On March 22 the construction of the official “Flying Tigers” Memorial Park has begun in the outskirts of Guilin. The park area will include the remains of the former Yangtang airfield where the volunteer group, commanded by General Claire Lee Chennault, has been stationed from October 1941 to the end of the war.
The group consisted of 99 pilots, 200 ground crew man and 10 army flight instructors which were hired as check pilots for Chinese cadets. Several of these would ultimately join the AVG’s combat squadrons. The group derived their name from the brightly colored paintings on their airplanes. While the actual average
strength of the AVG was never more than 62 combat-ready pilots and fighters, Chennault’s strategy, also called “Chennault’s fighter doctrine” proved to be highly successful against the Japanese airforce. On 297 destroyed enemy planes, they only lost 14 pilots. The US$ 23 million project will include the reconstruction of the command post and barracks as well as a museum.
There is a second small “Flying Tigers”Museum in the mountainous area around Guilin, consisting of the wreckage of a downed B24, dragged out of the mountain it crashed into. The museum was privately taken care of and currently does not have English descriptions. It is not known if the two places will be combined after the park opens to the public. Here a link to the original news in Chinese and here a link to the official web-page of the Flying Tigers Heritage park
March 24, 2009
Flying Tigers Memorial Park
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Dedication of the museum, first phase of a three phase project to build the Flying Tiger heritage Park, will be March 2010. It is my understanding that the B24 remains will be moved to the new museum.
Comment by Larry — July 29, 2009 @ 18:22
Yes, I'm thinking the same. They will probably try to concentrate everything into one place (which most probably also has commercial reasons).
Comment by Julian — July 30, 2009 @ 01:05