Flying Tigers

Flying Tigers (a.k.a. Yank Over Singapore and Yanks Over the Burma Road) is a 1942 American black-and-white war film drama from Republic Pictures that was produced by Edmund Grainger, directed by David Miller, and stars John Wayne, John Carroll, and Anna Lee. Flying Tigers dramatizes the exploits of the American Volunteer Group (AVG), Americans who fought the Japanese in China, serving with the Chinese Nationalist forces, during World War II. The movie portrays them as fighting before U.S. entry into the war but, in point of fact, they did not see action until after the attack on Pearl Harbor. It is unabashedly a wartime propaganda film that was well received by a 1940s audience looking for a patriotic "flagwaver". Plot Jim Gordon leads the Flying Tigers, a squadron of volunteer American pilots who fly Curtiss P-40C fighters against Japanese aircraft in the skies over China during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The pilots are a mixed bunch, motivated by money (they receive a bounty for each aircraft shot down) or just by the thrill of aerial combat. One day, Jim's old friend Woody Jason shows up. An arrogant, hot-shot aviator, he starts causing trouble immediately. When the Japanese raid the Flying Tigers' airbase, the new arrival goes after them, taking up a P-40 fighter without permission, not realizing until too late that it has no ammunition. As a result, Woody is shot down. He is unharmed, but the precious fighter is a total wreck. As time goes on, Woody shows that he has little use for teamwork, alienating and endangering the other pilots. He abandons his wingman, Blackie Bales, in order to shoot down a Japanese aircraft. As a result, Blackie is attacked and bails out of his burning P-40. While hanging suspended in his parachute, he is strafed and killed by the Japanese pilot.