i l o t ’s

P
A ry
S t o
Barrie S. Davis
Colonel (retired)
WWII Fighter Ace
 Preface

HAT DID YOU DO IN THE WAR, DADDY?” It was nearly 50 years

W after the close of World War II when one of my children asked

that question. It deserves an answer.
How many are old enough to remember that amazing Sunday after-
noon when we heard the radio announce the unbelievable news that the
Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor? It was December 7, 1941.
My brother, Ferd, four years and a week older than I was, and his
wife, Selma Ann, lived in two upstairs rooms of my parents’ small home
in Zebulon, North Carolina, a little town with less than 600 population.
I was 17 years old and a sophomore at Wake Forest College. The college
was in the town of Wake Forest, North Carolina, just 17 miles north from
my home. It was many years later when Wake Forest College was moved
to Winston-Salem and became Wake Forest University. My place, when
I was home from college, was the third upstairs room.
To put things in perspective, World War II began less than 40 years after
Wilbur and Orville Wright flew their powered aircraft at Kitty Hawk on the
Outer Banks of North Carolina. Yet, before the oldest son asked about my
experiences in World War II, man had walked in space and on the moon. In
1941, our fighters cost less than $50,000 each. As this is written, a U.S. Army
Apache helicopter costs $27,000,000, and Air Force’s F-35 fighter aircraft each
costs many millions. Fighting a war has become terribly expensive.

i
 A Pilot’s Story

In the 1930s and early 1940s, many families could not afford an auto-
mobile. They found it was easier to walk to the grocery store than to hitch
a mule to a wagon for the ride into town. In October of 1941, we were
enjoying a family tag football game in the front yard of my parents’ home.
Ralph Lewis, Sr., lived a mile west of Zebulon. He paused during his walk
home from downtown Zebulon and watched as we threw the football back
and forth. Then he called out: “Y’all better enjoy that game while you can,
’cause you’re going to be in the Army before long.” I stopped playing and
stared. He was an infantry veteran of World War I and a member of the
American Legion. He should be an expert on military matters. If he said I
soon would be in the Army, it must be true. The Army to Ralph Lewis was
the infantry. That did not appeal to me. I wanted to fly!
As the U.S. increased the size of its armed forces and prepared for a
war that President Franklin D. Roosevelt knew was coming, recruiting
posters were seen everywhere. The Army Air Corps had one posted at
Matthew’s, a road house just outside Zebulon on the highway to Wendell.
It showed all Army ranks from private to general and all the wings worn
by Air Corps members—pilot, senior pilot, command pilot, navigator,
bombardier, observer, gunner—the whole lot. Many a night, while other
teenagers at Matthew’s were dancing to juke box music, I stood in front
of that big poster and imagined how exciting it would be to wear any of
those wings. After getting in bed each night, I dreamed of flying.
My desire to fly was whetted because men from our area already
had completed Aviation Cadet training and become Air Corps officers
and pilots. One was Ted Pippin from Zebulon, and another was Ray
Whitley from Wendell. Both were handsome guys who looked the part
of Air Corps pilots, even in civilian attire. Whenever a military plane
flew low over Zebulon, people ran out and swore they could see either
Ted or Ray waving. I don’t know if either flew over our town.
With a college buddy from Greensboro named John Yeates, I hitch-
hiked 17 miles from Wake Forest to Raleigh and found the Army and
Navy recruiting stations in the post office building. An older brother of
mine, Ted, had served two years in the Navy, most of the time on the air-

ii
 Preface

craft carrier Lexington. His tales made the U.S. Navy sound like great fun.
We went to the Navy recruiter, who assured me that if I enlisted, I could
fly with the Navy. After more questions, he admitted that my flying prob-
ably would be nothing more than as a gunner on a torpedo bomber or
dive bomber. Neither option appealed to me. I wanted to be a pilot.
We walked over to the Army recruiting office. “Fine,” the recruiter
said. “We’ll take you, but you have to have two years of college to qualify
for appointment as an Aviation Cadet.”
We wore long faces when we returned to Wake Forest. We talked of
going to Canada and enlisting in the Royal Canadian Air Force, but nei-
ther of us was willing to take the lead. The idea of becoming military
pilots suffered a quick death.
On December 4, 1941, Dr. Charles Flowers, a local family practition-
er, delivered brother Ferd’s first son, whom my brother named Ferd Leary
Davis, Jr. Ferd assisted in the delivery of the young fellow, whereupon, fol-
lowing the baby’s delivery, my brother exclaimed, “Never again!”
Three days later, on Sunday, December 7, 1941, the Japanese
stunned the U.S. with their surprise air attack on Pearl Harbor, bombing,
torpedoing, and strafing the battleships in Pearl Harbor and airfields on
the island of Oahu. The attackers devastated the United States’ Pacific
fleet. Almost immediately the United States was at war with Japan,
Germany, and Italy. Two weeks later, on December 22, I celebrated my
18th birthday.
My oldest brother, Eric Farmer Davis, a career soldier, had been
home on leave from the Philippines two years earlier. At that time, Eric
was a sergeant, but he held a Reserve commission as a lieutenant. He pre-
dicted that the U.S. and Japan soon would be at war, and he returned to
the Philippines, accepted his Reserve commission, and trained Philip-
pine Scouts in northern Luzon island. For over a month, our only word
from Eric had been letters written prior to the Japanese attack on Luzon,
which took place nearly simultaneously with their attack on Pearl
Harbor. His last message was a Christmas greeting mailed in November
1941 that showed him relaxing in a hammock with a beautiful, bare-

