the use of her name may have come up in some vague fashion in my life relative to Terry and the Pirates and the Dragon Lady, the knowledge of the real pirate Lai Choi San came into my life from a person I knew that of all things, knew her.
When I was a teenager just entering my third year of high school I was living with my grandmother in what was then an otherwise family oriented Southern California beach community. During that period of time, and unusually so, a single older man bought and moved into the house next door. A good portion of the rooms in his house had been finished floor to ceiling with natural color knotty pine --- which, apparently unattended over the years, was strongly in need of refinishing. The man decided to tackle the job himself and in doing so, after observing how well I meticulously maintained the wood on my early 1940s Ford Woodie Wagon, approached my grandmother, who he had become friends with, asking if, upon my return from my summer long stay at the ranch of my Stepmother, would it be OK to hire me to assist him in sanding and prepping the surface of his knotty pine. Always in need of money and with my grandmother's approval I accepted the job enthusiastically.
Near the end of summer following my return from my stepmother's ranch located in the high desert not far from Edwards Air Force Base, my neighbor and I sanded, bleached, and eventually clear varnished the wood. During that time, the man and I, who I now call my Mentor in all my works, after a slow start began talking about all kinds of things. Mans place in the universe, philosophy, existentialism, religion, his travels and his life. As it turned out my mentor was the primary role model used by British playwright and author W. Somerset Maugham as the main character in his book The Razor's Edge. In the novel Maugham calls his main character Larry Darrell, and although not my mentor's real name nor not even coming close, the following refers to Larry, thus then my mentor:
"In his novel Maugham pretty much focuses on Larry's travels in Europe and India. However, in the spring of 1931 Larry's former fiancee' Isabel mentions she knew the bank manager in Chicago that handled his account and he told her '...that every now and then he got a draft from some queer place. China, Burma, India.' My mentor told me he had been to China, Japan, and the Philippines, even mentioning he had a son in the Philippines."
(source)
And that's how I came to know about the real life Chinese pirate queen, Lai Choi San. My mentor, in his travels from China to the Philippines in the mid to late 1920s, got hooked up with her in some fashion, either working in some capacity in exchange for transportation or paying his own freight. Now, while it is true my mentor's interaction with Lai Choi San was never really our only or single major topic of our ongoing conversations during that summer, she did take on a life of her own and a lot more meaning with me later in life when I discovered and read a book completely outlining her life. While reading the book I continually came across any number of things that refreshed my memory and totally paralleled what he told me he had experienced. Those so similar life and adventures related to Lai Choi San are covered quite extensively in the book written by a man of the same era named Aleko Lilius, who, under similar circumstance and time period, traveled with her as well. Lilius' book, linked below in PDF format, besides all the inside dope and adventures traveling with the pirate queen, is as well, loaded with a whole string of photographs of the pirates, their haunts, and ships. See:
I SAILED WITH CHINESE PIRATES
The female bodhisattva Kuan Yin, known throughout Buddhism for being a compassionate saviouress for the downtrodden and those caught in unsurmountable situations is often depicted dressed fully in white riding the rough seas on the back of a dragon as shown below. So said, as cast in that role, those whose lives and livelihoods depend specifically on the sea, i.e., sailors, fishermen, the shipwrecked, and even if left unsaid, pirates et al, turn to her as their savior during times of duress.
KUAN YIN, SHAMBHALA, AND
OM MANI PADME HUM
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In his book I Sailed with Chinese Pirates, Lilius writes about sailing with the most merciless gang of high-seas robbers in the world on in an armored junk commanded by Lai Choi San. Conjuring up images of, or at least in tribute to Kuan Lin, speaking of Lai Choi San, Lilius writes:
"What a woman she was! Rather slender and short, her hair jet black, with jade pins gleaming in the knot at the neck, her ear-rings and bracelets of the same precious apple-green stone. She was exquisitely dressed in a white satin robe fastened with green jade buttons, and green silk slippers. She wore a few plain gold rings on her left hand; her right hand was unadorned. Her face and dark eyes were intelligent not too Chinese, although purely Mongolian, of course and rather hard. She was probably not yet forty.
