The image is familiar even if the story behind it is not. A fighter plane with shark teeth painted on its nose, a grin aimed straight at history. For decades that image has stood in for courage, swagger, and American defiance before Pearl Harbor. But the real story of the Flying Tigers is stranger, rougher, and far more human than the legend suggests.

This episode of Dave Does History walks into that space carefully. Not to knock the myth down, and not to polish it brighter, but to understand what actually happened when a small group of American pilots resigned their commissions, signed civilian contracts, and flew into a war their country had not officially joined. These men were not mercenaries in the simple sense, and they were not knights of the air either. They were professionals caught in a moment when politics, necessity, and survival collided.

What you are about to hear is the story of how the American Volunteer Group came together, how they fought, and why they mattered. It is about improvisation under pressure, hard lessons learned quickly, and the quiet understanding that war rarely waits for clean rules. The shark teeth are still there. This time, we look behind them.