Another Tiger Down

Flight Journal, Dec 2004 by Davisson, Budd

IN SO MANY WAYS, THOSE OF US IN THE magazine/information business are experiencing a sad time in history. Hardly a day goes by that we don't get an obituary notice that says one of those who helped make history is gone. This time, it was AVG pilot Charlie Mott.

Charlie was one of the original Flying Tiger pilots who carried the fight to the enemy. It has become a cliché to say that while the rest of the world was reeling from shock and in a defensive mode, the Tigers had gone on the offense. The fact is, however, that the War was barely a month old when Mott, leading four P-40s on a sweep of the Japanese airfield at Mae Sot, Thailand, was hit by ground fire; after he bailed out, Charlie spent the rest of the War as a POW. He was one of the thousands of prisoners held in the camps who worked on the railroad near the famous River Kwai.

Charlie fought the Japanese, he fought to recover from injuries incurred during the bailout, and he fought against the neverending cruelty and deprivation that was part of being a POW. He won all of those battles and, after the War, returned to the Navy; he retired as a captain in 1963. Now, he has lost the final battle-as we all must.

Charlie is just the latest veteran to take his final flight, but more than that, he's a reminder that there are actually two types of WW II vets: those who were already in the military when the War started and those who joined after Pearl Harbor. As we come to this point in time, the age difference between the two groups is becoming critical.

Beginning in December 1941, we had to fight a war with the equipment we already had that was manned by men who were already trained. We fought with a military that was not only already in existence but with men who had been wearing the uniforms for a few years, so none of them were kids.

Using the AVG as an example, all of the pilots were already in squadron service in some arm of the U.S. military before they resigned to fly for Gen. Claire Chennault. Considering that the prewar Army/Navy/Marine air arms were professional services made up entirely of volunteers (the draft didn't exist then), and the Navy still required higher education, all of the pilots were in their mid- to late twenties: Boyington was 29 years old; Chuck Older was 24; Bob Neale and Charlie Mott were 27. In those days, there weren't many of the 20-year-old fighter pilots who became so commonplace just a few years later.

The Doolittle Raiders are another case in point. When Doolittle formed his Raiders in early 1942, he was looking for volunteers, but he wasn't looking for newbies. He wanted experienced pilots. Also, the B-25 was a hot new weapon, and the military wasn't going to trust its shiny new toy to kids just out of flight school. (Although that changed rapidly when America's war machine kicked into gear.) The net result was that all of the Raider crewmembers were older than B-25 crews were in 1944/'45. This fact is obvious in the statistics: as this is being written, only 17 of the original 80 Raiders are still with us.

The cadre of pilots and crews who were already in service in 1941 waged a desperate holding action until training pipelines began to kick out men and machines, but as it did, the average age of combatants began to come down. By mid-1944, a 20-year-old fighter pilot wasn't unusual enough to even warrant comment, but three years earlier, that same seat would have been occupied by someone three or four years older. This means that there is a minimum of five to seven years difference in age between those who were there at the beginning of the War and those who were part of the draftinduced buildup.

Six or seven years doesn't sound like much until we get down to this end of the hourglass. A pilot who was 25 in 1941 is 86 years old today. A 1945 20-year-old pilot would be only 79 years old-a relative youngster. Charlie Mott was 89.

WW II, like all classic adventure stories, was a three-act play. Act 1 : the conflict is defined and the good and bad guys are identified. Act 2: there is give and take between the forces of good and evil, and there is no clear consensus as to what the outcome will be. Act 3: the end is in sight, and the heroes turn on the steam and bear down on the bad guys to force a rapid conclusion.

When we lose someone like Charlie Mott, Act 1 becomes more difficult to understand. It goes a little out of focus because another of its players has left the stage. Soon, the original cast will all have gone, and grainy black-and-white images will be all that remain to remind us of how it began. The opening act of any movie or play is always shorter than the rest, but the seeds that determine the course of the plot are planted there. Guys like Charlie set the course, and without them, Act 3 could have been decidedly different.