Wallace H. Little was born on 14 June 1924, raised in the country between Morris Plains and Mt. Tabor, New Jersey, and at 17, was in his senior year at Boonton High School.   A few minutes after two o’clock on Sunday 7 December 1941, His Dad was listening to the radio as he and his brothers came into the house…the Japanese were bombing Pearl Harbor!   That event turned his world upside down.   Little turned 18 and graduated from high school in June 1942, and on July 6^th, raised his right hand swearing to defend the United States, and was inducted into the US Army.  In September of that year, he was transferred into Air Corps flight training, flying PT-17s, BT-13s, and AT-6s, completing flying training and graduating as a rated pilot and commissioned a second lieutenant on May 28^th 1943 - - all while still only 18 years of age!

After a year as a flight instructor, he wrangled a transfer to fighters, checked out in the Curtis P-40, then went to Bartow, Florida, for four months training in the P-51, the best fighter to get into combat in sufficient numbers to be effective on either side during WWII.   In November 1944, Little was sent to China, to fly and fight with the 75^th Fighter Squadron, 23^rd Fighter Group, 14^th Air Force, commanded by Maj. General Claire L. Chennault.   Chennault had organized and led the AVG - - AMERICAN VOLUNTEER GROUP - - commonly known as THE FLYING TIGERS.   When the AVG was disbanded on July 4^th 1942, the remnants were inducted into the US Army Air Corps as the 23^rd Fighter Group, with the AVG’s First, Second, and Third Squadrons becoming the 23^rd’s 74^th, 75^th, and 76^th Squadrons.  These made up the infant CHINA AIR TASK FORCE, later expanded somewhat into the 14^th Air Force.  The 23^rd Group with its component squadrons carried on the tradition of the AVG, continuing to dominate the air war in China despite the overwhelming number of Japanese planes brought against it.

In China, Little flew most of his combat in the P-51.   He later checked out in the P-38 and P-47, but by then the war was over.  What many people then and today do not realize is that the China Theater Of Operations was larger than the European and African Theaters combined.   Yet Chennault, with his tactical genius, used the 14^th AF in such an astute manner that after the war, the Japanese commanding general said that had the 14^th not been there, he could have taken any objective in China he wanted, and still released half of his 1.2 million army for duty elsewhere.  That is one measure of its effectiveness under Chennault’s leadership.

The AVG shot down 299 Japanese planes confirmed, with about another 150 probables from the beginning of the war on 7 December 1941 until it was disbanded on 4 July 1942, after only seven months of combat.   Additionally, many of the fights were over open water or dense jungle, and in the swirling confusion of combat, a downed plane disappeared quickly, before any possible confirmation. In this combat, the AVG lost 12 pilots, and of these, only 4 in air-to-air combat.  This is a record that will stand without challenge.

The 23^rd, the successor to the AVG, established its own record during the remainder of the war, destroying more than 1200 Japanese planes both in the air and on the ground.   The 75^th had its share of these.   The 75^th produced half of the aces of the 23^rd, and after the war, of those who stayed in service five became general officers.

Little is very proud to have been a portion of the 75^th, which in his mind, was the greatest fighter squadron in WWII.  

It is in the spirit of this pride and in an effort to communicate some of the many adventures of this time that Little has penned Called to Honor, a novel about that time and place in the second “war to end all wars.”

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  Please click here for Wally's biographical sketch.