1941 – 1942
In the beginning…
Perhaps the best known aircraft of WWII was the single engine P-40 with distinctive tiger shark markings. It will live in history as the aircraft of the American Volunteer Group, better known as the “Flying Tigers” of General Claire Lee Chennault. In the P-40, 95 pilots of the AVG shot down more than 500 enemy aircraft with a combat loss of only 45 of their own. This is stark testimony to the quality of both pilot and aircraft. But the P-40 was more than a pursuit and bombing aircraft; it also flew escort for the first large scale airlift in the China-Burma-India Theater of Operations. It was during those early days of the war that the concept of large scale air cargo was formulated, tested and proven. And from this group of “Flying Tigers” came founder and president Robert W. Prescott and the men who started the Flying Tiger Line.