Biography
Perhaps I should start off with a real bang, that first combat action over Rangoon, Burma, on the 23rd of December 1941, barely two weeks after the disaster of Pearl Harbor. I could begin by describing how it felt when I got that first glimpse of the enemy, and knew that within a couple of minutes I would get my first taste of war in the air. I was in a flight of seven P-40s patrolling an area just east of Rangoon, with another flight of seven a couple of miles to the north. All eyes were nervously scanning the skies to the east; the British ground radar, not noted for its reliability of late, had reported a large number of enemy planes approaching from that direction, no doubt from bases in Thailand. Eventually one of us would spot them and then, following the standard reporting procedure and using code words prescribed by our limited training during the preceding weeks, would calmly announce his discovery over the radio. We would hear someone say something like, "Red Leader from Red Four, many Bandits at two o'clock low." Instead, a voice suddenly screamed, "Hey, Mac! I see the bastards!...off to the right and a little below us, a whole slew of 'em"
-- From Tale of a Tiger by R.T. Smith
That's dad, an excellent writer with a wonderful sense of humor. One of my prized possessions still is an autographed picture of Hopalong Cassidy, the Luke Skywalker of my generation. Dad obtained it from Hoppy when he was writing radio scripts for the Hopalong Cassidy Western Adventure Show in the late '40s and early '50s. He also wrote for Lum and Abner and the Clyde Beatty Show.
Robert Tharp (R.T.) Smith was born February 23, 1918 in York, Nebraska. He attended the University of Nebraska before joining the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1939, midway through his senior year. He received his primary flight training at Santa Maria, California; basic training with Class 40-C at Randolph Field, Texas; and advanced training at Brooks Field, Texas. R.T. was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in June 1940, and returned to Randolph Field where his first assignment was as a basic flight instructor.
Dad resigned his commission in July of 1941 in order to join Colonel Claire Chennault's American Volunteer Group (AVG) as a "soldier of fortune" with the Nationalist Chinese Air Force. The Flying Tigers, as they were soon to be called, were in Burma training in P-40s (actually Hawk Model 81-A-2s, or, as the British called them, Tomahawks) when Pearl Harbor was attacked on December 7, 1941 (December 8th on their side of the International Dateline). R.T. (sometimes called "Tadpole" after Tex Hill supplied the answer to a question someone posed to Dad, “What’s the ‘T.’ stand for?”) saw his first combat action over Rangoon two weeks later. The AVG continued to fight throughout Burma and southwest China until it was officially disbanded on July 4, 1942. Promoted to flight leader in the Third Pursuit Squadron, "Hell's Angles," R.T. was credited with shooting down 8 3/4 Japanese planes, and was twice decorated by the Chinese government.
Dad returned to the United States and was drafted into the Army as a Private in December of 1942, but was quickly re-commissioned as a U.S. Air Corps Second Lieutenant and promoted to Major the next month. For the next few months, as Commanding Officer of the 337 Fighter Squadron, 329th Fighter Group at Grand Central Air Terminal, Glendale, California and Paine Field, Everett, Washington, he trained replacement pilots using P-38s. R.T. married Barbara Bradford in June of 1943. That fall, he volunteered (having told my mother that he had been ordered) to return to the China-India-Burma Theater with the 1st Air Commando Group, flying occasional P-51 missions and commanding that group's B-25 squadron. R.T. (for "Round Trip" according to Chuck Baisden, while in the 1st Air Commando Group) was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel in March, 1944, flew 55 combat missions over Burma, and was awarded the Air Medal, Distinguished Flying Cross, and Silver Star. He returned to the States in the late spring of 1944 and was assigned as Director of Flying Training with the 441st Army Air Force Base Unit at Van Nuys, a P-38 training base in California.
Dad resigned from the Air Corps at the conclusion of World War II and settled in the San Fernando Valley in Southern California. After flying for two years with Trans-World Airlines (TWA), he wrote for a variety of radio shows for several years. He was also co-owner of a toy manufacturing company (Smith-Miller) and developed and sold a product for conditioning automobile convertible tops (Top Secret). A check on eBay will disclose that the Smith-Miller trucks have become fairly expensive collector’s items. He and my mother were divorced in 1955. At about that time he joined Lockheed Aircraft Corporation as a technical writer, working his way up through the organization, first as a military sales representative for the F-104 Starfighter, and later to open and manage a new corporate office for Lockheed in Newport News, Virginia.
He married Ronni Burkett in July of 1965. During the late '60s, he joined the Flying Tiger Line, first as Vice President for Industrial Affairs in Washington, D.C. and later as Vice President for the Far East headquartered in Tokyo. He left the Flying Tiger Line and Tokyo in the early '70s to live and work in the Palm Springs area.
Dad and Ronni were divorced in the mid-'70s. He returned to the San Fernando Valley where he continued to reside until he died at age 77 -- the number he selected for his first P-40 in the AVG -- of lung cancer on August 21, 1995. During this time he wrote and published Tale of a Tiger, based on facsimiles of his original diary entries and several articles for Air Classics. He also established a mail-order business, selling his book and a variety of color photographs he shot while he was in the AVG and 1st Air Commando Group.
Dad was survived by his sister, June, who died in 2001; three sons, Bradford, Robert, and William (William Reed Smith, named in honor of his good friend, Bill Reed); and three grandchildren.