Sunday, November 17, 2024

Malaysia’s ‘Winky’ Ho Wen Tho, one of the surviving Flying Tiger pilots of World War II, dies at the age of 103 in Singapore

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“This is a precious generation who lived a much more difficult and unpredictable life, and who sacrificed so much so that my generation could live a peaceful and much easier life.

Captain Ho Wen To pilots a B-25 Mitchell bomber at Hanzhong Air Base in Shaanxi Province, China during World War II.Photo: Handout

“To him and the rest of his generation, I express my gratitude.”

Mr. Ho, known as “Winky,” was born in Malaysia, studied in Hong Kong, and made a name for himself in World War II as a bomber pilot for the China-American Combined Air Wing (CACW), a subsidiary of the Flying Tigers. Ta.

CACW was a joint venture between the U.S. Air Force and the Chinese Air Force to fight Japanese aggression.

Captain Ho, a B-25 Mitchell bomber pilot, flew missions over occupied China during the war and brought a hero home to Ipoh, Malaysia.

Never forgotten: 6 veterans who survived the conflict remember the lessons of World War II

“I was very lucky,” Ho told the Post in 2015. You could say it’s almost undamaged.

“For a boy from Ipoh, that’s quite a thing. I was a university student in Hong Kong when the war started.”

Born in Ipoh in 1920, Mr Ho returned to Malaya in 1951 and joined the now-defunct Malaya Airways, then Singapore Airlines, and in 1974 became chief pilot of the Boeing 737. .

Mr. Ho retired from flying in 1980.

Ho Wen Tho flew B-25 bombers during World War II.Photo: Ho Wen Tho

In November 2019, he published his autobiography after Singapore’s former foreign minister George Yeo persuaded him to write one. Memoirs of a Flying Tiger: The Story of a World War II Veteran and SIA Pioneer Pilot.

Ho married Augusta Rodriguez in 1949, but Rodriguez died of lung cancer in 1977.



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