"Every move she made and every word she spoke told plainly that she expected to be obeyed, and as I had occasion to learn later, she was obeyed."
P-40 GOOSE SHOOT
DR MARGARET CHUNG, M.D.
FLYING TIGER RECRUITER, ADVOCATE, PHYSICIAN
P-40 FIGHTER PILOT DAN ROWAN
CURTISS P-40: OBSOLETE WAR HERO
THE LADY ON THE DOCK AND THE PBY 6-A
A PBY BLACK CAT ATTACKING AT MAST HEIGHT IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT
FLYING TIGERS
THE ORDEAL OF LIEUTENANT STONER
P-40 WARHAWK
PEARL HARBOR SURVIVOR
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SQUADRON LEADER JACK NEWKIRK OF THE FLYING TIGERS, CIRCA 1942
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FIFTEEN CHAPTER 1940's MOVIE THEATER SERIAL
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EIGHTEEN EPISODE 1952 - 1953 TELEVISION SERIES
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CLICK
HERE FOR
ENLIGHTENMENT
ON THE RAZOR'S
EDGE
THE WANDERLING
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DID THE WANDERLING FLY?
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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.
Footnote [1]
SCENE FROM THE ORIGINAL TERRY AND THE PIRATES AS DRAWN BY MILTON CANIFF DATED JANUARY 27, 1935.
At the end of the summer of 1953, just as I was about to start the 10th grade or so, the August - September #6 issue of the comic book Mad came out. Inside #6 was a story, drawn by my all time favorite non-animator cartoonist Wallace Wood, that spoofed or satired big-time the long running comic strip Terry and the Pirates, and that Wood, in his spoofing, called Teddy and the Pirates.
Although I had followed Terry and the Pirates a good portion of my life, and knew how Milton Caniff, the artist-cartoonist of the strip presented Terry and the world he and his so-called Pirates lived in, Wood's top-half opening drawing below, showing his version of an underbelly far east like milieu, real or not, that exemplified the Asian atmosphere along with the rest of the story hit me like a hammer, with me, the teenager that I was, sucking up his version as my version and as my version, the real version. Ten years later, thanks to Uncle Sam and his friendly Selective Service, found me Rangoon, Saigon, and Chiang Mai, as well as other such places, and in those ten year later years, especially in and where I traveled, having gone from a high school teenager to an almost mid-twenties GI, my vision not only didn't wane, but was bolstered and grew. Notice the tommy guns, stabbings, hand grenades and exotic women.
WANDERLING AND THE PIRATES
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"Any mention by me of Terry and the Pirates is typically made to draw an analogy to whatever I am writing about and the exotic-like underbelly-type milieu, real or not, that exemplified the Asian atmosphere Terry and his companions, pirates or otherwise, operated in. I have always carried a certain fondness for that type of milieu and because of that fondness have been drawn to such odd-ball fictional characters and stories like Dan Duryea in China Smith and of course Terry and the Pirates as well as real life places such as Rangoon, Burma; Bangkok, Thailand; and Chiang Mai."
A lot of people who read the above paragraph in reference to Terry and the Pirates say I have not much more than a pretty romanticized view of the Asian atmosphere and the milieu that I imply exists. For people who feel that way I usually suggest they go back and click the "Wanderling and the Pirates" link above.
If that doesn't work I ask them if they have ever heard of Mong La or read my account on Mong La.
In writing about the movie and TV actress Phyllis Davis and the two of us being in Thailand together, I make reference to that same city, Mong La. I visited Mong La along the Chinese Myanmar border, comparing it to the wretchedness of the Star Wars city of Mos Eisley. I do so by including a section on her page titled MONG LA: Mos Eisley Spaceport or Mayberry, R.F.D.?. That same section also shows up on my Khun Sa page. Although I don't give specific dates as to when the events in the section actually occurred, it is implied quite clearly that they happened after Hurricane Ike, i.e., September 1, 2008 - September 15, 2008, but before Ms Davis' death September 27, 2013, many years after the mid-60s encounters between Khun Sa and myself. In the section I write:
"Obi-Wan Kenobi warned Luke Skywalker that he'd never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy in the whole galaxy than Mos Eisley spaceport."
