Flying Tigers

A “Black Scorpion”, one pilot of 57th Fighter Group’s 64th Fighter Squadron “Black Scorpion”, taxiing on Grosseto Airport, early 1945. The plane is a Republic P-47D Thunderbolt “Razorback” in all silver finish, tail red with yellow band and front engine cowling red (color of 64th FS). On the engine cowling the 64th FS emblem, the “Black Scorpion”. The 15th Air Force 57th Fighter Group (First in the Blue), with its Fighter Squadrons (64th “Black Scorpions”, 65th “Fighting Cocks” and 66th “Exterminators”), was at Grosseto Main, coming from Corsica, from September 25, 1944 to April 28, 1945, date of its transfer to Villafranca Airport, Verona, for the last missions (last sortie May 5, 1945) of WW2. On May 1945 Group ordered to return to Grosseto and in August its personnel bound from Naples Harbor to USA. Victor Sierra

A “Black Scorpion” taxiing

Four unidentified Doolittle Raid crewmen, who bailed out over China from Aircraft #14, are escorted in a Chinese village before being reunited with other airmen in April of 1942. Most of the crew members made it to China, either crash landing, or bailing out over land. The assistance given by the Chinese to the airmen spurred the Japanese Imperial Army to carry out a retaliatory action called the Zhejiang-Jiangxi Campaign -- over the course of four months, entire villages were destroyed, and an estimated 250,000 Chinese civilians were killed. (AP Photo/U.S. Army Air Force