I entered the service on April 15, 1942. We left early in the
morning from the railroad depot in Canandaigua for Rochester where
we went through the induction center on State Street. From there
we left for Ft. Niagara near Buffalo. It was still cold weather
and they drilled us on the parade grounds in heavy army overcoats.
One day I had a terrible headache and every step I took marching
made it hurt more. They asked for volunteers to take a test for
the Air Corps so I volunteered just to got out of marching. I had
such a headache that I didn't think I did very well on the test.
If I hadn't had that headache my war years would have been
entirely different.
The first three or four days I wondered what I had gotten myself
into and would have given anything to have been able to have
gotten out. That soon passed and the rest of the time I wouldn't
have missed the experience for anything. We were only at Ft.
Niagara for about a week before being sent by train to Fort Bragg
in North Carolina. This is where we were to take a 13 week
training in field artillery. We trained for the 105 gun which was
medium size, the shell being about five inches in diameter and
about eighteen inches long. We would haul it around on a truck and
set it up at a gun emplacement. The first time we shot it there
were several officers there and the target was on a hillside about
a quarter mile away. We fired the gun and watched for the hit.
Nothing happened and we just stood waiting. We never did find out
where it went. After the officers left we had a good laugh!
The land there was red sand and the trees mostly pine. It was very
hot and muggy as we were there in June, July and August. We wore
one piece coveralls and every time we got back to the barracks we
would step in the shower with our clothes on and would dry off in
about 10 minutes. We had to got up at 5:30 am and pick up all the
cigarette butts and papers on the grounds before breakfast. This
was loads of fun when it was raining... We spent most of our time
in marching drills, rifle range, obstacle course and 1earning.,
about the big gun. The drill sergeants were mean, miserable and
yelled at us all the time. They yelled at me continually for being
out of step while marching. I couldn't figure out why because I
was always in step. After 13 weeks, I could have easily killed
both of them.
The obstacle course was about a mile long through woods, gullies
and across water. I had such a competitive spirit that I would
run the whole route and try to finish first. Some guys would walk,
take short cuts and really goof off. It didn't seem to make any
difference how you did it, but I still ran all the way.
The food was not too good and I especially remember when they served
spare ribs. We sat seven to a table and if the bowl started at the other end of
the table by the time it got to the last person there would only be
bones 1eft. The PX did a big business selling candy bars in the
evenings. I remember one time my stepmother sent me a package of
goodies. She put in some pickled seckle pears and just wrapped them in
wax paper. The entire package was a squashed mess smelling of vinegar.
We were not allowed off the base during this period.
When we had Saturday afternoon and Sunday off we wrote 1etters
home did laundry and rested. I finally had time to make friends,
especially with the men in my barracks. There was one man from
Canandaigua and several from Buffalo, Syracuse and western New
York. You can make good friends in a short time when you are
that far from home. Ray Smith was in the Army too and I kept
in touch with him even though we moved around a lot. We used
to write gooey love letters to each other saying how much we
missed each other. I took pictures and the ones that were so
black they were nearly blank I sent to him "with love" It is
a good thing no one saw those letters or they surely would
have thought we were gay. (It is interesting that I never did
run into any of that type in the service) There were all types
of men in this outfit and they were from all over the east coast.
Some couldn't read or write and one was straight out of the
Kentucky backwoods. It made you wonder how they were taken
into the service. There was one, Cliff Boll, who could neither
read nor write so he got several of us to write his letters to his
girlfriend. He was a real character so we wrote torrid love
letters and included all the fantastic things he was doing. When
he got a letter from her, we would all gather around and read it
to him. I often wonder what happened when he went home
on leave. I was accustomed to writing a lot of letters an I wrote
to my dad, four sisters and three brothers. I also wrote to Duke
and Mabel Montanye and Mabel's letters back were the longest of
any I received. She would write about everyone in Cheshire,
especially the Bunnell boys, who were always getting into trouble.
Their barn burnt down, the house burnt down, the tractor tipped
over and they would wreck cars. When I read her letters, all the
guys in the barracks would gather round and I would read them
aloud. Just like a serial on TV. Mabel wrote long letters in such
a delicate hand that it must have taken her forever, but she wrote
every month.
Marion Bunnell was in the service and he was home on leave when he
ran into a wooden guard rail on the curve south of Cheshire and
the rail went through the windshield. He was hit in the head and
should have died, but after much surgery he survived. He was left
retarded and was given a 100% disability from the government. I
can't remember the year, but soon after the war Al Bunnell and
another guy held up a bank in Rochester and were chased all the
way-back to Canandaigua before the police caught them down on
Coach Street. He spent several years in prison.
During training while loading the logs that braced the big guns, I
broke a finger on my right hand and consequently had difficulty doing
my laundry and writing letters. The medics put a splint of two tongue
depressors on it and I still have one knuckle that doesn't bond.
Sometimes at night we would have an alert drill and drive all the
vehicles from the motor pool into the pine woods. Sometimes I would
have to drive one of the big personnel carriers and I would grab
blankets or anything big to put behind me so could reach the floor
pedals. We drove without lights up steep banks and around curves in
that deep sand. It was pitch dark and quite an experience. Then we
would stop grab our gas masks and run into the woods as far as we could
and lay on the ground. We were supposed to put our gas masks on, but we
never did.
