S4 [ENCORE] - World War II Aviation Stories: An American “ghost pilot,” and the Japanese fighter pilot who became a god in Tainan 台南

Note: This remastered, re-edited encore episode was first released in Sept. 2022. 

Cover images left: illustration from cover of Damned to Glory via GHOST P-40 - LORE, LEGENDS AND HER WHEREABOUTS.

Center: 杉浦茂峰, Sugiura Shigemine, a Japanese fighter pilot in WWII who is now recognised in Tainan, Taiwan as the deity Feihu Jiangjun  飛虎將軍, or "General Flying Tiger." - Via Wikimedia Commons.  

Right and below:  Image by Katakura Yoshifumi, a Japanese writer living in Taiwan. Read his whole article at the link below!

Nippion.com "Sugiura Shigemine: The Japanese Pilot Who Became a God in Taiwan."

Below: Wikimedia image of a Mitsubishi "Zero" fighter A6M2 Model 21 on display at the Pacific Aviation Museum Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, United States. This aircraft was made airworthy in the early 1980s before being grounded in 2002.  

Below: History captured on film:

1. A Mitsubishi A6M2 "Zero" Model 21 takes off from the aircraft carrier Akagi, to attack Pearl Harbor in Dec. 1941.

2. Mitsubishi A6M3 Zero wreck abandoned at Munda Airfield, Central Solomons, 1943.

The book, God is My Co-Pilot was written by Robert Lee Scott Jr. (12 April 1908 – 27 February 2006), a brigadier general in the United States Air Force and a flying ace of WWII, credited with shooting down 13 Japanese aircraft.

Below: Scott with an oil painting of himself at the Museum of Aviation in Georgia, USA in 1994. 

Scott wrote 12 books, including Damned to Glory (cover image below), but the historical accuracy of some of his content is disputed. 

David T. Zabecki writes: God Is My Co-Pilot is the story of Scott’s first tour of duty in the China-Burma-India Theater, from July 1942 to October 1943. During that period he flew 925 hours of combat, totaling 388 missions, and shot down 13 confirmed Japanese aircraft, plus a number of probables. He was one of America’s earliest aces of WWII, and one of the first double aces ... A career fighter pilot, he was told in early 1942 that at age 33 he was too old to fly combat. Determined to get into the war, he bluffed and outright lied his way to India as a B-17 copilot, despite having no previous four-engine time. Once in Asia, he flew C-47 airlift missions over “the Hump” into China, where U.S. Maj. Gen. Claire L. Chennault's American Volunteer Group, popularly known as the Flying Tigers, had been fighting the Japanese for months. Because the C-47s had no fighter escorts, Scott managed to convince Chennault to “loan” him a P-40 for that purpose. Before too long, Scott was unofficially flying missions with the AVG members, learning about their tactics firsthand. In July 1942, the AVG was officially absorbed into the U.S. Army Air Forces, although only a few of the AVG members chose to remain in China thereafter. On the recommendation of U.S. Maj. Gen. Claire L. Chennault and China’s president, Chiang Kai-shek, Scott was assigned to command the newly designated 23rd Fighter Group, composed initially of a scratch team of whatever fighter pilots and ground crew they could pull together from within the CBI theater. Chennault was recalled to active duty and assigned to command the China Air Task Force, which later grew into the Fourteenth Air Force. 

Below: Robert Lee Scott Jr. had an incredible life and career, and was also a rather good storyteller. Tales he and friends later admitted were made up for fun have had a long life, "refusing to die," so to speak.

One of these tall tales was published in the THE READER'S DIGEST: JANUARY 1945; VOL. 46, NO. 273 under the title "GHOST SHIP: THE WEIRD STORY OF A MYSTERY PLANE."

Below: a comic panel illustrating the fictitious "ghost plane" tale. 

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