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2012-03-29

LIFE magazine March 30th 1942 AVG Flying Tigers

Forwarded message marc loriaux

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Thx Marc



Interesting article and one I can actually relate (sort of) to.  When I returned from my year in Southeast Asia (66-67) I went back to school at the U of Minnesota.  I rented the upstairs of a small house in St. Paul from a sweet little lady by the name of Marie Haywood.  I had been living there for several months and had an occasion to be in her living room when I saw hanging on the wall a Nationalist Chinese flag, a AVG banner, and several other pieces of memorabilia obviously Flying Tiger related.  Naturally my interest was aroused and I asked about them.  Turns out that her son, Tom, was a pilot for the AVG and survived his "tour" in China and returned with this stuff.  Marie was widowed and lived there with her daughter but I never saw anyone else there.  I asked where Tom was and she said he was living in California and working for Flying Tiger Air Transport Services ( can't recall if that was the actual name).  He was a pilot for them until he had a heart attack and was grounded but continued in some other capacity.  She had a book that had been written about the Flying Tigers and she let me read it and it had several pictures and "mentions" in it about him.  We have a museum here in Nampa (Boise Area) called the Warhawk Museum with the main emphasis on WWII and the P-40 aircraft.  They have several of these aircraft and, as I understand, they were part of the filming of Tora, Tora, Tora. It has a lot of P-40 and AVG memorabilia and there is one picture of a group of guys and Tom Haywood is in it.  Anyway, interesting and it was good to revisit that piece of history.