My Flying Tiger room

[JeffG.]

I had posted a picture a while back of a cherry trestle stand I build for our big screen. This same room is progressing and I've added two more tables and two birdseye maple framed pics.

The pictures are of the Flying Tigers fighting over China. One of these is signed by 7 original members including Tex Hill (18.5 kills) and Ed Rector, both of whom flew during the battle for the Salween Gorge.

I have a CD/DVD storage unit to build and a stand for the stereo before I can start the fun part - new speakers! Probably won't hit that until this winter some time.

[Flames1950]

Send me your address and I'll move in!!! Backyard looks awfully inviting.

Question, how do you get half a kill? Didn't know there were assists in dogfighting.......

[chad]

The pictures are of the Flying Tigers fighting over China. One of these is signed by 7 original members including Tex Hill (18.5 kills) and Ed Rector, both of whom flew during the battle for the Salween Gorge.

Tex Hill one of the best aces in history.I have read much about him in the past and think he is as humble as he was a damn good Fighter.Great history and a great man!! That is cool that you have his sig. on that wonderfull looking Flying Tigers pic. I take it you have met Mr.Hill ? BTW beautifull looking room. Chad

[Winder]

Very nice. Did you make the coffee table too? Sweet.

My father-in-law (RIP) was on the Burma Road during the war so they probably flew over him a time or two.

[JeffG.]

Thanks guys. Yes the coffee table and side table came from the same tree. The rest of the wood from that tree is being used to build a cd rack and hifi stand. I get most of my wood from a guy in Michigan who reclaims blow downs and other trees that bigger sawyers don't want to be bothered with.

Actually there are assists. Even 1/4 kills. And confirmed and unconfirmed. I spend a little too much time playing Aces High LOL Part of the reason that back yard has so many weeds right now.

I have not met any of the guys whose signatures I have. Its a print I purchased from a museum about 3 years ago. It does have the certificate of authenticity. I've met Boyington and Holman (P-47 pilot), but that is all. Actually I met Boyington when I was 14, during the Baa Baa Blacksheep TV show era

"By May 5, the Japanese army had advanced to the Salween River, seventy-five miles along the Burma Road inside China. Chinese resistance had melted away, with much of the disorganized Chinese army fleeing into the mountains and others pushing civilian refugees out of the way along the Burma Road as they raced for the Hweitung suspension bridge across the Salween River gorge. The remnants of the Chinese army made it across the bridge just ahead of the Japanese. The Chinese then blew up the bridge, effectively stopping the advance of the Japanese. Had the Chinese not blown up the bridge, the Japanese would have had a clear, unobstructed route to Kunming. Once Kunming fell, denying the Chinese their last major supply point by air, China would be out of the war. Only two things were stopping the Japanese: a demolished bridge and the Flying Tigers.

For several months, Chennault's armorers had been trying unsuccessfully to fit workable bomb racks on the P-40B Tomahawks. With the arrival in late March of the newer model P-40E "Kittyhawks," however, the problem was solved. The E-model came with underwing mountings for six thirty-five-pound fragmentation bombs. Roy Hoffman, the AVG's chief armorer, and Third Squadron armorer Charlie Baisden devised a rack beneath the aircrafts belly that could carry the plentiful 570-pound Russian bombs supplied by the Chinese. The Second Squadron, made up largely of ex-Navy pilots, provided the dive-bombing expertise needed.

On the morning of May 7, Chennault called together his pilots and briefed them on the mission: Tex Hill would lead the flight of four P-40Es, accompanied by former USS Ranger pilots Ed Rector, Tom Jones, and Frank Lawlor. A top cover of Tomahawks would be flown by Arvid Olson, R.T. Smith, Erik Shilling, and Tom Haywood.

That afternoon, taking off from Yunnanyi, the two flights arrived over the target area to find Japanese engineers busily working to span the muddy Salween with pontoon bridges. At the juncture of the Salween River and the Burma Road, the road drops sharply over a mile down into the gorge. Japanese armored columns, trucks, and troops snaked back east for twenty miles along the narrow approaches to the gorge. As Chennault described later, the Japanese were trapped in the open "like flies on flypaper - a sheer precipice on one side of the narrow road and a rock wall on the other."

Signaling his flight for the attack, Tex Hill peeled off in a dive toward the western end of the Japanese column. Aiming for the sheer rock walls above the convoy, he released his 570-pound demolition bomb. As the bomb found its mark, tons of rock came cascading down on the hapless Japanese troops below, effectively sealing off any retreat back along the Burma Road. Rector, Lawlor, and Jones followed in a string, each dropping his own payload and causing further chaos and panic below.

Hill and his company followed with successive attacks along the twenty-mile length of the Japanese column, expending their fragmentation bombs and ammunition from their six .50-caliber machine guns.

Their ammunition gone, Hill and his flight climbed out of the target area to allow the top cover flight to add to the carnage. The four Tomahawks led by Oley Olson swept the column with their own .30-caliber guns until they had expended their ammunition; then, they joined Hill and his flight as they headed west for Yunnanyi.

The scene below was sheer pandemonium - vehicles were burning, the bodies of dead Japanese soldiers were strewn about like cordwood, and smoke rose thousands of feet in the air.

The AVG had just begun. After refueling at Yunnanyi, the P-40Es were loaded with more fragmentation bombs, incendiaries were added to the armament load, and the pilots made a second round trip to the Salween Gorge. Chennault followed up with an attack by a dozen Russian SB-3 twin-engine bombers flown by Chinese pilots and even a few Hawk III biplanes from the training school at Kunming joined in the fray.

Chennault continued the attacks with small flights of Tomahawks and P-40Es over the next three days, harassing the small remnant of retreating Japanese as far south as Wanting. The drive on the Salween had been stopped. The Japanese were never able to cross the Salween Gorge and, even though they maintained artillery and infantry positions on the Salween's west bank, they were never again able to attempt a river crossing. With the emboldened Chinese on the east bank, the opposing forces faced each other in a stalemate until the Japanese were driven back south into Burma in the summer of 1944. Chennault and the AVG had broken the back of the Japanese invasion of Western China."

[marshman]

You realize you need this, of course:

http://store.tailwinds.com/tiwaaicefan.html

Looks real good, otherwise. Nice work.

[chad]

You realize you need this, of course:

http://store.tailwinds.com/tiwaaicefan.html

Looks real good, otherwise. Nice work.

No joke. Thats BADASS!! cool as hell.Wouldn't mind having that myself. Chad

[marshman]

Yeah, that fan is dead cool. There's a P-51 also, but it doesn't have the mojo that the warhawk does.

http://store.tailwinds.com/p-51-mustang ... g-fan.html