Then I write that I guess neither of them ever heard of Mong La.(see)
Then, after leaving Mong La I go on to say:
"Not long after that we were in Panghsang with me introducing myself to Wei Hsueh-kang. He asked if I had the 'item.' I opened my phone and handed him the SIM card. He praised me for a job well done, saying everything he heard about me was true. Then he asked how it was I knew Khun Sa. I quickly explained to him the whole story saying I felt he was instrumental in saving my life."
Wei Hsueh-kang is probably the most notorious Southeast Asian warlord and drug kingpin around, with a $2M dollar FBI bounty on his head. Yet I sat there on a veranda with him along the Chinese-Burma border sipping drinks together. Next thing I know I am at the 140-million-baht Casino Club operating under the flagship of the Myawaddy Riverside Resort Complex on the Thai-Burma border meeting with Khun Sa's son.
KHUN SA
PHYLLIS DAVIS
WEI HSUEH-KANG
Footnote [2]
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When I was a young boy growing up my grandfather worked in some capacity for the railroad. Just at the start of World War II they moved him from the Pacific Northwest to the Southern California area, relocating and settling in not far from where we lived. However, because of the war effort and the sudden large influx of people into Southern California related to that effort, housing was quickly becoming more and more difficult to come by. So said, at least in the short term, my grandfather and grandmother, as long as the railroad was willing to pay for it, stayed in a hotel. From what I can remember it was my first experience of any significance dealing in any fashion with a hotel. There were bellhops, people who asked if there was anything they could get you, and what was called a hospitality suite. The hospitality suite had all kinds of stuff just for the taking. Donuts, fruit, drinks. It also had big plush chairs and couches as well as newspapers and all kinds of magazines.
One of the magazines was Life dated March 30, 1942, Vol. 12, No. 13. Of course I didn't remember the date or volume number at the time, but I do remember the issue. My older brother found a copy of the Life magazine in the hospitality suite of the hotel and inside was a lengthy predominantly photographic article about the Flying Tigers. I didn't specifically know what the Flying Tigers were at the time, but I remember him running all around yelling to my dad, "Flying Tigers, Flying Tigers," then a big fuss made all over him and the article.
My older brother running all around all excited waving the article yelling, "Flying Tigers, Flying Tigers," with my mom and dad and younger brother all there along with my grandparents was probably the first time I ever heard the words Flying Tigers uttered or ever saw a picture of a jeep. Little did I know those happy semi easy going family days were numbered. With my brothers and I still young kids, after a quickly established but months and months long lingering illness, our mother died and the family disintegrated, dispersed to the four winds, with my father heavy into alcohol.
The photo at the top showing several men dressed in khaki military-like garb sitting in a jeep in front of a Flying Tiger adorned P-40 is from the same article, Life Magazine dated March 30, 1942, Vol. 12, No. 13. I cite the same article 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 as found in the link below:
JACK NEWKIRK OF THE FLYING TIGERS
Footnote [3]
Below are four separate panels from the daily Terry and the Pirates newspaper strip that linked together form a tightly interrelated four day series circulating around the Dragon Lady and how, four years after the strip was developed, she began taking on the more complex character she became. The four panel series, dating from Wednesday March 30, 1938 through to Saturday April 2, 1938, well before any entrance into the war by the United States, clearly show the Dragon Lady setting into motion the early stages of a formal pirate-based resistance group to fight against the Japanese invaders:
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On Sunday, November 7, 1937, a major west coast newspaper, at least at the time it was major, the Los Angeles Examiner, had a full page color map of the Earth's northern hemisphere depicting most of the Pacific Ocean from roughly the edge of China's eastern coastline and Japan to about the mid west of the United States, concentrating on Hawaii in the center and down the Alaskan coast, along Canada, the U.S. and Mexico's Baja peninsula. The theme of the article and map was to show that long before the December 7, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, as early as 1937, all the plans and legwork was being laid down for an attack, and still we were caught off guard. For more, including a huge expandable version of the full color Examiner map click either of the following graphics:
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REMEMBER, THE DATE OF THE ARTICLE WAS NOVEMBER 7, 1937
FLYING TIGER RECRUITER, ADVOCATE, PHYSICIAN
DR. MARGARET CHUNG
Margaret Chung was the first-known American-born Chinese woman physician. During World War II she was a strong advocate of the U.S. position in the defense of freedom, especially supporting China against Japan. With that, even prior to Pearl Harbor and the official U.S. entry into the war, came her strong views in support of the Flying Tigers.
