Robert Lee Scott Jr.

Robert Lee Scott Jr. (12 April 1908 – 27 February 2006) was a brigadier general in the United States Air Force and a flying ace of World War II, credited with shooting down 13 Japanese aircraft. Scott is best known for his memoir, God is My Co-Pilot (1943), about his exploits in World War II with the Flying Tigers and the United States Army Air Forces in China and Burma. The book was adapted as a film of the same name, which was released in 1945.

Quotes[edit]

The only time I've ever been moderately successful in combat was in the bottom of my class at West Point because of a goat mind. And a goat is the bottom of the bottom.
- "Gen. Robert L. Scott" in The Washington Post (1 March 2006)

I cleared the first magnolia, but then the main wing strut broke, and I came down in Mrs. Napier's rose bushes. It's the only plane I ever crashed
- "Gen. Robert L. Scott" in The Washington Post (1 March 2006)

For now, the seriousness of war had gradually come to me. Unless men like myself-thousands and millions of them-left these wonderful luxuries in this great land of America we could lose it all forever. I loved these two with all my heart, but the only way in all the world to keep them living in the clean world they were accustomed to was to steel myself to the pain of parting with them for months or years-or even forever. The actuality of war, grim war, had come. I knew then that the theoretical word “Democracy” was not what we were to fight for. I knew it was for no party, no race, creed, or color. We were going to fight, and many of us were to die, for just what I had here-my wife and family. To me, they were all that was real, they were all that I could understand. To me, they were America.
- "The story of Robert Lee Scott, the P-40 pilot who waged a one-man war against Imperial Japan and became AVG commander when the unit became the 23rd Fighter Group" in The Aviation Geek Club

The greatest thrill was the first time I ever flew with the Flying Tigers before I joined them. You see, they didn’t think much of us regular fliers. I had come in and gone to sleep under the mosquito netting, when a bunch of the Flying Tigers burst into my room. Not knowing what was happening, I grabbed the revolver I kept under my pillow and pointed it at them. They had come to ask if I would go on a mission with them, never thinking that I would. I readily agreed. They were really testing me out.

Every time I flew a mission, I had the nose of my plane painted a different color so that the Japanese would think these were different planes. I got credit for that idea back in America, but really the idea was not mine. It was Chennault’s. When flying over a city, we would split up, two or three going to the right, several over the center, some to the left. The noise created the impression that there were more planes than we really had.

I tried to kill the plane, not people. We heard that the Japanese shot our parachuting pilots, but I never saw that. We never shot a pilot who had bailed out. Sometimes you would fly near them and they would salute you. As for the planes, it varied. For a fighter, you fired where the wing joined the fuselage. For the bombers, you went for the engines. You didn’t want to get too close because the wounded plane would spew engine oil all over your plane.

I was flying with 1,000-pound bombs attached to my P-51. We were escorting B-29s sent to bomb steel mills in Korea. On the return I flew over Peking and over the Great Wall. I was fascinated with it and followed it all the way to the Yangtze River. My plane made a shadow over the wall and I said out loud, ‘O God, let me one day walk were my shadow walks.’