American Volunteer Group Colours and Markings

American Volunteer Group Colours and Markings
Osprey Aircraft of the Aces #41 © 2001
By Terrill Clements
Review by Ned Barnett
(Review copy provided by review author)


This may become a continuing refrain at this review site – “just what we need, another book on ...”

It’s my hope that, in each case where that question comes to mind, I’ll also be able to provide they answer, “Hell YES we need this book!” I’m pleased to say that this book on the often-covered American Volunteer Group – the AVG – is needed, welcome and very well done. And I say this as one who’s got at least a dozen good books on the AVG, from biographies by Scott and Boyington to the recent and superb “Sharks over China.”

I’m glad to be able to report that, once again, I’m finding that a new book – new to me, anyway, though it was first published in 2001 – that explores new aspects of even an often-explored subject is well worth having. In this case, author Terrill Clements interviewed several surviving Flying Tigers, and in the process, brought new insights into this well-reviewed topic. For me, this was a page-turner, with new insights into a well-traveled story, and lots of useful-to-modelers photos, drawings and pilot commentary.

Most students of things military will recognize the AVG – a group of three squadrons of mercenary pilots in the employ of the Nationalist Chinese government. Always under-strength and under-manned, these brave soldiers of fortune – themselves often cast-offs from the pre-war US Army Air Corps and the US Naval Air Service – blazed a trail of glory across the skies of Southeast Asia for barely six months. From their first combat on December 10, 1941 until July 4, 1942 when the AVG was disbanded and reconstituted as the 23rd Fighter Group of the U.S. Army Air Force’s China Air Task Force, the AVG destroyed nearly 300 Japanese combat planes in the air and on the ground, losing just 20 pilots and perhaps 35 or 40 aircraft in the process.

Not surprisingly, the AVG – the Flying Tigers – have been covered widely, in everything from a piss-poor John Wayne wartime propaganda movie to a series of books, articles, seminars and websites. Did we need another book? Surprisingly – especially if you’re a modeler or you want to know more about the people who made up the AVG – the answer is a resounding YES!

The book is a godsend to modelers like me who have a “thing” for the American Volunteer Group – for instance, it has a dozen-page chapter that probes almost excessively (if “excessive probing” into AVG markings is possible) into the color schemes and markings of the group’s 99 remarkably historical Tomahawk fighters. Not only are very specific details of even the smallest markings spelled out, but in many cases the author is able to say who painted on those markings – when – and where he bought the paint! In focusing on the people who painted and serviced and flew these Tomahawk fighters, the author swings back to further coverage on the markings: asking – then answering – specific questions such as “who created the various versions of the shark-mouth,” for instance, and “how the squadron and personal markings evolved over time.” For “marking nuts” (and who, among those who model the Flying Tigers, isn’t something of a “marking nut” at heart?) this book is a “must” for your hobby bookshelf.

A personal aside about my fascination for the AVG’s Hawk Model 81 Tomahawk – the primary mount of the AVG, which also flew a few USAAF hand-me-down P-40Es late in the Group’s abbreviated lifespan – this AVG Tomahawk is a beaut! Not exactly a P-40, the AVG Tomahawk was built to a British Lend Lease contract as an offshoot of their Tomahawk Mk. II. These aircraft were then passed on, again through Lend Lease, to Nationalist China to help in their ongoing war against Imperial Japan. Other Tomahawks from the same production run were Lend-Leased to the Soviet Union, and amazingly – since the fall of the Soviet Union – a few of these Tomahawks have recently been discovered and are currently being restored to flight status or for museum displays.

The aircraft from this particular production batch is really an amalgam of the P-40B and P-40C, with features from both aircraft. However, when taken into the USAAF at the time the AVG disbanded, the plane was referred to “officially” as a P-40C. No matter what it’s designation, to my eye the AVG Tomahawk is not only the most elegant and attractive P-40, but also the most deadly-looking.

Sure, later models of this Curtiss fighter had more powerful armament – six wing-mounted .50 caliber Browning heavy machine guns as opposed to the Tomahawk’s two nose-mounted .50s and four wing-mounted .30 caliber Brownings – and these later models also had the ability to carry and drop bombs. They also had heavier armor and better gunsights – and very likely improved self-sealing fuel tanks, too. No question that the D and E models (the Kittyhawks) and the later F-model through N-model Warhawks were, in most cases, technically more capable warplanes. But the Tomahawk looks deadlier (at least to me), and because it wasn’t weighted down with heavier armament and extra armor, it may well have been a bit more maneuverable – that judgment is really up to the pilots who flew both in combat, and this book didn’t address that issue.

Speaking of judgment, one AVG pilot – a former US Navy F4F-3 Wildcat pilot – felt that the Tomahawk’s firepower was superior to the Wildcat’s. No question that four .50s had a more potent punch than two .50s and four .30s – but against lightly-built, unarmored Japanese aircraft, the higher volume of bullets from those six guns (and the .30s’ inherently higher rate of fire) proved decisive in those brief on-target instances in combat.