CHINESE-AMERICAN ACTRESS ANNA MAY WONG
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THE DRAGON LADY. HAND-DONE WATERCOLOR BY MILTON CANIFF
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The original of the above watercolor was created specifically for actor Orson Welles by Milton Caniff and signed and dated by him with "New York, October 1939." Welles had initially came into the public eye one year earlier following his infamous October 30, 1938 Mercury Theater radio production of H.G. Wells' 19th-century science fiction novel War of the Worlds. The results of Welles' broadcast, which was presented over the air in the format of a "real newscast" was, as shown in the headlines in the New York Times below, actual panic in the streets with people actually thinking there was a real Martian invasion.
WAR OF THE WORLDS
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A SOMEWHAT MORE REVEALING DRAGON LADY IN B-29 NOSE ART
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THE GHOST AND THE HAUNTED B-29
The Best of The Maugham Biographies:
- WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Good biography. Lots of Maugham graphics, from early childhood to late adult.
- W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM: A BIOGRAPHY
- MAUGHAM
- LITERARY AMBULANCE DRIVERS
Everybody knows Hemingway drove an ambulance during WWI, nobody knows Maugham did.
As mentioned in the main text above Milton Caniff created a fighter pilot for the strip he called Flip Corkin and as well, that Corkin was based on a real life fighter pilot with the then rank of Major, Philip G. Cochran. Most of the Corkin character's adventures in the strip circulated around the use of P-40s in the China-Burma-India theater during World War II with the planes so illustrated carrying all the markings of the Flying Tigers. The real life pilot, Philip G. Cochran, however, before any CBI affiliation, earned his reputation as the squadron commander of "J" Squadron also known as the Joker Squadron flying P-40s in North Africa as part of the 33rd Fighter Group. He also flew P-40s for the 57th Fighter Group as a member of the 65th Fighter Squadron known as the Fighting Cocks.
Hardly anyone ever puts P-40s and aircraft carriers together. However, Cochran's P-40 equipped "J" Squadron, arriving off the coast of North Africa flew from the deck of a flattop as well as being the first to catapult P-40 Warhawks from the deck of a aircraft carrier and recover them in Casablanca. Re the following from the source so cited:
"While the idea of catapulting the P-40s may have been a cutting edge idea, the actual execution of the plan would prove to be less than simple. Although the ship was equipped to accommodate aircraft operations, the P-40s were not able to operate off a ship because they were too heavy. After stripping the Warhawks of ammunition, navigation equipment, and excess fuel, Major Cochran (squadron commander) and his deputy flight lead were catapulted from the ship, breaking both the catapults in the process, thus leaving 34 pilots to determine how they were going to launch. Throughout the remainder of the day, all but three aircraft were able to make it to Casablanca; two aircraft went down where the pilots were recovered and one went down without the pilot being recovered.
"The invasion was in its early stages, and organization systems were fragile if not nonexistent. Finding no assignments and no place to go, Cochran decided to keep the group together and headed off in the general direction of the war. By inquiring locally as they flew short hops, they eventually found an Army infantry unit at a flat spot in the desert who were more than happy to have their own air cover.
"Cochran immediately set up a training schedule for his recruits, commandeered infantry trucks to find supplies, fuel, and ammunition from wherever they could be borrowed or pilfered, and in a few weeks had a cohesive fighting squadron. Being formed outside of Air Force jurisdiction and having no official number, they dubbed themselves the 'Joker Squadron,' and adopted bright red scarves are their symbol."