One day I was laying in my bunk looking at my gas mask hanging on the
wall and decided to get it down and see if it fit. it was filled solid
with cockroaches! Guess what would have happened I had put it on out
there in the dark in the woods some night! The washroom had a cement
floor and when we went in there at night We would turn on the lights
and wait for the cockroaches to disappear. The boy from the Kentucky
hills spent all his extra time doing laundry for others for a small fee
and we all thought he was just too stupid to know any better. At the
end of the 13 weeks, however, we were given a three day pass. Nobody
had any money except the hillbilly and he went home for the three days
and really lived it up. Sometimes the brains are not where they think
they are. I used my three days to visit Ken Montanye who was at Ft.
Jackson in South Carolina. We met in a small dusty Southern town
halfway in between and stayed in a tourist home. There was nothing to
do in the little town so we just visited and walked the streets. I
traveled by Greyhound bus and it was so crowded I had to stand up in
front next to the driver. When I arrived back at base they were getting
ready to ship the men out to their next outfits. I received a letter
telling me that I had passed the test for the Air Corp and the company
commander told me to stay there and not leave with the rest.
The camp was empty for a week except for the sergeants who were
instructors and myself. I did KP duty and cleaned barracks until the
next group arrived. The next thirteen weeks I spent working around the
base and when they went an maneuvers I drove the supply truck. We would
go ahead about ten miles and I would set up the officer's tent, Wood
floor and cots. The new group would hike the ten miles and pitch their
pup tents. I Just crawled under a truck and slept in the sand.
Sometimes during this period I got a pass and went down to Ft. Jackson
and stayed a few days with Ken in his barracks. Nobody knew what to do
with me so they just gave me jobs and I had my share of washing pots
and pans and peeling potatoes.
When this group shipped out, I got an order to see the camp commander,
a colonel. I didn't know what to expect but found out that I had been
listed as AWOL for the prior three months as they couldn't find me. I
was supposed to be at home waiting for them to call me! This is the way
everything went for me in the service. I could have been home living on
that big $21 a month and not doing all the dirty work. My orders
finally came and I went to Nashville, Tenn. by myself, probably by
train to the classification center. At the center we had three days of
intensive tests of all kinds to find out what we were best qualified
for: navigator, bombardier or pilot. Naturally, everyone was hoping for
pilot.
The tests were from morning till night and covered everything from
physicals, eye, hearing and coordination to reaction time. The test for
depth perception was particularly interesting. At the end of a long
tunnel about a foot in diameter and dimly lit were two wooden pegs. You
had to pull them with strings until they were opposite each other.
Another one involved a board in front of you while you sat at a desk
and the board had little red lights with switches below them. When a
light came on, you had to turn the switch off and you had to move
quickly to keep up. Another was a small hole in a board with a wooden
peg that would just go in without touching the sides. While you held
the peg there, the instructor, Wolfgang Loganowiche ( I remember him
well and later read somewhere that he was a famous German scientist and
inventor) would yell and holler at us. He had a tremendous loud voice
and would sometimes sneak up behind you, yell, wave his arms and stomp
his feet. Ht would scare the daylights out of you and every time you
moved the peg would hit the sides and the loud buzzer would go off.
We also had written tests with a time limit so we had to work fast. I
used to skip all the math problems as I was so bad in math. I didn't
realize until later that it was a good thing I skipped the math as the
men who were good at it probably got sent to bombardier or navigator
training. Of course we really wanted to be pilots instead. The notices
were posted after three days and we were about worn out from the long
days of testing. I was lucky to be chosen for pilot training. This was
where I got used to standing in line and waiting. We had to wait in
line to get our issue of Air Corps uniforms and I stood in line from
8:00 am until almost 4:OO pm for my clothes. We couldn't get out of
line to get any dinner as we would lose our place. I now had all my
army clothes as well as my Air Corps cloths and everywhere I went I had
to make two trips carrying my barracks bags. When I got to my next
base, I either sent my Army clothing home or turned them in. I can't
recall which.
We were next sent by troop train to Maxwell Field in Alabama. Somewhere
on the trip we had to get off the train and spend the night in the
train station in one of those little southern towns. It was cold so we
made a mountain of barracks bags in the waiting room and then we
climbed up on them and tried to sleep. We arrived at Maxwell in
September and trained there through November. The first few weeks were
just like college with hazing and all that by the upper classman. We
had to sit at attention in the dining room and eat with our eyes
straight ahead and our shirt buttons touching the table. You couldn't
look at your plate so really didn't get much to eat. It was probably
just as well because later we had a Sunday dinner with half a chicken
each. The chicken was a green color and when I lifted a wing the
feathers were stil1 there. Needless to say, most everyone got up and
left.
These three months were about the hardest I experienced. I used to be
the first one up in our barracks at 4:30 am and got everyone else up.
It was nice to get to wash and shave before the others made it crowded.
It was just like going to college and they told us it was the
equivalent of two years of college. Besides getting up at 4:30 am we
had classes all day and homework until 11:00 pm. We had classes in
airplane engines, theory of flight, math, physics, and similar
subjects. During the evenings I helped others with physics and they
helped me with the math. I was 27 years old at this time and older than
most of the others. I was always happy and cheerful in the morning and
got everyone off to a good start.
Some of the math problems were very difficult. If you took off from an
aircraft carrier at a certain compass heading and flew at another
heading to the target, what compass heading would you take to return to
the carrier if it had also changed to a different heading? You had to
also take into consideration your air speed and the wind direction.
Bomber pilots had a navigator to tell them where to go and a bombardier
to drop the bombs. A fighter pilot had to learn all of these things as
he was up there all alone. We worked like this for three months and it
was tough.
