A lot of marching, K.P., physical training; besides ground and communications schooling: (Morse Code, et al).

We got a 24 hour leave once in awhile, and invariably headed for Hollywood. There was lots of glamour there for us old country boys.

I remember that my father visited me once in my barracks on a Sunday. I had not seen him in a long time. This is a good place as any to say a little about him, I guess. My dad volunteered for the Navy as a seaman shortly after Pearl and got in on the invasion of Guadalcanal. He had to be over 40 at the time. His duty was to pilot an L.S.I. and land Marines on the beach during the invasion. While there, he contracted malaria (from which he never fully recovered before he died at age 72). He was hospitalized in New Zealand for a time, and then they sent him to the Navy Hospital at San Diego, California. It was from there that he got 24 hours liberty and came to see me at Santa Anna.

SANTA MARIA-Primary

This was a former airline pilots training field, and quite a difference as to living conditions from what we had been accustom to. For example: two to a room with inter-connecting bath, civilian operated cafeteria, and other niceties. I was assigned to a civilian flight instructor who I thought was an old man. He had to be at least 30! He had been flying Ford tri-motors in survey work in South America before the war.

One incident I remember in particular. Once, before I soloed, he had me practicing landings at an auxiliary gravel field. On one trial, proceeding downwind the wind-sock changed so I would not be able to make a touch and go as we usually did. He told me over the gosport tube to go ahead and land anyway and we would have to taxi back for the other take off and landing. This field did not have runways. Explanation: The gosport tube was a funnel hooked to a tube in the front cockpit where he sat, then back to the cadet's helmet ear pads in the rear cockpit. The instructor used this method to communicate with the cadet (mostly cuss him out), but the cadet had no way of answering back. After we rolled to a stop, I began a taxi back downwind to the take off point. He said, "I got it" and raised the tail and began taxiing faster. From time to time, he turned around to tell me what I had done wrong. As we were passing a shack, whoops, here came another Stearman right in front of us. No way we could miss. We crawled right up his tail with our prop making red and white confetti out of his rudder; flipped over inverted on top of the other airplane with the leading edge of our wing cutting a big crease about 6" behind that other cadet's head.

I guess we were both 'kinda in shock, but with gas leaking all around, I had the presence of mind that I didn't need to hang around there upside down anymore. I cut the switches and, not thinking, I pulled my safety belt latch and promptly fell out on my head. I felt sorry for my instructor. That really hit him hard since he had years of flying experience, and that was the first time he had ever dinged an airplane. They took us to the hospital for a checkup, but we both checked out fine and were flying the next day.

The Santa Maria countryside is beautiful since one of their main agricultural efforts is in growing flowers.

Dad came up once more from San Diego and we went to town and had our picture made; he in his sailor suit and me in my gadget (cadet) uniform.

We had to do a formation on the parade ground every day at 5pm where we had to salute the flag and wear our Sam Brown belts with sabers and listen to the cadet officer of the day read the orders of the day. Also, he was to read the names of the cadets who were to assume the duties of officer of the day and charge of quarters for the next day. Well, on this one day he screwed up good. He forgot the names, so not to be undone, he said, "The officer of the day will be cadet Stearman, PT and in charge of quarters will be cadet Vultee, BT" (these were the names of training airplanes). As you can imagine this went over like a lead balloon with the commissioned tactical officer, so a result we were restricted to quarters on our time off for 40 days without leave and had extra close order drill ever day as long as we were there.

This also was the first place I ever came into contact with a simulator. Bear with me on how sophisticated this was. Those of you who are familiar with the loss of aileron effectiveness just before landing, (particularly in a crosswind and in a tail dragger) you know you have to give top rudder to get a low wing back up before you touch down, because rudder control is the last to go. Well, picture this. They had a whiskey barrel suspended horizontally between two ropes, one on each end, with a stick across the front end tied to a screen door spring on each end of the stick attached to the barrel. You mounted the top of the barrel as you would mount a horse, and put your feet on the stick as if it were a rudder bar. You were in an extremely unstable condition, and the only way you could stay upright was when it tried to roll to one side or the other, you had to give it top rudder to bring it back. I must say that this became instinctive with us and I, for one, benefited from this knowledge more than once during my flying career.

We were introduced to aerobatics in primary, learning to do loops, rolls, immelmans, (half loop with a roll out at the top to reverse direction), wing-overs and dives, positive snap rolls, hammerhead stalls (a vertical climbing maneuver with a wing over downward just before stall).

