In early 1941, the American Volunteer Group, who are better known as the Flying Tigers, voluntarily joined an organization that was paid by the Nationalist Government of China. Initially, sixty pilots from the US Navy or the Marine Corps, plus forty pilots from the US Army Air Force resigned their commissions in the American military. Getting them over to South East Asia was a long and arduous process and the Japanese had already attacked Pearl Harbor, by the time the Flying Tigers entered combat against the Japanese. On July 4th 1942 the American Volunteer Group was reinstated into the US Army and formed the cadre of what eventually became the US 14th Air Force. Not all of the volunteers accepted this. Greg Boyington for one, decided to rejoin the Marine Corps after the Flying Tigers were disbanded.