I found out that Red Hayes from Bristol Valley was a sergeant mechanic
there at Maxwell Field. He used to go to all the Saturday night square
dances and was a good friend of mine. He was married to a southern girl
and lived off base in a nice brick house. Sometimes on Sunday I would
go out to their house for a southern fried chicken dinner with pecan
pie. One time another service man and I went to church there. I don't
know what denomination it was but the minister would rant and rave and
wave his arms for about three minutes then they would take up a
collection. After about ten collections we were out of money so got up
and left.
Even though we were being trained to be pilots, we still didn't know
whether we would be fighter, bomber, transports glider or even a "wash
out" (the term for not qualifying). At any time during training you
could be sent to something else if they decided you wouldn't make it as
a pilot. In most cases you would be sent to navigator or bombardier
school. After graduating from Maxwell, I was sent to Primary training
at Orangeburg, South Carolina. Every time we made a few friends we
would be sent to different places and have to start an once again.
At Orangeburg we were a small group and this is where we saw our first
airplanes. They were P17's, a biplane. Things began to get a little
easier for us here and the food got much better. The only discipline we
got here was the GIGS we got for anything wrong that we did, like
getting in late at night or not being in the right place on time. For
each GIG we had to carry a rifle and march around the square in the
center of the base for one hour, usually at night as you were too busy
during the day. I had to do this several times myself.
We were allowed off bass on our free time and it was about five miles
to the small city of Orangeburg. There was a man who drove his car and
would take six or seven guys at a time at $2 a piece, and he would just
drive back and forth all day and most of the night. I don't know when
he ever slept but he must have made a fortune during the war. When we
didn't have the money we would jump on the freight train that went
right by the main gate. It was an uphill grade and the train was so
slow that we could hang on the ladders and steps if a flat car was not
available. Five miles was not too long to hang on the side of a car
which went to downtown Orangeburg. Sometimes we would see a movie or go
to the service club which was in a large old house. I used to dance
there with a little blond girl and when I went to the next base she was
there also. I found out later they were called camp followers and would
marry as many guys as they could and have the men's army life insurance
put in their name. I never did go off the base very much after we
started flying as that was the main interest.
When our large group left Maxwell Field, we were divided up and sent to
several of the smaller fields to start flying. Some of the friends I
made there went all through the rest of the war with me. I can't
remember just when, but it was about this time that Lloyd Bruce from
Missouri and I became close friends and we were together the whole way.
He was my wingman, we were both shot down on the same mission and were
together in prison camp.
I was at Orangeburg from November 1942 until January 1943. We were
divided into groups of five students to each instructor. My instructor
was Art Brewster and we got along fine. We had classes studying
airplanes and motors and would fly for one hour a day. The student rode
in the front seat and the instructor behind him. After the first ride
he would let us do the takeoff and landing. In the air sometimes he
would shut the motor off and it was up to you to figure out which way
the wind was blowing and to find an open field in which to land. You
needed to learn how to land on that field into the wind. When you were
about ten feet off the ground he would start the engine and back up
you'd go. You needed to be careful because if the field was level and
your approach was right, he would let you land. You never knew which
you'd have to do. When he stopped the motor you could usually find the
wind direction by checking smoke from the smokestacks or something like
that. Our days were easier as we would wait around for our turn to fly.
The plane we were flying had an open cockpit and, as it was cold at the
time, it was very cold up there some days. We had the leather sheepskin
lined flying suit and it was very warm. On warmer days we would just
wear underwear under the suit. After six hours of instruction we were
ready to solo. It was quite an experience and after you got up there
all you did was worry about getting down! I had a bumpy landing but
soon got better at it. Some days for a whole hour we would just take
off and land over and over again for practice. After this we flew part
of the time alone and part of the time with the instructor. This was
the period when the instructors really washed out the ones they figured
would never be fighter pilots and they were sent to other air corps
Jobs.
I loved doing acrobatics with the loops, spins, rolls and upside down
flying. My instructor took me up once and did an outside loop. I had to
hang onto the iron bars in the cockpit and the blood all went to the
top of your head. You would nearly pass out doing that one. He also
showed me how to fly backwards. On a windy day you would slow the
airplane down so it would just stay up and the wind would blow you
backwards. You could look down and see the fields and buildings all
going in the opposite direction.
One night we had to fly a triangle cross country course of about one
hours time. We had not done much flying at night and we took off at
intervals and started out all alone towards the first check point. I
missed the first checkpoint and finally realized I was lost. I didn't
know what to do so the first town I saw with enough lights, I flew down
the middle of Main Street real low and got the name of the town either
off the movie house or the bank and then looked it up on my map. I was
way off course and had to figure my heading to the next checkpoint. I
made it okay but was about a half hour overdue and they thought I had
gone down. I didn't get reprimanded so I figure they thought I had used
my head to solve my problem and did the right thing.
Almost all of our flying here was takeoffs and landings and in the air
we practiced spins, slow rolls, snap rolls, and figure eights to get
the feel of the airplane and develop our control. It was hard to get
the plane out of a tight spin but it was an important thing to learn.
The planes that we later flew in California were notorious for not
being able to get out of a spin. I had 60 hours of flying time here and
in January of 1943 was graduated from primary training school. We had
to fly with the commanding officer for our final test. All five
students with our instructor passed but a lot of the others didn't make
it. Three or four from each group were the average to make it. We
really liked our instructor and it was hard to part from him and go on
to the next school.
In February and March of 1943 we were at Gunter Field in Alabama for
our basic training. The airplane was the BT-13 with one wing and an
enclosed cockpit. It was bigger, more powerful and flew like a truck.
The controls were much harder to move but it was a safe plane to fly. I
don't remember anyone crashing a plane in primary or basic training. At
Gunter we started formation flying, night flying and instrument flying.