Primary was a rather rigorous program. We had to take check rides periodically with Army check pilots and that's where it got nitty gritty. As an example, statistically, 60% of the entering cadets at my primary school washed out and were sent to bombardier or navigator school, gunnery school, or wherever the army wanted them.

Upon graduation from primary, we were asked to fly our instructor in the back seat and show him what we had learned. I did that, and added another little twist that he had not taught me. That was an outside snap. In a normal snap roll, g forces push you down in the seat and the blood leaves the brain downward causing a possible blackout. Conversely, in an outside snap, the reverse is true where the brain gets an excess of blood causing what is known as a red-out, with similar consequences. He cussed me over that. Another cadet I knew took his instructor for a ride and during a slow roll the cadet didn't have his seat belt secure and fell out. He had to use his parachute.

PECOS-Basic

One thing I remember here was the interminable Sand Storms where we had to stand retreat every afternoon in our dress uniforms at 5pm and couldn't see the rank in front of us.

We lived in very crude quarters; tar paper shacks. This, was strictly an Army base, with Army instructors and all the GI stuff that went with it. I happened to draw a flight instructor who was a graduate of New Mexico Military Academy and he gave no quarter. Seems he was always putting me in a brace (an exaggerated form of attention).

Wash out rate here was 34%.

Claire Chennault Jr. bunked next to me, being alphabetically near, and we were pretty good buddies.

It was at this base flying the BT that we tried to learn instrument and night flying. We had to spend a lot of time in the link trainer learning all about cross-country flying. Lost my first buddy here. He was on a cross-country night flight and for some reason plowed into the Glass mountains nearby. Had to escort his body home. That wasn't any fun.

Once, I had to do a solo round robin cross-country. The first leg was up NW to a little airport called Salt Flat and it was so hot. I opened the canopy to get some air and the slip-stream immediately sucked out my map. Held my heading constant and finally found my destination.

The next leg was to Marfa, Texas where I landed on a gravel strip and congratulated myself. When I taxied back, my joy was short lived, because there was that GI instructor of mine setting in a BT as the control officer, and he made me get out and really gave me a dressin' down 'cause I had forgot to roll my flaps up while taxing and could have ruined the flaps by letting rocks fly into them. He made me do two double time laps around the field with my parachute hitting me in the butt all the way. I never forgot to roll my flaps up again.

Then there was the time my buddy from Corpus, a cadet at Pecos, and I just happened to start flying a couple of BTs at the same time and decided to play fighter pilots. We made a lot of gyrations and he got on my tail, so I put it into a full power climb and just before stall, did a hammerhead, and had him dead to rights. We dang near had us a mid-air collision, but I was able to slide under him.

A B-17 base was nearby, called Peyote, which was a B-17 combat crew, training center. We tried messin' around with those guys some 'til they started tracking us with those 50 cals, and we got the hell outa there and quit doing that.

We had an exercise called hurdles at an auxiliary gravel field where we supposed to come in over a thing like a high jump bar. This was designed to train us to make extremely short field landings by coming in with the power half way between full on and idle, and carrying an airspeed between power on and power off stall speeds. With full flaps, after estimating when the tail had crossed the bar, you cut the throttle and immediately being in a stall configuration, you let it drop in 3 point. Claire had a little problem with that, since he had one leg shorter than then other which was obvious when he was marching. Claire Jr. later distinguished him self by flying an F-82 fighter in Korea.

DOUGLAS-Advanced

One thing I remember while here was losing another buddy and his instructor when they flew into a mountain. We had to do an exercise up in the mountains at a very small airstrip. We were to suppose to learn how make do with our airplanes under primitive conditions. We had to learn how to land at night with no lights; runway or landing lights; only smudge pots. Remember during one of these deals we were trying to get into a dirt strip in New Mexico. It was at night and the ships preceding had stirred up so much dust that it was even with the top of the telegraph poles, in line with the strip. We landed okay, but several tried to flare on top of the dust and dropped in from about 40'. Wheels and stuff flew everywhere.

Another goof, (I didn't do it, but I knew who did it). One time an airplane was flying around the mountains at night in the area and spotted the light of a train going around a mountain on a single track. He thought it would be great sport to fly around from the other side of the mountain just above the tracks to meet the train. He turned on one landing light and headed down the track to meet the train. You can imagine what happened. Lots of sparks, etc. when the train tried to stop. Nobody ratted, but we were restricted to base for a time anyway.

