As for who would fly and maintain them, many of the pilots in China's existing air force were poorly trained. So Chennault sent recruiters to U.S. military bases.
"He managed to get Roosevelt to allow some of our military pilots — that was the original AVG — to resign their commissions in the U.S. military and go to China as mercenaries, basically, because it was against the international rules for any American military person to be involved in the conflict over there," Jobe tells NPR.
This was mid-1941 — before Pearl Harbor and before the U.S. declared war on Japan.
"By using Chinese funds to buy the aircraft and supplies and pay the salaries of the proposed crews, the U.S. government could retain a façade of neutrality, while helping China against the Japanese," the Department of Defense's history of the Flying Tigers explained.
To make recruitment easier, pilots and mechanics were offered pay that was often more than double what they were making before.