My instructor here was R.E. Umbaugh and I had thirty two hours flying
with him and forty two solo. When we were flying solo in formation we
were now developing confidence and were starting to do things like
flying close to the ground and chasing each other around in the clouds.
We began doing more cross country flights to airports in the area.
Sometimes we flew with other students and the one in the rear seat
always flew the plane as that is where the instructor always sat. One
time I was flying with Bill Bell ( the son of the founder of Bell
Aircraft Inc. of Buffalo N.Y.) and he was flying the plane, with me in
the front seat. When coming in for a landing he was going so slow I
thought we were going to stall and crash. I yelled at him and pushed
the stick forward and we landed okay. I was really scared and told my
instructor I never wanted to fly with Bill again. He must have agreed
with me because I never had to again.
During Basic training was our first experience with the Link Trainer.
It was a replica of the cockpit of an airplane and was used to learn
how to fly by instruments only. It operated about the same as the
"mechanical bull" they have in Western nightclubs now. It was
completely closed and dark with only the instruments lit up. It was run
by a sergeant who would put it into a spin, upside down or any
dangerous situation and you had to get back to level flight again. It
was frightening and exactly like being in a plane in fog or a cloud.
Fifteen hours of Link Training were required in Basic, Advanced, all my
flying in California, even in England while flying missions.
At the end of March 1943 I graduated from Basic and went to Advanced
Training at Napier Field in Alabama. We were beginning to know a lot of
the other students and would stay together with them right on through,
except for the ones who washed out. In Advanced we flew the AT-6 which
was a faster plane and easier to fly. We had about the same schedule at
this field flying one or two hours a day. There were several small
level fields in the area that were used for practice landing and
takeoffs. I had an Englishman for an instructor. After the Americans
were flying out of England, some of the English pilots who had flown a
lot of missions were sent to this country to be instructors as we had a
shortage of them. Like school teachers, it took a special kind of man
to be able to teach flying in a short period of time. They had to have
a lot of nerve also to be able to get out of the situations an
inexperienced student could get them into! The one I had wasn't worth
much as he would fly to one of those other fields and let me land and
then he would get out and stand around smoking cigarettes for half an
hour. I was supposed to be getting an hours instruction and I was
afraid I would be washed out. I went to the commanding officer and
requested a change of instructors and got it. Perhaps others had done
the same. I can't remember the name of my new instructor but he was
tough and strict, which was okay with me as then I knew I would learn
something.
We now started to practice landing on instrument only. The instructor
rode in the seat behind you in the AT-6 and when you were in the air
there was a black hood that you pulled over the front cockpit. The
instructor would then give you compass headings, height and speed and
you would follow his directions to approach the field. Following his
direction you would line up with the runway and begin coming down. All
you could see were the instruments. If you were coming in perfectly, he
would let you go ahead and land by yourself. On the other hand, he
might take over the controls about 20 feet off the ground and take you
up again. It was quite scary as you never know whether you were going
to land or not. After we had the okay on these daylight landings, we
were allowed to fly the planes alone at night.
The AT-6 was designed with places for machine guns in the wings and we
were sent in groups to Elgin Field in Florida for gunnery practice.
This was the field where General Jimmy Doolittle trained his crew for
the bombing of Japan. They practiced for months at bomber takeoff from a
field the same length as the deck of a carrier which had never been
done. That was the only way they would be able to reach Japan. We were
assigned there for about two weeks practicing by shooting at ground
targets on a large restricted area. We didn't do any shooting at
targets in the air, Just dove down shooting at the ground. I recall it
being very hot and muggy there off the Gulf of Mexico.
After returning to Napier Field we were nearing graduation time. We had
now developed a lot of confidence in our flying and fooled around when
flying without our instructors. We would fly very close together and
tap our wingtips and the wing of the plane flying next to us. Flying
close to the ground was fun also and gave you a better idea of how fast
you were actually going than you had at high altitudes. In Primary I
flew 60 hours, in Basic 72 hours, and in Advanced 97 hours for a total
of 220 hours. There were about 250 of us in the class and by that time
we had become acquainted with most everyone and close friends with
many. We went all the way through combat with some of those same
follows.
After our final flight with the commanding officer we were ready
for graduation. We then filled out forms giving our preference for the
type of flying we wanted. Just before graduation they put on an airshow
for our benefit. Little stunt planes would fly straight up and all
types of fighter planes did acrobatics and speed. Naturally we almost
all wanted to get into single engine fighters so that is what we had
listed on the forms. I don't remember much about graduation except many
of the fellows had their parents there. We were now second lieutenants
in the Army Air Force which was a wartime addition to the regular U.S.
Air Force.
We received $250 in $50 bills to purchase our new officers uniforms,
lieutenants gold bars and our silver wings. We bought these clothes on
the base and they were of wonderful material. After the war I wore the
pants and shirts for years, and after they were too old, I wore the
pants for hunting as they were very warm and wore like iron. I still
have one of the wool shirts. We graduated at Napier Field on May 28,
1943 and waited nervously to see the notice on the bulletin board
telling us where we would go next. When they were finally posted I got
fighter plane and was as happy as the others that did. Some pilots went
to Twin Engine, Transport, Troop Carrier, Light Bomber, Medium Bomber,
Dive Bomber, or Heavy Bomber. The poorest fliers went to Piper Cubs and
flew observation over the battle lines to direct the field artillery. I
am glad that I didn't go to Bomber planes as they were sent to a field
in Alpena, Michigan and flew out over Lake Michigan. We had to report
to the commander to receive our active duty orders and my friends and I
were hoping we would go to the same place.
