Blood chit lettered 航空委員會 [Aeronautical Affairs Commission], 22 signatures, most matching AVG roster names

The objectphotographed as held, uncropped

Catalogue description

A cloth panel, hemmed on all four sides, with the flag of the Republic of China printed across the top and four columns of heavy black characters below it. The sentence reads 來華助戰洋人（美國）軍民一體救護 [this foreigner, an American, has come to China to help in the war; soldiers and civilians alike, rescue and protect him]. Down the left margin is the name of the body that printed the standard form, 航空委員會 [Aeronautical Affairs Commission], and below it a serial line, 字第　　　號 [___ series, No. ___], whose blanks are empty. A bordered red rectangle is printed or stamped over the centre of the character field; it is filled with rows of fine character-like marks, all rubbed beyond reading. A separate handwritten red mark of two or three characters or letters lies across its left edge, also unreadable.

Blood chits were carried by American airmen in China and sewn to their flight jackets; neither Chinese-language source consulted records the （美國）[(an American)] variant printed on this panel. Whether this panel was ever issued or carried is not established: its serial line is blank, and the red rectangle at its centre cannot be read. What is on the cloth is a text that does not describe the man at all; it addresses whoever finds him. It names his nationality in a parenthesis and then turns to everybody else — 軍民一體 [soldiers and civilians as one] — with an obligation. The framing runs opposite to most of the material in this collection: here a Chinese state document vouches for an American to a Chinese public, and the person who needs identifying and protecting is the foreigner.

Twenty-two signatures in dark ink cover the panel, twenty-one of them legible. Each signature as read was checked against the American Volunteer Group roster published at warbirdforum.com, and nineteen match names on it: five of these readings are doubtful and are marked [?] in the transcription (Raine, Rumen, Clouthier, Vaux, and Greene's initial). The matches are David "Tex" Hill, J. Richard "Dick" Rossi, Charles Older, Charles Bond, Kenneth Jernstedt, Eriksen Shilling, Robert "Bus" Keeton, Robert "Catfish" Raine, Robert Layher and Paul Greene, all listed as P-40 pilots; and Joseph Poshefko, Charles Baisden and John Rumen, armorers; Frank Losonsky, Leo Schramm and Edgar McClure, crew chiefs; Edwin Fobes and L. Paul Clouthier, clerks; and Morgan Vaux, communications. The signatures are not confined to the fighter pilots: armorers, crew chiefs, clerks and a communications man are among the names read here. Two further legible signatures, read as Paul Richardson and Frank L. Andersen, are not matched to the roster; see uncertainties. A name-match is not an authentication: the archive has verified that these names appear on the published roster, not that these hands are theirs.

The serial line is blank and the central red rectangle is unreadable, so this panel carries no evidence that it was ever issued to a named man. Twenty-two signatures cover a chit whose serial line is blank. The archive has not established when, where, or on what occasion they were written; the cloth records no date, no place and no dedication.

Transcriptiontext on the object, as printed

PRINTED IN BLACK (Chinese, four vertical columns, read right to left):
來華助戰
洋人（美國）
軍民一體
救護
[read as one continuous sentence: 來華助戰洋人（美國）軍民一體救護 — This foreigner (an American), who has come to China to help in the war; soldiers and civilians alike, rescue and protect him. The modal and pronoun of the customary English rendering are supplied: 救護 is a bare verb compound, "rescue and give aid", and 洋人 means specifically a Westerner.]

PRINTED IN BLACK, left margin, top to bottom:
航空委員會 [Aeronautical Affairs Commission]
字第　　　號 [___ series, No. ___ — 字 and 第 are stacked high on the margin, 號 sits far below with a blank interval between them; both blanks are empty and no number has been entered]

PRINTED OR STAMPED IN RED, over the centre of the character field:
[a bordered red rectangle filled with rows of fine character-like marks, rubbed and broken: illegible]

HANDWRITTEN IN RED, across the left edge of that rectangle:
[illegible; roughly "R[?]4"]

HANDWRITTEN IN INK, on the red field of the flag:
Dick Rossi          Charlie Bond   [both on the upper line, Rossi at the left, Bond at the right]
Chuck Older   [second line, at the left]
[a fourth signature at the lower left of the red field, faded into the printed red: illegible]
[a faint darker mark on the red field right of centre: illegible]

HANDWRITTEN IN INK, in the white band below the flag:
Joe Poshefko
C. Baisden
"Tex" Hill
Erik Shilling
"Bus" Keeton
Ken Jernstedt
Catfish Raine [?]
Ed Fobes
Morgan H. Vaux [?]
Ed. McClure
Idaho [?]   [a short cursive word written directly beneath the McClure signature]

HANDWRITTEN IN INK, across the field of printed characters:
Frank S. Losonsky   [left of centre]
John Moore Rumen [?]   [upper right]
Paul C[?]out[?]er [?]   [right]
Leo J Schramm   [lower right]
Paul Richardson [?]   [lower left]
Frank L.[?] Andersen [?]   [lower left]
P.[?] Greene   [lower left]
Bob Layher   [lower left, at the bottom hem]

No maker's imprint, printer's line, date, contract number or inventory mark appears on this face.

