USAAF US Army Air Force Patch United States b 14 AAF China CBI Tigers

US Army Air Force Patch United States 14 AAF Flying Tigers 1943 Offensive China Burma India CBI Fully Embroidered cut edge 65mm two and nine sixteenth inches diameter.

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Fourteenth US Army Air Force was activated on 19 March 1943 at Kunming China on the renaming of the China Air Task Force 10 US Army Air Force retaining CATF units and Major General Chennault as its commander which had taken over the AVG American Volunteer Group Flying Tigers US pilots fighting for China against the Japanese invaders when their contracts with the Nationalist Chinese government expired on 4 July 1942.

Operating in the China Burma India Theater CBI 14 AAF conducted highly effective fighter and bomber operations along a wide front that stretched from the bend of the Yellow River and Tsinan in the north to Indochina in the south from Chengtu and the Salween River in the west to both East and South China Seas and the island of Formosa in the east achieving air superiority. The 14 Air Force were also instrumental in supplying Chinese forces through the CBI airlift of cargo across the Himilaya Mountains from India to China known as The Hump.

The members of 14 USAAF and the US press adopted the name Flying Tigers and emblem for themselves. Following the end of the war with Japan 14 USAAF was inactivated on 6 January 1946. 

This patch dates from 1943.