I got my orders to report to Hamilton Field in California with a ten
day delay enroute. Naturally all the fighter pilots were split up now
as we were cut down to squadron size and sent to different bases around
the U.S. A lot of my friends, however were assigned to the same place.
Al Johnson, a big Swede from St. Paul Minnesota, was going to Hamilton
and the last thing I said to him was " I'll meet you in Cheyenne,
Wyoming and we'll go the rest of the way together. We were to report to
the 380th squadron of the 363rd fighter group. A group consisted of
three squadrons and I still know all the fellows in the other squadrons
although we didn't fly together.
Now for my first visit home in fifteen months! The parents of B. Bell
of Bell Aircraft in Buffalo, had come to his graduation and I rode home
with them. He was the one who almost crashed with me as a passenger
back in training. He and I took turns driving and they took me all the
way to Canandaigua. I was driving on a divided highway somewhere in So.
Carolina when I was stopped for doing 35 in a 30 mph zone. I was taken
before a judge and fined $10. Those rich Bell's didn't offer to pay it.
It really made me mad to get fined for only 5 mph over the speed limit
as I hadn't been home in a year and a half.
I can't remember much about my leave at home, but I must have spent it
visiting with all the ones who did not go in the service. I had a good
visit with the Montanyes and Lennie Pierce's family. When it was time
to report, I went by train from Rochester to San Francisco. Bill Barnum
and Al Bunnell from Cheshire gave me a ride to Rochester and we spent
several hours having a big time in a bar before train time. We all
staggered down to the depot and they poured me aboard. I survived and
enjoyed the train ride across the country. The trains were always
crowded then, but I enjoyed them. The train made an hours stop in
Cheyenne, Wyoiming and I got off to have something to eat. The first
person I saw when I entered the station was Al Johnson, the big Swede,
standing there! That wouldn't happen again in a million years. We made
the rest of the trip together and stayed overnight in a San Francisco
hotel.
The next morning we took a taxi across the Golden Gate Bridge to
Hamilton Field. It was good to be back among all the fellows from
flying school. We Just hung around there for a couple of weeks, not yet
knowing what we were going to be flying. We had classes everyday on
engines, aerodynamics, and air craft identification. They would flash
silhouettes of friendly and enemy aircraft on a screen from all
different angles and we had to identify them immediately. We also had
classes in aerial map reading and continued to have them even when we
were in England flying missions.
After all this time it is difficult to remember the correct sequence of
events as we were stationed at four different locations in the
following weeks. I will attempt to note all the events even though they
may not be at the exact field. After a week at Hamilton we went by
train to Tonapah, Nevada to start flying. We stopped for a couple of
hours in Reno, Nevada and four of us headed for the nearest bar. I
ordered four whiskey sours and told the bartender to just keep them
coming. After the first hour the crowd had grown bigger and the drinks
were still coming. I didn't know who was drinking them, but when I got
the bill, I paid for 75 drinks! I had to help the others back to the
train as they had a lot of trouble crossing several train tracks on
their way back to our train. Tonapah was at the foot of a mountain
range and the airfield was out in the valley toward the next range. It
was flat country with nothing but sand and brush. The buildings were
just wooden shacks and the wind blew the sand everywhere. It was in the
food, in our beds, and over us most of the time. We arrived here on
June 23, 1943 and were going to be checked out in the P-39 airplane.
This plane was the one used in the early part of the war in the Pacific
and had become obsolete. They were shipped back to the U.S. to be used
for training pilots as all the new planes were going to the war zones.
The P-39 was a lot more airplane than any of us had ever flown before
and with only one seat, we would have to fly it alone. The instructor
took a group of us out to the plane and let each of us look in the
cockpit while he explained how to start it and the different
instruments. After about one hour's instruction, he asked for a
volunteer to go first. Somebody volunteered and taxied out to the
runway. He went down the runway and started up in the air. About 200
feet up the plane went straight down to crash in a ball of flame. We
went over to another plane and the instructor asked Who's next?" We
used another runway and I was the third one to go. This was our first
experience of losing a pilot and really made us all stop and think.
When I took off I flew straight for a long time before I dared to try a
turn. You just moved the stick a fraction of an inch and you were
upside down. It was extra sensitive after the trainers which had almost
needed two hands to move the stick. I didn't do any fancy stuff and was
relieved to be on the ground again after making a fairly good landing.
After we were all checked out, we practiced takeoffs and landings and
flew cross country in formation. I flew about 20 hours the two weeks we
were in Tonapah. After our confidence grew we started doing things like
flying real low down the straight section of the highway trying to
chase the Greyhound buses off the road. The airplane numbers were on
one side of the plane only so we had to keep that side away from the
road so we wouldn't be identified. On July 5 we went by train back to
Hamilton Field in California.
The rest of July and all of August we flew P-39's from Hamilton Field.
From here we made cross country flights to Reno, Nevada, Oroville,
California and Sacramento, California. We also started gunnery practice
here. The P-39 had a 30mm cannon that fired through the nose of the
propeller and the targets were along the shore of San Francisco Bay. We
would dive down at the target and shoot the cannon. We also had
practice at aerial gunnery. One of the planes was used as a tow ship
and towed a cloth target about four feet wide and twenty feet long on a
cable behind the plane. The tow ship would fly up and down the coast
while the other planes would fly toward the target at 45 degree angles
and shoot the 50 caliber machine guns which were mounted in the wings.