Confirming this, one of the Japanese Imperial Army Air Force’s leading surviving aces – quoted in the book from a recent TV documentary – referred to gunfire from the Tomahawks as a “rain of bullets” that never seemed to stop. He should know – hit by two .30 rounds from an AVG Tomahawk, he barely survived. Hospitalized for months, he didn’t return to combat until long after the AVG had become the 23rd Group of the U.S. Army Air Force’s China Air Task Force – and long after the fast-shooting “transition-era” Tomahawk had been replaced by later-model P-40 Kittyhawks with their harder-hitting but slower-shooting six .50 caliber machine gun battery.

Part of my preference for the Tomahawk – and therefore part of my interest in the AVG – is my fascination with what I call “transitional-era” aircraft. The P-35 and P-36 were the US Army Air Corps’ first all-metal monoplane fighters with retractable landing gear, enclosed cockpits and heavier armament than the two rifle-caliber machine guns that had been common in all air forces from 1916 to roughly 1936. The early P-40s – the Tomahawks – were little more than re-engined P-36s, and were still what I consider “transitional” fighters. They didn’t carry or drop bombs, they still had a mixed armament that included light rifle-caliber machine guns, and their radios sucked on toast.

However, the more robust P-40E had completed the transition. With heavy armor, decent radios, six .50 caliber heavy machine guns and the ability to drop bombs, the P-40E was fully the conceptual equal of the second-generation monoplane fighters such as the P-39 Airacobra (which some might consider a “transitional-era fighter, too” – that’s open to debate, at the very least) and the early Allison-engined P-51 Mustangs. They were also the equal to other “evolved” planes that started out as transitional-era fighters, including the cannon-armed Hurricanes and the Daimler-Benz DB-601-powered Bf-109 E fighters. While these later P-40s might be better fighter aircraft – hell, they WERE better fighter aircraft – they had lost some of the distinction I think all those first-generation “modern” monoplane fighters shared.

When it comes to modeling, I prefer the transitional era fighters (this also applies to the jet era – I really like those first-generation jets, as well as those awkward hybrids like the Ryan Fireball) – and because I find the Tomahawk the most elegant of the breed, I’m particularly pleased with this book. For the Tomahawk modeler who likes the AVG, this book is sensational!

Along with this superb narrative are fifteen pages of color plates – including 1941-1942 color photos – and dozens of contemporary B&W photos. The photos are interspersed throughout the book, and accompany a narrative that focuses on the personalities – the pilots and ground crewmen – who made up the Flying Tigers, as well as their oft-reported combat operations.

While the book focuses more on markings than on aerial combat, it does note that in exchange for the loss from all causes of 20 combat pilots, the AVG racked up a confirmed kill rate of 296 Japanese aircraft, including many victories over Ki-43 Oscars (the equal, in speed and maneuverability, to the better-known Zero) flown by some of the premier fighter jocks of the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force. To all causes, the AVG lost about 70 of their 99 original Tomahawks – though more were lost to training accidents than to combat, and most combat losses were either planes bombed on the ground or shot-up Tomahawks that brought their pilots home before being turned into spare-parts bins.

At a time when the Japanese were clearing the sky of Allied planes over Hawaii, the Philippines, Java, Singapore and Western Australia, the relative handful of AVG Tomahawks – and an even smaller contingent of RAF Buffalos and Hurricanes – stood up to the largest aerial armadas to be seen in the Pacific before the start of the great Carrier battles of 1944, and gave better than they got. Much better!

In many cases during the defense of Rangoon, a dozen or so AVG Tomahawks and another dozen RAF fighters – including the often-maligned Buffalos – would rise to fight air fleets of 150, 200 or more Japanese fighters and bombers. While the Allies were too few in number to inflict losses sufficient to deter the Japanese – who seemed to have a near-endless supply of replacements – these AVG and RAF forces inflicted damage all out of proportion to their numbers, and lived to fight another day. And another day. And yet another day – in the case of the AVG, for six long months.

Even if you cut their victory numbers in half – an unjustified move, in my opinion, since so many AVG kills were confirmed by wreckage that fell in Allied territory or into occupied China were loyal partisans eagerly confirmed the victories – the AVG scored in combat at a trade-off rate that wasn’t matched by the Allies until Hellcats and Corsairs took to the skies in overwhelming numbers more than two years later. With vastly superior numbers – and vastly superior combat planes – it’s relatively easy to rack up impressive victory totals. When outnumbered 10-to-1 – or even 20-to-1 – while flying against combat-tested veterans … when flying planes the world considers obsolescent, if not down-right obsolete – survival alone is remarkable. But to score a 5-to-1 victory margin over a confident and skilled enemy at the peak of his strength and power is all but unbelievable.

But, in the case of the AVG, the unbelievable was all in a day’s work.

This detailed, superbly-illustrated 96-page book is pure Osprey, which in this case is a good thing – Osprey has a strong track-record of producing books that add real value to both the amateur historian and the avid modeler. Since I have a particular affinity for modeling early-model P-40s, this book has proven especially interesting and useful – but anybody with an interest in the Flying Tigers or in modeling the Tomahawk will find real value in this book.