Historical context

Blood chits are notices carried by airmen and addressed to whoever finds them, identifying the bearer as friendly and asking for help. The 航空委員會 [Aeronautical Affairs Commission] of the Republic of China printed the standard chits distributed to the Flying Tigers; the standard form carried the Commission's issuance serial number and its 關防 [guanfang, the seal of office of a government body] seal, and the chits were distributed 抗戰後期 [in the later stages of the war of resistance against Japan]. American airmen fighting in Asia commonly sewed blood chits to their flight jackets, and the chits were in use after the United States formally declared war on Japan in 1941. Both of the Chinese-language sources consulted quote the Flying Tigers wording as 來華助戰洋人，軍民一體救護 [translated in the transcription], without the （美國）[(an American)] that is printed on this panel. The American Volunteer Group flew P-40s in Chinese service. The roster published at warbirdforum.com lists the fighter pilots alongside the armorers, crew chiefs, clerks, communications and weather personnel who made up much of the group, and records post-AVG service for many of them with the Army Air Forces or the China National Aviation Corporation — Rossi and Shilling as CNAC pilots, Losonsky with CNAC, and Baisden, Bond, Older, Fobes, Greene and Jernstedt with the AAF.

What is not known

• Nothing on the object dates it. The printed form is the Aeronautical Affairs Commission chit, but the （美國）[(an American)] parenthesis printed here does not appear in either source's quotation of the wording, so this variant is undated and the archive has not established when it was introduced. Whether this panel is a wartime printing, a wartime blank, surplus or a later reproduction cannot be told from the photograph, and the maker of this copy is not identified. date_sort 1941 is a sort key, not a finding.
• The serial line 字第　　　號 [___ series, No. ___] is blank. The source consulted states that the standard chits carried the Commission's issuance serial number and its 關防 [guanfang, seal of office] seal; the archive has not established whether every issued chit was numbered, and cannot say from this panel whether it was never issued, issued unnumbered, or is not an issue example.
• The red rectangle at the centre is described here as what is visible — a bordered block filled with fine ruled rows of character-like marks. It is probably an official seal impression, plausibly the 關防 [guanfang, seal of office] the source describes, but the archive has not confirmed this, and none of its content can be read. The handwritten red mark across its left edge, roughly "R[?]4", is also unread.
• Whether this panel was ever issued to, carried by, or worn by any airman is not established.
• Whether the signatures postdate the printing, and whether they were all written on one occasion, is not established. A search result described a different blood chit signed by AVG members at a 1995 Flying Tigers reunion in Portland, Oregon, but that dealer page returned HTTP 404 when fetched and nothing links this panel to it; the reunion hypothesis is recorded here as an unverified possibility only.
• One signature at the lower left of the red field has faded into the printed red and could not be read under enlargement; a faint darker mark on the red field right of centre is likewise unreadable and may be a stain rather than ink.
• Doubtful readings, each marked [?] in the transcription. 'Frank L.[?] Andersen [?]' — the middle initial reads to the editor as a cursive L (a tall upstroke closing to a basal loop, no bowl); R is the alternative reading and was the drafter's; the surname ends '-ersen' or '-erson'. The AVG roster's A–B section contains no Andersen or Anderson of any kind, so this signer's connection to the group is unverified. 'Paul Richardson [?]' — the roster lists three Richardsons, Charles (crew chief), Randall (weather) and Rolland (communications), and no Paul; the signature is not matched. 'Paul C[?]out[?]er [?]' — the capital after 'Paul' is joined and the terminal letters are a single undifferentiated run; Clouthier (the roster spelling for L. Paul Clouthier) and Couture are both sustainable, and the transcription records the ink rather than the roster. 'John Moore Rumen [?]' — the surname's initial capital is ambiguous between R and K and the terminal letters are a run of minims. 'Catfish Raine [?]' — the surname's capital could be R or O. 'Morgan H. Vaux [?]' — the surname terminates in a flourish with a descender. 'P.[?] Greene' — the initial is a large flourished loop, best fit P, with F and J not excluded. 'Idaho [?]' — the short cursive word under the McClure signature; the drafter read it as illegible, the refuter and the editor read five letters plausibly spelling Idaho. Five of these doubtful readings (Raine, Rumen, Clouthier, Vaux, Greene's initial) stand behind roster matches counted in the description.
• 'Catfish Raine', '"Bus" Keeton', '"Tex" Hill', 'Dick Rossi', 'Chuck Older' and 'Erik Shilling' are signed as nicknames or short forms; the roster names are Robert Raine, Robert Keeton, David Hill, J. Richard Rossi, Charles Older and Eriksen Shilling. Matching a signature to a roster name is a match of names, not a verification of the hand — the archive has authenticated no signature on this panel.
• No place is named on the object. The geo field carries country-level coordinates only. The American Volunteer Group's principal base in China was at Kunming, but no place of manufacture, issue or signing is established for this panel.
• Only one face of the object was photographed. Whether anything is written, stamped or labelled on the reverse is not known.
• The English rendering of 救護 [rescue and give aid] as 'rescue and protect him' supplies a modal and a pronoun the Chinese does not carry; it is the customary English of this chit, recorded here as an editorial expansion.
• The hem's stitch line is even and regularly spaced, which is consistent with machine sewing but does not prove it; the photograph does not establish how the panel was made, printed or hemmed.