Each pilot had different colored chalk on the bullets and they would
thus leave a colored hole in the target when you hit it. I flew tow
several times and you never felt safe as those characters were using
real bullets. Just once someone hit a tow ship. Shooting from different
angles at the target taught us how far ahead of the target you had to
be to aim in order to hit it. We shot 100 rounds each and one time I
had 51 hits! The tow ship had to fly low over the field and release the
target before landing. We never liked to fly the tow ship as it was so
monotonous flying back and forth for hours.
We started to fly more formation flights of two or three planes and
another plane would try to "attack" us from out of the sun or from the
clouds like an enemy would. This taught us to keep our heads turning
all the time to keep track of the sky all the way around us. We would
take evasive action to try to keep the enemy ship from getting behind
us. We also did a lot of formation flying close to the ground which
trained you to stay close together in formation. In the tomato and
vegetable farms in the Sacramento valley the pickers would be out in
the fields with crates stacked about six feet tall and we would fly
down so low that we blew the empty crates over. I imagine we were
cussed a lot! A couple of times someone would come back and land with
telephone wire or fencing caught on the underside of the plane. I loved
to do acrobatics and when I was up alone, I would do rolls and
snaprolls and all the fun stuff.
We were on duty two days and had the next one off so we had plenty of
free time and spent a lot of it in San Francisco. We found a rent-a-car
place and started renting a car by the day. Instead of taking it back
we would just pass it on to someone else. Sometimes we would keep it
for two weeks and when it went back we would all chip in to pay the
bill. One time we had a big Packard Clipper which didn't have any
reverse so you had to drive it, park it, and keep it in places that you
could get out of without using reverse Sometimes that was real ticklish
in the city. I had this big black car when I had the first date with
Lettie. I would get her home anytime between 1:00 and 3:00 am then wait
outside in the car until she came out in the morning to go to work so I
could give her a ride. I got used to staying up all night every third
night. The other fellows were all finding dates so I had started
looking one day and found her working in the candy section of a
department store. I liked San Francisco and servicemen were welcome
anywhere so I spent a lot of time in the best hotels and restaurants.
We also found many "steak houses" in California and would eat in them
frequently. They were small places with a couple of tables and a bar or
counter with stools. All the menu consisted of was steak, salad, rolls
and coffee but it was always good. I rode the cable cars a lot and
helped them turn the cars around at the bottom of the hill. I found
that all the head turning and watching while flying really sharpened
your driving ability in a car. You saw all the traffic at once and
could go through it quickly. We used to drive 60 mph across the Golden
Gate Bridge when the fog was so bad all you could see was the white
line in the center of the road. 0n my first date with Lettie we doubled
with another couple. The fellow, Wes Hottdorf, flew with me and had
been a member of the Chicago Mafia. He ended up flying P-38s in a
different group in England.
On August 28 we went to another field in Santa Rosa, California and
flew about the same type of training as we had been doing. We were
still close enough to San Francisco to get up there often. At the time
we were also still getting experience with the link Trainer. At this
field we had a BT-13 and an AT-6 which we had flown in flying school.
We could fly them anytime we wanted to and they were also used if the
flight leader wanted to check on our flying skill as they were two
seaters. Remember Pete Lenzi who had hitchhiked to California and
Joined the Marines? He had been wounded over the Pacific and was
recuperating in the Oak Knoll Hospital in California. When he was able
to get out of the hospital for a day I had him come up from San Diego
and I met him in San Francisco where we spent the day together. In the
evening I took him out to the field and took him up in a BT-13. I gave
him a wild ride with lots of acrobatics: loops, rolls and spins. I dove
down almost to the ground then pulled up so that he disappeared down in
the back seat out of sight. He really enjoyed the ride and still
remembered it the last time I saw him.
We now started to fly a lot of formation with the planes in a V. It was
not until later in the War that a formation of four planes was used. We
flew formation at high altitude, low to the ground and cross country.
Neil Ullo and Lloyd Bruce were now my closest friends and were in my
flight. Neil was sent to a special gunnery school in Arizona for two
weeks and when he came back he had to teach what he had 1earned to all
the rest of us. Later I will tell how much this extra gunnery training
helped him.
By this time we had developed our skill to the point where we got the
fighter pilot attitude which was years later described as the 'Right
Stuff'. We wore the silk scarf, sunglasses and rakish hat with a
leather Jacket. In San Francisco I bought a pair of lumberjack boots
that I was still wearing when I was in prison camp. We began to fly
more aggressively as we knew the airplane better. The gunnery range was
along an uninhabited portion of the California coast and we would fly
down close to the rocks along the shore to scare the seals off the
rocks. Some of the guys flew under the Golden Gate Bridge, but I never
tried that. Out guy flew down into a football stadium during a game and
he was reported and grounded for three days. He forgot to keep the side
of the plane with the identification numbers away from the spectators.
We were now flying two and three hours a day and a little at night.
Landing a plane at night is a lot different than in the daytime.
Altogether I flew about 155 hours in the P-39 and another 10 hours in
the basic trainer while I was in California.
On September 22, 1943 I was granted a leave and prepared to go home.
