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.