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 A Pilot’s Story

breasted Philippine girl waving a large frond to cool him and keep the
insects away. The caption read: “General William Tecumseh Sherman
may have been wrong!”
The first week in January 1942, my only living grandparent, my
mother’s mother, died at her home in Virginia. She was in her 80s and in
poor health, so her death was not unexpected. Still, the loss of a loved one
always is a shock. The night before my grandmother’s funeral, we were
preparing for the trip to the tiny hamlet of Gladys, Virginia, where she
had lived and would be buried. My mother, a person who possessed great
intuition and had the ability to sense the feelings, thoughts, and concerns
of others, was not satisfied that we had heard all the bad news. She was
right. The telephone rang. It was Western Union calling a telegram from
the War Department telling that Eric was dead. He had been killed in
combat by an American artillery round while fighting a delaying action
against the Japanese at a road crossing on Bataan peninsula.
Eric’s death brought the real pain of war into our home. There was no
question that Ferd and I would enlist. It was just a matter of how soon. Ferd
was first to go. In March, I drove Dad’s car to take him to the Reception
Center at Fort Bragg, near Fayetteville, 95 miles south of Zebulon.
The following chapters are, to the best of my recollection, true
reports of a teenager from a small North Carolina hamlet who volun-
teered for combat in the “big war.” The stories are true. The people are
real. Some of the names have been changed to avoid embarrassing those
who may be less than proud of their war-time activities. The dates and
places are as accurate as I could get them from the various papers that are
randomly filed in an old foot locker, which accompanied me overseas
and has survived many moves since.
I am indebted to a number of people for their willingness to help
confirm memories as fact. Art Fiedler, fighter Ace with eight victories, an
officer of keen vision, unbelievable flying skill, unflinching courage, and
remarkable memory, urged me to write more. John Phillips, Assistant
Intelligence Officer of the 317th Fighter Squadron, complimented my
prose but suggested I delete the profanity, because it adds nothing to the

iv
 Preface

stories. Herky Green, my fearless squadron commander who authored a

great book of his World War II experiences titled Herky, suggested no
changes in my text but commented that my memory was far better than
his. Phil Heitman, another close friend, a superb transport pilot, an
author, and an editor par none, eliminated many of the rough edges in
the manuscript. My wife, Ramona, finally agreed to read what I wrote,
and then embarrassed me by telling how much she enjoyed these pages.
She did say, however, that what I wrote makes me appear conceited. The
chapters that follow were recorded simply to answer a single question
posed by a son: “What did you do in the war?”

v
A Pilot’s Story

Written for my children

By Barrie S. Davis
 From Teenager
to
Pilot

of the United States into war against Japan,

T
HE SUDDEN ENTRANCE
Germany, and Italy brought drastic changes to life in the United
States. Everybody was affected. No longer was it necessary to
search for a job. Work was available for anyone able and willing to accept
it. Rationing began. Gasoline, shoes, sugar, meats, coffee, and tires soon
were available only to those with ration coupons. If travel by auto were
not essential to your work, then you were entitled to only three gallons of
gasoline each week. If travel were necessary, you qualified for five or
more gallons a week, depending on your actual needs. Those who proved
they needed more than five gallons a week could plead their cases with a
Ration Board. A local grocer was believed to be increasing his meat sup-
ply by selling horse meat, but no one could prove it, and no one com-
plained. Every car owner was ordered to turn in tires in excess of five per
vehicle. Some did; some didn’t. Price controls went into effect.
Automobile production for the civilian market ended, and the last
General Motors cars off the assembly lines sported wooden bumpers.
New military installations sprang up all across the country. Each day,
in the pre-dawn darkness, buses were loaded in Zebulon with carpenters
who helped to build new military bases at Camp Davis, near the North
Carolina coast, and Camp Butner, fifty miles northwest of Zebulon. Men
left their homes for the shipyards at Wilmington, North Carolina, and