This was the second and last leave that I had during my three and a
half years in the service. Four of my friends who lived in the East
bought an old car for $75 and they drove it non-stop all the way to
Pennsylvania and New Jersey. They sold it for junk and took the train
back to California. There wasn't room enough for me to go-with them so
another fellow and I took a bus to Sacramento, where there was a bomber
base, and tried to hitch a ride east on an Army plane. There was a B-24
Bomber flying to Omaha, Nebraska and we could ride it if we had
parachutes. We tried everywhere to borrow a parachute and at the last
minute I talked a captain into letting me take his (after a couple of
hours of pleading with him). I agreed to return it immediately upon
returning to California. We got on the plane and had to stay in the
bomb bay section. The door on the side of the plane was about six feet
by six feet and was open as the doors were missing. After we took off
the cold air was terrible as it was night and the opening was right by
us. We found a l2xl2 canvas and tried to fasten it over the opening and
it blew right out over the city of Sacramento so somebody got a good
canvas. We took all of the clothes we had with us and put them on, laid
down in the bomb bay and nearly froze to death on the way to Omaha. If
the bomb bay doors had opened it would have been the end of us as we
were using the parachutes as pillows! When we got to Omaha, I left the
other guys and took a train to Rochester. Somewhere in the past I had
met an old sergeant who had given me some good advice about train
travel. He said to buy a coach ticket and get on a first class car. By
the time they came around to collect tickets the coach cars were so
crowded they couldn't make you move. This always worked for me and I
saved a lot of money.
Besides my luggage I had to carry that heavy bulky parachute all the
way across the country and all the way back.( When I got back to base I
put it on a P-39 and flew it back to the captain in Sacramento.) I
arrived in Rochester in the middle of the night and took a taxi to
Pittsford where I stood on the corner to thumb a ride. About 1:30 in
the morning an old black man and woman in an old Model A Ford gave me a
ride. They were so old I think they were scared of me but they were
surely nice to give me a ride at that time of night and we had a good
visit along the way. They let me out in Canandaigua and I walked home.
I made it faster than a train ride even though I used a lot of
different means of travel to get home that leave.
After my stay at home I took the train from Rochester to San Francisco
and it was a trip that I'll never forgot. There was a girl with three
kids under the age of 5 and she was traveling from Boston to San Diego
to be with her husband, a sergeant stationed in California. We had a
Pullman car and their berth was opposite mine. The kids spent most of
the time crying or running in the aisle. There was a sailor sitting
with me and we tried to help entertain them as best we could. After
three days and nights with all that noise you can bet I was glad to
arrive in California!
I took a taxi out to the base at Santa Rosa and the whole camp had.
disappeared. The barracks were empty and all my gear was gone. It was
real spooky and I didn't know if they'd gone overseas or what. I hunted
around and found a caretaker who told me they had moved to Oakland,
across the Bay from San Francisco. I called a taxi again and made it to
Oakland just before my leave was up. While I had been gone, two of the
guys had had to bail out of their P-39s due to engine trouble. Al
Johnson was one of them and he landed in a lake. The next time I flew I
spent the whole time listening to the engine for fear that it would
quit. I kept hearing things that weren't there, but those planes were
all old and anything could happen to them.
The lst weeks of our training here at Oakland were formation, gunnery,
dive bombing, and simulated aerial attacks. We began to lose some of
the pilots now. One took off over the Bay and the plane exploded. We
figured there was gasoline in the cockpit and he must have lit a
cigarette as he was always doing that (against regulations). When we
flew low formation and came to any body of water, I always went up a
lot higher than the rest and then dropped down again into formation. I
wanted to make sure that I could glide to land if the engine quit. I
hated water as I didn't know how to swim. Some of us had cameras and
would fly close to each other and take pictures. I took a lot of
pictures when I first entered the Army and don't know why I didn't take
any all through my flying. I did take a lot while in England. Oakland
was just across the bay from San Francisco and I used to take the "A"
train across the bridge to see Lettie. This was the "A" train that the
song was written about and it was the best way to get to San Francisco
in a hurry.
While flying formation with these planes we would practice crossovers.
The middle plane was a leader with a plane on either side and slightly
behind. When crossing over the plane on the left would go under and the
one on the right would go over when the leader gave the signal. It was
Just changing positions. At this time it was early in the war and it
was after learning more from combat experience that a flight was
changed to four planes. One day I was flying the lead plane and I
called for a crossover. The next thing I know the two planes came up
right in front of me with pieces flying off in all directions. They had
both gone under me and one had come up under the other and stuck right
together. They fell together in a spiral and crashed to the ground in
an open field. The pilot of the lower plant was probably killed
instantly. His name was Cassadont and he was a real handsome dark
skinned, dark haired man of Mexican descent I believe.
The pilot in the top plane was Hershberqer and after they crashed I
flew down close and saw him crawl out of the wreckage and give himself
a shot of morphine from the emergency kit. He had a broken back, but
survived to join us by the time we were in England. I gained altitude
and wiggled my wings to get the attention of anyone in the area. I saw
a car heading for the scene so I gained more altitude and circled the
area while calling "Mayday" on the radio. I finally got through to the
emergency channel in San Francisco and gave them the location. Then I
returned to base. I was lucky because it could have just as well been
me in one of those planes.
In November of 1943 four of us went to Nebraska to pick up four P-39s
from an abandoned air base in northern Nebraska up near the South
Dakota border. Our flight was chosen and our leader was Thomas J.
Tilson (called TJ), Lloyd Bruce, Neil Ullo and myself. the four of us
were to stay together all through combat. 'TJ' was a nice looking blond
from Teaneck, New Jersey and was what we called a " big time operator"
in those days. He had girls where ever he went. His ambition was to
dance in all the big ballrooms in the U.S and England. I think he
eventually made all of them. Bruce was from Kirkville, Missouri and
Neil Ullo was from California. Neil had been an electrician in Pearl
Harbor when it was bombed and as soon as he was able to get back to the
States he joined the service. Bruce and Neil were my closest friends in
the days to come and after the war Lettie and I visited the Bruces in
Missouri and after Lynn was born, we visited the Ullos in California
during one trip to Utah. Lynn stayed with her grandparents in Utah that
time.
