When I’d visit my grandparents, there were two book that I’d always read. One was the book “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo” by Ted Lawson, who was one of the Doolittle Raiders (and the one most severely injured survivors) and the other was a book about the Flying Tigers. The Flying Tigers were a group of volunteer America pilots who were led by Claire Lee Chennault. They fought the Japanese in China before Pearl Harbor in the Curtis P-40B Warhawk — America’s top fighter at the outset of the war. And while not a match for the Japanese Zero, the Warhawk could hold its own in skilled hands. The Flying Tigers destroyed 296 Japanese aircraft to only 14 losses of their own.
Here are a couple of “paintings” I’ve done in honor of those two books: the P-40B (in American livery) somewhere in the South Pacific and the B-25 over Tokyo.