(source)
33rd FIGHTER GROUP HONOR ROLL
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LAI CHOI SAN, THE DRAGON LADY, IN HER FIRST APPEARANCE, SUNDAY DECEMBER 23, 1934
Below is a full page click-through comic panel that links through to a page about a renegade World War II P-40 pilot called The Lone Tiger. The page shows the Lone Tiger meeting for the first time the person that would become his main protagonist, the warlord Wu Fang.
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ONE P-40 FLYING TIGER THAT DIDN'T MAKE IT, FOUND AFTER 50 YEARS IN A THAILAND JUNGLE
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The comic panel above as well as the panels on the page so mentioned depicting the adventures of the Lone Tiger were drawn by master artist-cartoonist Wally Wood. Although the Lone Tiger and the P-40s are drawn and presented in a serious tone, Wood was a one-time major cartoonist for Mad Comics. One of his most famous stories is a spoof on Terry and the Pirates called Teddy and the Pirates. See:
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TEDDY AND THE PIRATES
Although the dates and times are such that it could not occur, and NOT a Dragon Lady in any classical sense of the word, Woods could have modeled his 'Dragging Lady' almost directly off of the wife of the former Vietnamese Air Vice Marshal and onetime vice president of Vietnam, General Nguyen Cao Ky. To wit as found in:
MEETING WARLORDS, ET AL
MADAME NGUYEN CAO KY
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In the above Dragon Lady cartoon Woods draws my all time favorite visual presentation of the Dragon Lady he calls the Dragging Lady and drawn not too different than I have always depicted her myself. In later years, staying in a similar but serious theme Wood turned his artistic talents toward a person he called The Infamous Madam Toy as shown in the graphic below:
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In 1962 Wood also contributed his creative abilities to a series of baseball-like collectable cards called Mars Attacks. Relative to me, one of those Mars Attacks cards played heavily in what I have written about the possibility of a Roswell ray gun. See:
THE ROSWELL RAY GUN
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For more on the Dragon Lady and others of similar ilk that have impacted my life for both fact and fiction please see:
FIREHAIR
"SO I'M GOING TO BE SOLD AS A PROFESSIONAL SOLDIER TO PAPA PYZON AND HIS CUT THROATS?" "AND I SHALL JOIN FORCES WITH HIM! IT WILL BE A NEAT BARGAIN!"
Below are the original newspaper comic strips used to create the above book. The strips appeared October 23 1936 through October 27 1936:
"As we traveled along, drawing from my heavily injected academic background brimming with in-depth encyclopedic and intellectual knowledge, information and data --- all garnered from comic books of course --- I told him about a great story I read in a Gene Autry comic called 'The Ship in the Desert' (issue #52, June 1951) and an even better one in an Uncle Scrooge comic called 'The Seven Cities of Cibola' (issue #7, September 1954) wherein wrecked Spanish galleons had been found in the desert in both stories. As near as I could remember, as far as the ships were concerned, the punchline for both stories were associated with an old Colorado River channel covered and uncovered over the centuries by flash floods or some such thing leading to the Salton Sea."
SO, WHERE DOES IT COME FROM?
IT FLOWS FROM MY SUPER HEAVILY INJECTED ACADEMIC BACKGROUND BRIMMING
WITH IN-DEPTH ENCYCLOPEDIC AND INTELLECTUAL KNOWLEDGE OF INFORMATION
AND DATA, ALL COMING FROM COMIC BOOKS OF COURSE. TO SEE CLICK THE IMAGE.
Near midnight of July 3, 1944, found me as a very young boy riding as a passenger on the all first class Santa Fe Chief headed out of Chicago toward the city of Los Angeles.
On that same night, because of running behind schedule, in an effort to make up time the Chief's engineer had pushed the throttle to a near wide open position. The locomotive, with it's 80 inch drive wheels cranking out at over 90 miles per hour on a downhill run across Arizona between Flagstaff and Williams hit a clearly marked 55 mile an hour curve, and without a whole lot of other options at that speed, derailed. The 225 ton engine slid off the tracks tipping heavily on it's side, easily shoving rocks, gravel, scrub brush and boulders alike all out of its way. Prior to uncoupling most of the rest of the railcars followed suit, after which the engine, cut loose and without the weight of the attached cars, continued on it's side nearly two football fields from the tracks before losing its forward momentum.