Now for the trip to Nebraska. We were real characters by now with our
leather jackets, rakish hats and our 45's in our shoulder holsters. We
had to protect these planes from the enemy even in the middle of the
U.S.!! We were to fly by commercial airline to Omaha so we loaded all
our gear into a small army truck and said goodbye to all our friends.
We made the two and a half hour trip to the San Francisco airport to
catch our plane. (It was the only time I ever flew in a commercial
plane.) About four, and a half hours after leaving Oakland, we finally
took off. About two minutes into the flight we landed at Oakland,
across the Bay, on our first stop. There were all our friends standing
there waving at us! We could have gotten on there and saved half a day
of travel but that was the Army's way of doing everything. We landed in
Omaha, checked into a hotel and set out to look for the nearest
nightclub. We had a steak dinner and the meat in the stockyard district
was totally different from anything in the East. The steak was about
two inches thick and you could cut it with a fork. As soon as we found
some girls, we stacked all our guns on the table and danced the evening
away.
The next morning we left Omaha by train for Ainsworth, Nebraska. It
turned out to be a little place about the size of Cheshire out in the
middle of nowhere. The only one there to take care of the place was an
old man wearing a beard. The four old planes were parked there and we
didn't even know if we could get them started. To make a correction,
the fourth pilot was not Bruce, but another fellow who was from
Hastings, Neb. which was in the southern part of the state. We planned
to fly down there and land at the nearest airport. We got the planes
going and the old man wanted us to buzz the field before leaving, as a
farewell. We took off, gained altitude, then dove down right at the
building and the old man. We pulled up just as we passed over him and
Neil Just missed the roof by inches. I found that the plane that I was
flying had bad controls and you had to hold the stick way over to the
left of the cockpit in order to keep the plane level.
We flew down to Hastings, Nebraska and stayed the night with the other
pilot at his parents' house. Nebraska has always been known for its
pheasant hunting so the next day we all got shotguns and sat on the
fenders of his car and drove around all the back roads looking for
birds. I can't remember if we got any or not, but we sure had a lot of
fun.
We discovered that the planes did not have any oxygen so we had to find
some way to get over the Rocky Mountains. We next flew to Ogden, Utah
for fuel and when we landed the brakes failed on one of the planes.
While we waited for it to be fixed, we wanted to get into town and had
to sneak by the guards at the gate as we were not in uniform. We got
through the gate and ran down the road far enough so they couldn't
catch us. We caught a ride into Ogden. We were in a big department
store when we saw the MP's coming after us so we got down behind the
counters and ran all over the store until we lost them. We were never
caught and made it back to the base safely.
I intended to ask Lettie to marry me when we got back to California and
wanted to get down to see Mr. and Mrs. Clark while I was so close but
couldn't get the transportation and didn't have enough time. We decided
that as we had no oxygen in the planes, we could not fly over the
Rockies and would have to fly down one of the valleys south to Las
Vegas then to southern California and up the coast. It would be several
days before the brakes could be fixed on the one plane so we decided
that the three of us would fly on to Las Vegas and wait there for the
other fellow. We started south with mountains on both sides of us when
the clouds came down over the tops of the mountains. We were squeezed
into a narrow valley and couldn't see ahead of us. We took a chance,
continued on, and finally made it. Remember all this time I had to fly
with the stick Jammed to the left and the right rudder pushed half way
in to keep the plane level. My arms were very tired by the time we
reached Las Vegas.
We stayed in a motel in Las Vegas just outside of town. At that time
the city was undeveloped and the buildings were very far apart. The
streets were mostly dirt. We headed for the nearest casino and started
gambling. It was only a matter of hours and our money was gone so we
wired back to Oakland and each got $100 advance on our next paycheck.
We went back to the casino and after a couple more hours were broke
again. The next day the other pilot caught up with us and we took off
for California.
We flew in formation very close to the ground the whole way and
whenever we came to a lake or other water, I would go up a couple of
hundred feet above the others coming down to Join them when we were
over land. We made it back to the base all right and the next day the
planes had to be flown across the Bay to Hamilton Field which some of
the other pilots did. The one who flew the plane I had flown from
Nebraska could only get it a couple of feet in the air. He flew all the
way across just above the water. It was just plain luck that got me
there all the way from Nebraska.
I called Lettie and she agreed to marry me so I went to San Francisco
and we were married the next day, the 23rd of November, 1943. I had to
get special permission to 1eave the base to get married because we were
now on alert to be shipped overseas. We were married by a judge in the
Court House and stayed the night in the St. Frances Hotel. Early the
next morning I had to get back to the base. Our orders had come through
and I could not leave the base again. We were going to England and I
was glad of that because it meant we would not be flying over water all
the time. This was the way the Army did things: the ones trained on the
West coast went to England and the ones on the East coast probably went
to the Pacific.
We were shipped by train across the country to Camp Kilmer in New
Jersey. We were crowded in the train and it was a long hard trip due to
all the stops we had to make to wait for trains going the other way.
Most of the guys played poker in California and on the train. Al
Johnson was always borrowing money from me to play poker. He would
always pay me back at payday and a week later he would start borrowing
again. I didn't play poker so always had money and didn't mind lending
it to him as he never failed to pay me back. We arrived in Camp Kilmer
the first part of December and it was very cold there with a damp ocean
wind blowing. We really noticed the cold having been in California. We
all bought coonskin hats to keep our heads warm. We were fortunate in
the Air Corps be able to wear almost anything without being out of
uniform. I had a chance to get into New York City with Neil Ullo for a
few hours. It was not enough time to get to see much ... just enough
time to eat and buy Lettie a watch.