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China: A Chinese KMT soldier guards a line of American P-40 fighter planes, painted with the shark-face emblem of the `Flying Tigers,' SW China, 1942

Flying Tigers was the popular name of the 1st American Volunteer Group (AVG) of the Chinese Air Force in 1941-1942. The pilots were United States Army (USAAF), Navy (USN), and Marine Corps (USMC) personnel, recruited under Presidential sanction and commanded by Claire Lee Chennault; the ground crew and headquarters staff were likewise mostly recruited from the U.S. military, along with some civilians. The group consisted of three fighter squadrons with about 20 aircraft each. It trained in Burma before the American entry into World War II with the mission of defending China against Japanese forces. The Tigers' shark-faced fighters remain among the most recognizable of any individual combat aircraft of World War II, and they demonstrated innovative tactical victories when the news in the U.S. was filled with little more than stories of defeat at the hands of the Japanese forces.