PULLMAN CARS OF THE SANTA FE CHIEF WRECK JULY 3, 1944
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Some of the cars were a mangled mess and some, although off the tracks still remained fairly upright and undamaged, with two actually staying on the tracks without a scratch. The fireman and three passengers were killed. 113 passengers along with 13 train employees injured, among them the severely injured engineer.
I ended up without a scratch, but the adult or adults I was traveling with were among the injured, injured to such a point that they were hospitalized, in turn leaving me without adult supervision. My uncle, who lived in not so far away Santa Fe, was contacted. He got in touch with a Native American tribal spiritual elder he knew who lived close by asking him if he would oversee me until he, my uncle, could come get me.
Sitting in the waiting area of the train station with the spiritual elder it was quite obvious he was Native American and I was not. A lot of people seemed concerned with me, the young boy that I was traveling with an old white haired Indian, that is, except for an older white man who seemed concerned that I might be bored, re the following from the source so cite:
"He came over and sat next to me and asked if my dad was in the war. I told him no that he worked in the shipyards. Asking if I liked comic books he opened his suitcase and pulled out one called Blue Bolt. All the while he was thumbing through the pages like he was looking for something he was telling me he had a son in the war and that his son was a pilot. After he reached a certain spot he folded open the pages and pointed to a story about a group of American pilots that shot down 77 German planes in one outing. Then, carefully reading the story page by page and pointing to the different pictures he told me that his son was one of the pilots. My uncle told me with that I took the book from the man's hands completely fascinated, so much so I read the story over and over without stopping or setting it down. The man, seeing how much I appreciated the comic and the story, said I could have it. After that my uncle said I continued to read it again and again all the way back to California and months afterwards."
While waiting for my uncle to pick me up at the depot, which took a day or two longer than expected, it is fair to say the spiritual elder sitting around inside of a train station all day and night began to show signs of what I would call itchy feet. At the end of the second day, the elder had enough and with no sign of my uncle showing up any time soon decided he needed more open space around him. A little after sundown of the second full day, with still a slight red glow left from the now gone sun along the western horizon we went outside and in doing so I remember seeing the full moon, or nearly full moon, slowly rising just above the eastern mountains. We walked east along the tracks toward the rising moon some distance then, for no specific reason I could discern, we turned south into the desert, eventually after some distance, making camp along some river.
That night, out of nowhere, three seemingly lost non desert types came into our camp hoping for some warmth from the fire and a little food. We accommodated them the best we could sharing both the fire and what little food we had. As it turned out the three men were actully German POWs only recently escaped by a few hours from an unknown to us prison camp not far from where we were.
Although I get into the story a little more in depth in the Spiritual Elder link below, briefly, after learning the three were POWs and members of the German military, actually submariners, and I still had the comic book with me that had the Goose Shoot story in it the old man gave me the night before, I got it out and after stoking the fire for a little more light, began reading the story. All the while I was reading one of the men who could speak English interpreted what I was saying with both of us pointing out page after page of the graphic drawings of the event. Needless to say, even though the POWs eventually were caught up in what I was showing them, in that they had not received any substantial amount of news from anywhere let alone the battlefront, they just were not up to giving any truth or validity to the story, especially so coming from a kid and a comic book. As I got older I deciphered the attitude they displayed that night stemmed basically from a still strong or lingering belief in the infallibility of German superiority.
