“FLYING TIGER ROBERT P ‘DUKE’ HEDMAN, WAS CREDITED WITH FOUR JAPANESE BOMBERS AND A FIGHTER, BECOMING AN ACE IN A DAY” On 25 December 1941, the Japanese launched their second heavy air raid against Rangoon, the Burmese capital, in 48 hours. At Mingaladon airfield, north of the city, Christmas Day was a muggy muggy 46 degrees Celsius, smothering the pilots of the Flying Tigers’ 3rd Squadron, the Hell’s Angels. Suddenly, the air raid siren wailed. 13 Hell’s Angels pilots sprinted to their Curtiss P-40 Tomahawk fighters, joined by 16 pilots of No 67 Squadron RAF flying the Brewster Buffalo.
Just past noon, the characteristic V-formations of 71 enemy bombers and at least 30 fighters appeared. Charles Older, who had flamed two enemy bombers on 23 December, roared upward in a…