A Seattle resident, Bob Neale was a dive-bomber pilot on Saratoga
when he joined the AVG. He took over the 1st Squadron Adam & Eves after Sandy
Sandell was killed, and was decorated by the British government (Distinguished
Service Order) for his exploits in Burma. Neale was one of the AVG pilots who
volunteered two weeks' additional service in China after the group was
disbanded; during that interim, he commanded the U.S. Army's 23rd Fighter
Group--as a civilian!--pending the arrival of the designated commander,
Colonel Robert Scott. After returning to the States, he served as a civilian
transport or ferry pilot for Pan American World Airways. The AVG records
credit him with 13 air-to-air victories: 
Born in Korea to a missionary father who later became chaplain to the
Texas Rangers, Tex Hill was also a Navy dive-bomber pilot when recruited for
the AVG, serving on Ranger on the east coast. The British awarded him
the Distiguished Flying Cross for his service in Burma. He replaced Jack
Newkirk as commander of the 2nd Squadron Panda Bears in March 1942. Devoted to
Chennault, he was one of only five Flying Tigers who accepted induction into
the U.S. Army in July 1942. He was given the rank of major and the command of
the 75th Fighter Squadron. On his second combat tour in China, he served as
commander of the 23rd Fighter Group, and after the war earned general's rank
in the Texas Air National Guard. Not long before he died, he published his
memoirs as
A native of Pennsylvania, George Burgard was born August 12, 1915. He
attended Bucknell and spent six years as a newspaperman before joining the
Army. Trained in B-17s, he was serving as a Ferry Command pilot when he joined
the AVG. Following his AVG service, he flew for American Export Lines. He has
his own webpage; see the 
Bob Little is shown as a native of Spokane. Likewise recruited from the
Army Air Corps (probably from the 8th Pursuit Group at Mitchel Field), and
likewise a double ace, he was killed in action while bombing Japanese
positions on the Salween River, 22 May 1942. 
A graduate of UCLA, Chuck Older joined the marines as a breather before
law school. Following the AVG, he joined the Army and ended the war as a
lieutenant colonel before resuming his interrupted study of the law, perhaps
the only double ace to become a judge. (Most famously, he presided over the
Charles Manson trial.) Meantime, he was recalled to active duty and flew a
Douglas B-26 Invader during the Korean War--probably the only Flying Tiger to
be a combat pilot in another war. 
A native of Red Cloud, Nebraska, R. T. Smith was serving as an Army flight
instructor at Randolph Field when he joined the AVG, and he rejoined the Air
Corps when his tour was finished. He served with the 1st Air Commando in India
and Burma, ending the war as a colonel. His facsimile diary,
One of the few AVG recruits who'd actually flown fighter planes--Curtiss P-40s
for the 1st Pursuit Group at Selfridge Field--Mac McGarry was shot down over
Chiang Mai, Thailand, on 24 March 1942. (Portions of his Tomahawk are now on
display at the 
Charlie Bond was born in Dallas on April 22, 1915. As a high-school student,
he joined the ROTC and eventually the Texas National Guard. In 1935 he joined
the Army in hopes of attending the West Point Preparatory School at Camp
Bullis, Texas--a route for enlisted men to attend the Military Academy.
Failing to win an appointment, he tried again as a flying cadet. He succeeded
in becoming an officer, but was disappointed to be assigned to the 2nd Bomb
Group at Langley Field, Virgina, instead of flying "pursuit" as every young
pilot dreamed of doing. He was ferrying Hudsons to the RAF when an AVG
recruiter caught up with him. For his services in Burma, the British awarded
him the Distinguished Flying Cross. After his AVG tour--which included two
weeks' extra service during the transition to the 23rd Fighter Group--he
became a career officer, retiring from the Air Force with the rank of major
general. In 1984, he published his memoirs as
A graduate of the University of North Carolina, "Whitey" Lawlor joined the
Navy in 1938, and he was a fighter pilot on Saratoga when he joined the
AVG. He returned to the Navy after his AVG tour, ending the war as a
lieutenant commander. He tied Bond and Jack Newkirk with 7 air-to-air
victories: 
His family called him "Scarsdale Jack," to distinguish him from a
cousin with the same name. Born in 1913, he received his Eagle Scout badge
from no less a hero than the Antarctica explorer Richard Byrd. He learned to
fly as a student at Rennselaer Polytechnic, where he eventually accumulated
the two years' study that would qualify him to become a cadet aviator in the
US Navy. He was a fighter pilot aboard Yorktown, flying the F4F
Wildcat, when he volunteered for the AVG. At the age of 27, with his
leadership training, he was already a dominant figure in the group by the time
he arrived in Burma. By the time he was killed on the Chiang Mai raid, he too
had been credited with 7 air-to-air victories, though some AVG veterans hinted
broadly that were skeptical of his claims. (It is certainly true that the
squadron leaders, who had the primary responsibility for signing off on
victories, generally built up their scores more quickly than the other
pilots.) For more about the crash,
Duke Hedman was the only AVG pilot--and one of very few Americans--to
make ace in a single day. (The record was confused when one of his victories
was shifted to an earlier day, and again when his flight agreed to share all
bonus credits equally.) He attended the University of North Dakota and was
serving with the 1st Pursuit Group at Selfridge Field when he joined the AVG.