Claim to fame. I was the champ for sit-ups, push-ups, five-mile run, etc, because I was so skinny.

After graduation, got the wings and bars, went home on leave.

SALT LAKE CITY-Replacement Depot

This was where we were assigned as members of a combat crew. About all I remember about this place was how dreadfully cold this southern boy was that winter. We had other sessions of training and orientation. One of which was to qualify in the use of the Army 45cal automatic pistol and the Thompson sub machine gun. My hands were so cold that I was unable to feel my finger on the trigger. I believe that was the only reason I got an expert rating.

ARDMORE, OKLAHOMA-Combat Crew Training.

This is the place where crews were trained to operate the B-17F. We practiced bombing on various bomb ranges, took cross-country flights to learn about navigation, had ground schools such as those on the various aircraft systems, spent time on the firing range, learned to fly formation, and other things.

One night we were to practice night flying. With an instructor pilot aboard, and a few miles west of home base, we got lost in some very stinky weather with thunder, lightning, and severe turbulence all around. A word about navigation in those days, there was no such thing as airborne radar, VOR, ILS, nor all the multitude of aids we have at our disposal today. All we had was a low frequency, radio compass which homed in on various AM ground stations. There were airways to and from major cites identified by lighted steel towers spaced about every ten miles or so. Also, there were low frequency radio range stations about with A and N Morse coded signals which gave an indication that you were in one of two quadrants of the station. On the night in question, we came upon one of those light lines. We didn't know where it would lead, but followed it anyway knowing it would end up at some major intersection. There was a sentence we had to memorize as cadets that went thusly: "when in doubt every good man finds his position by known ways" (or something like that). The object being that each tower would flash a light in Morse code of the first letter of one word in that sentence, and from that an indication could be had as to how far it was to the next major intersection. The range signals or radio compass signals were of no use because of the static. After a while a welcome sight came into view, that being the lighted red horse on top of a skyscraper. Oklahoma City! We set up an approach for the runway at Tinker Army Airfield. The wind suddenly switched 180 degrees, but being committed, we had to land downwind. As a result, we ran off the opposite end of the runway and got stuck in the mud. While waiting to get pulled out of the mud, we went to operations and I met an old classmate of mine from advanced flying school who just happened to be Officer Of The Day that night. He said, "Come with me, I want to show you some thing". "Okay". He led me to a hangar guarded by MPs with Thompsons. We went in and I saw the biggest airplane beyond imagination. It was a B-29 Superfortress. My first thought was "That thing is too big to fly". They got our ship out of the mud, so we gassed up, and when the weather cleared, went home.

Another time, we had to participate in a bomber formation and were down around Abilene, Texas. A bunch of P-47 fighters swarmed us. I remember seeing one fly into the slip stream of one of our B-17s. He got flipped over and fell out of control. I am sure he must have recovered because we had plenty of altitude. But I thought that was a funny sight.

LINCOLN, NEBRASKA-Another repldepl (replacement depot)

Nothing much happened here. We were sent there to pick up a new Fortress and fly it to Europe. However, Boeing was on Strike, so no plane. We were only there over night, and the next day were put on a troop train for Camp Kilmer, New Jersey.

CAMP KILMER-The Jumpin' Off Place For Overseas.

We had to wait a few days for a boat. Meanwhile, we had leave most every night, and naturally took in the sights in the big apple several times. I met some of the "Follies" girls, and that was an experience.

Finally, we were put on a ship, and joined a convoy to cross the pond.

ABOARD SHIP

Very boring, cramped quarters; fed only twice a day; had to use sea water for everything except drinking. It took a long time to get over there. The monotony was broken only by abandon ship and anti U-boat drills.

LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND

We disembarked and had to march a long way down the quay carrying all our gear. While I was in advanced flying school, some of us took leave one day and went across the border to Agua Prieta, Mexico. Though I didn't drink, for some reason, I bought a fifth of scotch whiskey. I carried that thing in my B4 (canvas) bag all the way to Liverpool. When I dropped it on the dock, I busted the bottle of booze and I knew all my uniforms would be in a mess. The only thing I could think to do, was to grab my trench knife and poke a hole in my B4 so that booze could run out on the dock. That caused an uproar among my buddies. One bombardier even tried to lick some of it up off the dock!

BOVINGTON, ENGLAND

This was the place where the crews were assigned to the various bases. We had a buzz bomb come in there. The damage was negligible, however.

THURLEIGH, ENGLAND

And that's where all the trouble started.