A story lies behind the model of P-51 fighter that mayor of Portand presented to Suzhou. It is a replica of the plane flown by Lt. Walter A. Ferris, an Oregon aviator whose record of service in China is an important part of the story of Sino-American relations.

    Lt. Walter Ferris was born in Arlington, Oregon, in 1920 and was selected for pilot training school in the US Army Air Corps in 1943. He married Dottie Harding a graduate of Portland's Franklin High School and a student at University of Oregon in 1944 just after he completed pilot training in Florida. They were together a short time before he was sent to India to join the 51st Fighter Group 16th Fighter Squadron. In the summer of 1944 Ferris was assigned as a member of a detached unit to fly from the forward air base at Guilin under the command of Command of David Lee "Tex" Hill on of the most well known officers of General Claire Chennault's 14th Air Force Flying Tigers.

    During the fall of 1944 Ferris was awarded the Air Medal for numerous missions against the Japanese under extremely dangerous conditions. By January 1945 Ferris was flying missions out of the base at Laohokow and on January 5, 1945 he was credited with 2 aerial victories over Japanese fighters in one day.

    On January 16 his P-51 was shot down over Suzhou and he parachuted safely to the ground. He was assisted by Chinese villagers who tried to guide him away from Japanese soldiers searching the area. Their attempted escape lasted about eight hours before he was captured. An old Chinese farmer and a young boy were shot on the spot by the Japanese soldiers for helping the American pilot. Ferris was beaten by the soldiers and taken prisoner to a Suzhou jail where he would spend about a week before being sent to Nanjing for further interrogation. A month later he was imprisoned in the well-known Kiangwan POW camp in Shanghai where he was kept isolated from the main camp and jailed with a small group of other captured pilots from the 14th Air Force.

    16th Fighter Squadron Unit History
    16 January 1945 – Laohokow, China – Eight P-51s took off at 11:05 to make a sweep of Soochow Airdrome and Tsingpu Railroad. Lts. Zimpleman, Ferris, Harbour were the pilots who participated from the 16th Fighter Squadron.

    Flight made three passes on airdrome and then sweep the railroad south to Pengpu yards, strafed two locomotives at Suzhou (Soochow) and three at Pengpu damaging all of them. Lt Zimpleman leading the second flight strafed and destroyed a locomotive and strafed an Oscar in revetment, but it did not burn. Lt. Harbour, flew Lt. Ferris's wing strafed a barracks near the airfield,  destroyed a truck in the motor pool. He noticed Lt. Ferris's plane smoking so he tried to hail him, but couldn't get him. He last saw Lt. Ferris making another pass on the railroad yards. Lt. Ferris was last seen over Suz