He stayed on in China as a civilian transport pilot for the national airline,
CNAC. Postwar, he was a pilot for Flying Tiger Line until he retired in 1971.
Though his CAMCO bonus account stands at only 4.83, he should have been
credited with 6 victories, putting him in a three-way tie as tenth-ranking AVG
ace, and one of very few Americans who achieved acedom in a single day:
Joe Rosbert (his first initial stands for Camille) graduated from
Villanova as a chemical engineer before joining the Navy in 1938. He was
piloting a stately PBY Catalina for VP-44 in San Diego when the AVG signed him
up. He served two extra weeks during the transition to the 23rd Fighter Group,
then joined CNAC as a transport pilot flying cargo over the "Hump" of the
Himalayas. Postwar, he was one of the original founder-pilots of Flying Tiger
Line (see Bartling, below), before moving over to Chennault's Civil Air
Transport (the predecessor of Air America). Later he ran several "Flying Tiger
Joe" restaurants. He too had six victories in the record: 
Dick Rossi was born April 19, 1915, and he'd attended the University of
California and served a hitch in the Merchant Marine before joining the Navy.
He was a flight instructor at Pensacola when he joined the AVG. Like the other
six-victory aces, he declined to rejoin his country's armed services after the
AVG disbanded, staying on in China as a highly-paid CNAC pilot. He flew for
Flying Tiger Line until his retirement in 1971, and was the long-time
president of the Flying Tiger Assocation. He once posted his story
Born May 5, 1913, and therefore apparently the oldest of the AVG aces,
Bob Prescott had been a pre-law student in college. Recruited from the Navy,
he was yet another of the Flying Tigers who chose to fly for CNAC when his
tour ended. He later founded the Flying Tiger Line, the only "non-sked"
established by World War II veterans that survived and prospered, at least
until it was absorbed by FedEx. (Until the FAA put a stop to it, he used to
fly AVG veterans to their annual reunions.) The record shows him with 5.5
air-to-air victories: 
An engineering graduate of the University of Iowa, Bartelt had served
four years in the Navy when he joined the AVG. He quit the AVG in March 1942
and thus received a "dishonorable discharge" from Chennault, depriving him of
the veterans' benefits and Silver Star that were later awarded to those who
stayed with the group to the end. He was the only ace to be so treated, and
probably for that reason I could find no photograph of him in the AVG records.
(The mug shot above is cropped from a photo of him as a US Navy pilot, sent to
me by his son Rick.) He returned to the Navy as a lieutenant and served as a
flight instructor until being hospitalized with a lung infection. He received
a disability retirement in 1951 and worked for the state of Minnesota until
retirement in 1974. He died in Fargo, ND on March 29, 1986. The record shows
him in a five-way tie as the AVG's fifteenth-ranking ace: 
A 1938 graduate of Purdue in chemical engineering, Bartling joined the
navy and flew a dive bomber off the USS Wasp. He was one of the AVG
pilots who volunteered two extra weeks' service in China to ease the
transition to the 23rd Fighter group, and he afterward flew for CNAC. Postwar,
he was an executive at National Skyway Freight Corporation, which morphed into
the Flying Tiger Line, the most successful of the "non-scheds" established by
veterans flying war-surplus aircraft (in this case, Douglas C-47s with a
rather bemused shark-mouth painted on). He died November 1979. 
Born May 31, 1914, Eddie Overend became a Flying Tiger ace shortly
before his 28th birthday. A Marine pilot when recruited for the AVG, he'd also
served two years in a machine-gun company--presumably also in the Marines. He
rejoined the Corps after his AVG tour was ended, finishing the war with the
rank of major. 
