THE FLYING TIGERS

They expected a routine mission. Japanese planes owned the skies over China, but the pilots and crewmen who boarded the ten Mitsubishi Ki-21 twin-engine bombers on the morning of 20 December 1941, intended to cover the 300 air miles from their base at Hanoi to the Chinese city of Kunming, drop their incendiaries and 500-pound bombs, and return unscathed. There was no need for a fighter escort. For a decade the armed forces of Imperial Japan had been at war on the Asian continent.

They staged the Mukden Incident in 1931 as a pretext to seizing the northern province of Manchuria from China, and another so-called ‘incident’ in 1937 at the Marco Polo Bridge, near the city of Peking, to escalate the simmering conflict into what became known as the Second Sino-Japanese War. The Chinese resisted bravely on land and in the air. However, the resources of the Nationalist government of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek were few and often ineffective in the face of the Japanese onslaught.

Nowhere was the military contest more unequal than in the air. The Japanese flew modern planes, their pilots were well trained, and with each mission their confidence grew. Japanese fighter pilots regularly shredded the defending planes of the Republic of China Air Force, most of which were obsolete American-designed Curtiss BF2C Goshawk biplanes along with a few British, Italian, and Soviet types. Chinese pilots were often the sons of wealthy, influential families who graduated from flight training with wings pinned to their chests regardless of proficiency.

These ill-prepared fliers were often killed, their valuable aircraft destroyed in takeoff and landing incidents, while those who managed to engage in aerial combat fell to Japanese guns at an alarming rate. By 1941, although the Republic of China Air Force officially listed a complement of 500 planes, which was probably overstated, barely 90 aircraft were considered battleworthy at any given time.

However, during that morning mission to Kunming, the Japanese were made keenly aware that the situation in the skies above China, and neighbouring Burma, had been dramatically altered. As they approached their target, the Japanese pilots spotted something unusual. Four tiny dots were rapidly bearing down on them, and