P-40 GOOSE SHOOT
SANTA FE CHIEF LOCOMOTIVE #3774
THE SPIRITUAL ELDER AND THE SANTA FE CHIEF
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RETURN TO THE MONASTERY
C-47 AVIATION ARTWORK BY
ROY GRINNELL
IN STAR WARS LUKE WAS WARNED THAT HE'D NEVER FIND A MORE WRETCHED HIVE OF SCUM AND
VILLAINY IN THE WHOLE GALAXY THAN MOS EISLEY. FOR A VIDEO OF MY TAKE ON IT CLICK IMAGE
"Sometime in the spring of 1982 and a year or so after being gone two years in the Peace Corps, a very good friend of mine, a onetime philosophy major that I had known in college, but somehow now having morphed into a big time computer geek, contacted me.
"She told me the man she loved was on the waiting list for a heart transplant at Stanford University and that she had moved to a small studio apartment in Campbell, California to work in Silicon Valley and be within driving distance to see him. She wanted to know if there was some way I might be able to console him as he was wrought with anxiety almost to the point of a total breakdown --- in turn adversely impacting his health and preparedness for the transplant. Before a new heart with his match was available he died."
The above quote opens an article about Adam Osborne, who was not only a friend of mine and major foe and adversary to Steve Jobs of Apple Computer fame in their early years, he also grew up as a young boy in the ashram of the venerated Indian holy man the Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi, and where I met him. Osborne is, however not the person so mentioned on the waiting list. He came into the picture because of the person on the waiting list.
In the main text of the Osborne article I write that my initial stay of several days after going to Silicon Valley turned into several weeks, then several months, eventually extending into a period pushing nine months. However, I wasn't there totally from day one day-after-day around the clock through to my departure. During that period I was sort of using the area as a base of operations just like I would almost anywhere, coming and going as needed doing any number of things. Plus, for most of that period my friend had a regular day job and mostly unavailable during working hours and just as well, often not able to put together several days back-to-back over any extended span on a regular basis either.
It was under the above circumstances that during a trip to Southern California I ran into Madame Ky, the former Dang Tuyet Mai, at her boutique. The two of us knew each other through her husband, I just didn't know she had opened a boutique. As it was, typically I would have no call to be at the particular mall her business was located, but on the day we ran into each other I had gone there specifically looking for someone. The daughter of a couple I knew who lived on the east coast had only just graduated from college and moved to Southern California and started the very first year of her very first job as a special needs teacher. The school, Gill Special Education Center, an Orange County Department of Education school site, was located in a residential area in a former elementary school about three blocks south of the mall. I had told the parents, given a chance, that when I was in Orange County I would go by to see how she was doing. The day I went by the school she had taken her class on a community outing to have lunch at the mall. While at the mall I just happened to come across Madame Ky. We made arrangements to see each other again and after that I saw Madame Ky several times, usually for tea and chat.
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During one of those meetings I told her that on that particular afternoon, as soon as we were done with our tea, I would be heading out to Cabo San Lucas for a few days to stay at a hotel resort located basically right on the tip of Baja California called the Twin Dolphin owned by a friend of mine, David J. Halliburton, Sr. Embellishing the story a bit, although still true, I told her that one of Halliburton's first loves was a niece of my Stepmother who was babysitting me for the summer, a girl he always held in high regard. In turn Halliburton made it a point to ensure my stay at the Twin Dolphin was always special. With that Madame Ky said she wanted to go too. So she did, the two of us spending several days or more together at the Twin Dolphin. General Ky, thinking of me more as a monk and apparently slipping his mind that I was a onetime G.I., it presented no problem. Hah!
PANORAMIC VIEW OF HALLIBURTON'S HOTEL TWIN DOLPHIN AS IT LOOKED 1980s-1990s
During our visit a movie and TV actress of true natural talent, the fabulously beautiful Phyllis Davis was there as well. Although she and I didn't meet nor were we introduced, we were in the same general mix of people over a span of several days in and around the resort. One morning for Sunday Brunch, under invitation, like me, we sat at the same table together with several other people as a personal guest of Halliburton. Several years later, as Fate or Karma or luck would have it, following a formal meeting in Las Vegas between the two of us, she would not only make a major impact in my life but me on hers as well, eventually with the two of us heading into the jungles of Asia together so she become a becoming a frequenter of lonely places in an ever expanding attempt to enhance a deepening spiritual Awareness.
PHYLLIS DAVIS CIRCA 1980
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