A former Army flight instructor at Maxwell Field, Sandy Sandell somehow
ended up as squadron leader of the AVG 1st Squadron, called the Adam & Eves.
He was not particularly liked, but in his short combat career at Rangoon he
became one of the first of the AVG aces. He was killed on 7 Feb 1942 when his
recently-repaired Tomahawk shed its tail on a test flight over Mingaladon
airport. 
Sometimes called Snuffy, sometimes Smitty, this Bob Smith attended
Kansas State College and served in its ROTC detachment; he had 18 months in
the Army Air Corps when he was recruited for the AVG. He rejoined the Army
after his tour as a Flying Tiger, ending the war as a major. [Recently there's been a heated discussion on the AVG veterans' message board about what the British aviation historian Christopher Shores wrote about over-claiming in the Battle of Burma. Soon the argument spread to the Twelve O'clock High forum. In the end, Mr. Shores added his tuppennys' worth, which appears below. -- Dan Ford]
* * * *
Firstly, those who seek to attack what I have written on the subject should be made aware that I found AVG claims no more or less unreliable than those of most other air forces I have researched. Always the circumstances of each engagement needs to be looked at carefully. In fighter-v-fighter combats the claim: loss ratio always seems to climb rapidly, multiplied by the numbers of aircraft/units involved. In Burma the AVG were often fighting over jungle and attacked in steep dives before climbing back for altitude. Good tactics, but fraught with opportunities for double claiming - or triple claiming for that matter.
When I wrote ' Fighters over the Desert' way back in the 1960s, I could not understand why I kept finding claims that I could not verify when I seemed to have all the available records to hand. It was only years later, and after I had been attacked by apologists for just about every air force in the world, that I found in the official British war histories published in the early/mid 1950s a clear warning that claim totals were likely to be inflated and could not be relied upon - and that was admitted within ten years of the end of WWII !!
Indeed, over claiming, albeit in the best of good faith in most cases, certainly seems to have been endemic in aerial combat. It happened on every front and with every air force. Some (though not all) Luftwaffe units and Finnish units were considerably more accurate than most, most of the time. Fighter pilots by and large were young, aggressive and optimistic men who knew what they should be seeing and wanted to see. Even now, some still get very upset when it is pointed out that something they were quite certain had happened (and wanted to have happened) had not in fact occurred just as they recalled it. Others are much more pragmatic and realistic - and strangely, it is usually the latter whose claims prove to be easier to verify as having been accurate (or at least reaonably so).
I always remind myself of the little verse Barrett Tillman recited once - "You can tell a bomber pilot by the spread across his rear, and by the ring around his eye, you can tell a bombardier; you can tell a navigator by his maps and charts and such, and you can tell a fighter pilot - but you can't tell him much !"
Just for the record, I love it when I can find a loss that fits a claim so that I can properly confirm what actually happened at the time. It gives me no joy at all to have to point out that there was not a loss for a particular claim. I love the world of fighter pilots and have spent more than 40 years of my life researching and recording their exploits. But in doing so if one is to retain credibility as a historian, one must look at the full picture, not just one side.
In ' Bill; a Pilot's Story' by Brooklyn Harris, the author records how day after day Japanese formations kept returning to targets in the Solomons despite the losses apparently being inflicted on them by the 13th Air Force. It never once occurred to the author that perhaps the reason for the apparently inexhaustible supply of aircraft the Japanese seemed to have available to them - something to which he specifically referred - might have indicated that at least in part the losses they were actually suffering were not as severe as those being claimed.
To research matters from as wide a perspective as possible and to report the results as accurately as one can, should reflect no shame on those participating except in the occasional and thankfully rare occasions when some individual is deliberately falsifying their contribution. (The latter did happen now and again, but fortunately [sic] not often). From my own researches I can certainly state that the vast majority of fighter pilots (and aircrew generally) of all nations did their duty in an exemplary fashion. If anyone has done them a disservice I would suggest that it was more likely to be those who wrote about them carelessly for sensational and propaganda purposes - not those who have tried to be objective and honest in recording history to the best of their abilities. Personally, I am always pleased to be able to update and correct any statement I have recorded in the past where further or more reliable evidence becomes available.
If you should feel it appropriate to include these words on the Forum I would be grateful. If you feel it is too long, then fine.
Kind regards,
Chris