Who Likes Aircraft ?

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[Photon440]

The Aichi M6A Seirin was a torpedo bomber designed to be launched from a submarine. With folding wings and tail, three of these fit into the hanger section of a I-400-class submarine. These were the largest subs of WWII.
The Seirin was powered by a licensed built version of the Daimler V-12 with around 1,400 hp, top speed was just shy of 300 mph.

The only remaining example, near Dulles International Airport.

Designed specifically for sneak attacks on the United States, the plan was to surface the sub and launch the airplanes from a 120 foot catapult ramp on the deck and then submerge and hide. With floats, the returning aircraft would land nearby the resurfacing sub and get picked up by a crane. Plans were to attack important targets such as the Panama Canal and to drop biological weapons on west coast cities, but the end of the war came just weeks before these were to be carried out. Three subs were completed (one only used as a submarine refueling tanker) and other incomplete hulls were later destroyed. At 400 feet long, they were powered by four 3,000 diesel engines and had a range of 37,000 miles with a 330 foot depth limit. The two active subs were sunk after the war around Hawaii in target practice exercises. These and other subs were either quickly blown up or taken to US waters to avoid the Soviets from arriving in Japan to inspect them.

These remained the largest subs made until the 1960's nuclear ballistic subs were constructed.

 

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[Auggie56]

 

[Auggie56]

On this day in 1942, the Flying Tigers begin their last official mission. The unit formally known as the First American Volunteer Group had been flying for mere months, but its reputation was already one for the ages: In roughly 50 aerial battles, it was never defeated.

Perhaps more importantly to some Americans, the Flying Tigers struck the first blow at the Japanese in the wake of Pearl Harbor.

“Years before American soldiers stormed the beaches of Normandy,” author Sam Kleiner writes, “or raised the flag on Iwo Jima, it was Chennault’s Flying Tigers who rallied the country with victories . . . .”

The Flying Tigers were the brain child of former U.S. Army pilot Claire Lee Chennault. He’d been working as a consultant to the Chinese Air Force during the late 1930s, and he saw what the Japanese war machine was doing to the Chinese people: It was ravaging the countryside with bombing campaigns, killing innocents, and capturing major cities.

What if a “foreign legion” were created to protect against such attacks? The United States was officially neutral at this juncture, but Chennault sold Franklin D. Roosevelt on the plan anyway. FDR allowed American military pilots to resign their commissions without penalty. They would be free to join the covert effort.

Roosevelt was skirting the edges of neutrality laws, of course, so he never signed an official Executive Order authorizing the creation of the Flying Tigers. “The order was more of a wink and a nod,” historian Bill Yenne concludes.

Chennault trained the pilots at a British airfield in Southeast Asia. They would be flying Curtiss P-40B fighters, which most had never flown before. The American volunteers would be paid a salary by the Chinese government, and they were promised a bonus for each Japanese warplane that they destroyed.

Our boys left American soil with civilian passports—and false occupations—in their pockets. Indeed, in one humorous twist, future Medal of Honor recipient Gregory “Pappy” Boyington, a hard-drinking pilot, carried a passport claiming that he was a member of the clergy.

The Flying Tigers made their presence felt, right from the beginning. They’d finished training and were the only Americans ready to deploy when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Within days, the Japanese attacked Kunming, China, too.

The Flying Tigers were dispatched. The Chinese city would not be caught flat-footed again. When Japanese bombers returned on December 20, they were met with a surprise: American fighter pilots.

Let’s just say that it didn’t go well for the Japanese.

Americans soon heard about the heroics of the Flying Tigers. “Last week,” Time magazine soon reported, “ten Japanese bombers came winging their carefree way into Yunnan, heading directly for Kunming . . . . the Flying Tigers swooped, let the Japanese have it. Of the ten bombers, said [Chinese] reports, four plummeted to earth in flames. The rest turned tail and fled. Tiger casualties: none.”

The Flying Tigers would spend a total of seven months in combat before their contracts ran out on July 4, 1942. When the unit was disbanded, it was replaced by the 23rd Fighter Group of the U.S. Army Air Forces.

The Flying Tigers never wore an American uniform, but they revived flagging American morale. And, as many of you know, the grinning shark that graced their aircraft would become an iconic symbol of World War II.

 

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[miller]

Years ago, a buddy of mine, drinking, working together, both of our first kids born only a week apart, blah, blah.
Really surprised me, the day he started talking about his dad, who had just passed. Pretty much alone, drank himself to death. Fifth of whiskey a day.
Pat told me, his dad was a mechanic...for the Flying Tigers! What a piece of history. And, the sad ending.

 

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Advertisement from 1967:

 

[Auggie56]

First ever flight of this creation off a rooftop in Toledo Ohio.

 

[Auggie56]

 

[Auggie56]

This is ace Robert Johnson's P47 that was crippled and attacked by a 109 three times from his six but failed to shoot him down. The German eventually waved at him and let Johnson live.