* Joe was the dachshund of General Claire Lee Chennault, commander of the Flying Tigers and then the China Air Task Force of the US Army Air Forces, and became the mascot of those organizations.

* September 6 – Claire Lee Chennault, American aviator and general, leader of the Flying Tigers ( d. 1958 )

* Claire Chennault of the " Flying Tigers ," though born in Commerce, Texas, lived for a time in Waterproof in southern Tensas Parish.

Chennault retired in 1937, went to work as an aviation trainer and adviser in China, and commanded the " Flying Tigers " during World War II, both the volunteer group and the uniformed units that replaced it in 1942.

In 1932, as a pursuit aviation instructor at Maxwell Field, Chennault re-organized the team as " The Men on the Flying Trapeze ".

Flying Tigers: Claire Chennault and His American Volunteers, 1941 – 1942.

Flying Tiger: Chennault of China.

China Pilot: Flying for Chiang and Chennault.

In August 1950, the CIA secretly purchased the assets of Civil Air Transport ( CAT ), an airline that had been started in China in 1946 by Gen. Claire Lee Chennault ( of Flying Tigers fame ) and Whiting Willauer.

The 1st American Volunteer Group ( AVG ) of the Chinese Air Force in 1941 – 1942, famously nicknamed the Flying Tigers, was composed of pilots from the United States Army ( USAAF ), Navy ( USN ), and Marine Corps ( USMC ), recruited under presidential authority and commanded by Claire Lee Chennault.

In Flying Tigers: Claire Chennault and His American Volunteers, 1941 – 1942, Daniel Ford attributes the AVG's success to morale and group esprit de corps.

Old Leatherface of the Flying Tigers: The Story of General Chennault.

Chennault and the Flying Tigers.

Flying Tigers: Claire Chennault and His American Volunteers, 1941 – 1942.

With General Chennault: The Story of the Flying Tigers.

The Maverick War: Chennault and the Flying Tigers.

Flying Tiger: Chennault of China.

* Smith, Robert M. With Chennault in China: A Flying Tiger's Diary.

When Doolittle arrived in Chongqing, he told Colonel Claire Chennault, leader of the Flying Tigers, about Birch and his help.

Flying Tigers: Claire Chennault and His American Volunteers, 1941-1942.

With the United States entry into World War II against the Empire of Japan in December 1941, Claire Chennault, the commander of the American Volunteer Group ( AVG ) ( known as the Flying Tigers ) of the Chinese Air Force was called to Chungking, China, on 29 March 1942, for a conference to decide the fate of the AVG.

Chennault was opposed to inducting the Flying Tigers into the Army.

Chennault, wanting to keep the Flying Tigers going as long as possible, proposed the group disband on 4 July, when the AVG ’ s contracts with the Nationalist Chinese government expired.

Flying Tigers: Claire Chennault and His American Volunteers, 1941 – 1942.

From there, the American Flying Tigers led by Brigadier General Claire Lee Chennault, had inflicted heavy damage on Japanese troops both in China and Formosa and could launch air strikes against the home islands of Japan.

Currie was also assigned to expedite the American Volunteer Group ( Flying Tigers ), in which U. S. military pilots were released for combat under Claire Chennault, an adviser to the Chinese Air Force against Japan.

* April 9, 1942 Claire Chennault inducted into U. S. Army as a colonel, bringing the AVG Flying Tigers squadrons under Stilwell's nominal authority.

Covert flights for the military were not uncommon throughout the airline's history, given its roots in Civil Air Transport ( CAT ), as with its sister airline Air America, originally owned by General Claire Lee Chennault, commander of the Flying Tigers fighter squadron in Southeast Asia.

Following a personal letter from the French prime minister, Joseph Laniel, Eisenhower authorized the loan of aircraft with French markings painted on them and flown by crews from Civil Air Transport ( CAT ), a commercial airline, which had been started in 1946 by then-retired Major General Chennault, the famous commander of the American Volunteer Group ( AVG ), better known as the “ Flying Tigers ”, in China during World War II, and then purchased by the CIA in the year war broke out in Korea.

Near the war's end, the remnants of the Confederate treasury were taken through Columbia County from Augusta to where the Chennault Raid occurred in neighboring Lincoln County.

The 1900 US Census record from Franklin Parish, LA, Ward 2 states that C. L. Chennault was six years of age in 1900, with a younger brother, aged three.

Poor health and disputes with superiors led Chennault to resign from the service on April 30, 1937, leaving with the rank of captain.

Chennault participated in planning operations, observed the Chinese Air Force in combat from a Curtiss Hawk 75, and helped organize the so-called " International Squadron " of foreign mercenary aviators.

However, as Soviet air units increasingly flowed into China from the beginning of 1938, Chennault was sent to Kunming to head up a new training effort.

Increasingly, however, Soviet bomber and fighter squadrons took over from China's battered units, and in the summer of 1938 Chennault went to Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province in Western China, to train a new Chinese Air Force from an American mold.

Chennault followed shortly after with a promise from the War Department and President Roosevelt to be delivered to Chiang Kai-shek that several shipments of P-40C fighters were forthcoming along with pilots, mechanics, and aviation supplies.

His children from the first marriage were John Stephen Chennault ( 1913 – 1977 ), Max Thompson Chennault ( 1914 – 2001 ), Charles Lee Chennault ( 1918 – 1967 ), Peggy Sue Chennault Lee ( born 1919 ), Claire Patterson Chennault ( November 24, 1920 – October 3, 2011 ), David Wallace Chennault ( 1923 – 1980 ), Robert Kenneth Chennault ( 1925 – 2006 ), and Rosemary Louise Chennault Simrall ( born 1928 ).

Son Claire P. Chennault was a United States Army Air Corps and then Air Force officer from 1943 to 1966 and subsequent resident of Ferriday.

Chennault spent the winter of 1940 – 1941 in Washington, supervising the purchase of 100 Curtiss P-40 fighters ( diverted from a Royal Air Force order ; the Royal Air Force at that time deemed the P-40 obsolete ) and the recruiting of 100 pilots and some 200 ground crew and administrative personnel that would constitute the 1st AVG.

" They called Chennault " the Old Man " due to his much older age and leathery exterior obtained from years flying open cockpit pursuit aircraft in the Army Air Corps.

Chennault also had seven B-25C Mitchell medium bombers, out of an original 12 sent from India ( four were lost on a bombing mission en route and a fifth developed mechanical problems such that it was grounded and used for spare parts ).

The 11th Bombardment Squadron ( Medium ), consisting of the seven B-25s flown in from India, made up the other half of Chennault ’ s command.

He later served in China as chief of staff for General Claire Chennault of the China Air Task Force — precursor of the Fourteenth Air Force — then from 1943 to 1945 in the Southwest Pacific as chief of staff for the Fifth Air Force's Bomber Command.