1
 A Pilot’s Story

Norfolk, Virginia, working day and night to build ships that would travel
through submarine-infested waters to supply our allies and our own
forces on the far side of both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. It was a dif-
ferent world, but we were buoyed by the calm, confident voice of
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as he assured us that victory would
be ours. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” he said.
After December 7, 1941, and the U.S. entry into the war, college
studies seemed meaningless to me. The Christmas holidays passed, and
I never enrolled for the second semester at Wake Forest College, drop-
ping out of school to work in the family print shop until I could enlist in
the Army Air Corps.
My 22-year-old brother, Ferd, was among the first to enlist. He
already had graduated with a B.S. in physics from Wake Forest College,
and he was working as a printer in my father’s business, at the same time
editing and publishing The North Carolina Highway & Construction
Journal, a magazine devoted to the highway construction industry. In
March 1942, after he kissed a grieving wife goodbye and hugged his
three-month-old son, I drove with him 95 miles to Ft. Bragg where he
reported for duty with the Army Air Corps. It was dark when we arrived,
and we asked directions several times before we found the Reception
Center. Ferd and I shook hands—no last minute hugs among men in the
Davis family—and he walked, back straight, head erect, into a long
wooden building. It would be over a year and Ferd would be a commis-
sioned Army Air Corps officer before I saw him again.
From Fort Bragg, Ferd was sent to a classification center where the Air
Corps chose the smart Cadets—such as Ferd—to train as navigators. They
took the steady ones and made them bombardiers. The rest they put into
pilot training. Ferd trained first as a navigator in Miami, Florida. When the
Air Corps decided to reduce the number of crew members in some
bombers, Ferd completed bombardier training at Lake Charles, Louisiana,
so that he could serve simultaneously as both navigator and bombardier.
Soon after the U.S. entered the war, the requirement for two years of
college credit to be eligible for flight training was waived. The country

2
 From Teenager to Fighter Pilot

suddenly had an immediate need for thousands of crews for the planes
that were rolling off assembly lines. I rushed to Raleigh to enlist, but I
was told that I needed both a birth certificate and my parents’ signed per-
mission. It required weeks of communications with the office of the
Register of Deeds in Lenoir County, N.C., before I finally received a cer-
tificate proving that I really was born on the date—December 22, 1923—
and at the place I had been told—the Baptist Orphanage at Kinston
where my father was superintendent.
There was another problem. The birth certificate gave my name as
“Barrie Spilman Davis.” In elementary school I had faced ridicule for
having a girl’s name ending in “ie.” It never helped to explain that my
mother had named me for an Englishman, Sir James Barrie, who was the
author of Peter Pan and her favorite writer. My middle name was for Dr.
Bernard Spilman, a prominent Southern Baptist who was a close friend
of my parents. Labeled with a girl’s name and with Spilman as my mid-
dle name, I was subjected to constant teasing. In the 8th grade, my first
year in high school, I could stand it no longer. I began writing my name
“Barry.” That put an end to some of the teasing. But now that I was try-
ing to enlist in the military, I faced a choice. I could postpone enlisting
until I legally changed my first name, or I could go with “Barrie.”
Impatience won. I decided to enlist with the name on the birth certifi-
cate: “Barrie Spilman Davis.”
There remained another almost impossible task—getting my par-
ents’ permission. Neither Dad nor Mother was happy at the thought of
my enlisting. My father never signed. He gave no reason, but it was obvi-
ous that, having one son killed in battle and a second son already in serv-
ice, he hated the thought of sending a third son to war. I begged my
mother until finally she put her name on the proper form; but, as long as
she lived, Bess Davis claimed that she never knew what she had signed.
The written exam at the recruiting station in Raleigh seemed a
farce. After completing all the questions, I decided there must be a trick
to the exam, and I went through it a second time. When I turned in the
completed test, the civilian who graded my paper looked at me and ex-

3
 A Pilot’s Story

claimed, “My God!” I took a step backward. What did I miss? Did I fail?
“We’ve never had anyone score this high!” the man exclaimed.
There was a physical examination to be passed, including a color
test for vision. Neither was a problem to me. One applicant could not
read the numbers in the color vision book and was administered anoth-
er color test. A sergeant brought out pieces of yarn and asked the man to
match them. Eventually he was able to match eight out of ten pairs.
“OK,” said the sergeant. “You pass. You’re in!”
Later at the Classification Center, those who could pass only the
yarn test found that this did not qualify them for flight training, but it
was too late! They were members of the Army, and most were assigned
to the infantry.
Thirty minutes after passing the physical exam, I stood in a line of
20 men, held my right hand high, and swore allegiance to the U.S.A.,
promising to obey the orders of the officers appointed over me and to do
whatever else a soldier is supposed to do.
So now I was Aviation Cadet Barrie Spilman Davis, eager to get in an
airplane and fly. At that time my total flight experience was a $3 ride three
years earlier in a Piper J2 Cub. I thrilled as the little plane carried me over
Zebulon. Now I was going to be a pilot! Unfortunately for me, the Air
Corps had more men enlisting for flight training than it could manage.
Months passed. I marked time with great impatience while working in my
parents’ printing plant and helping with the weekly newspaper.
Fed up with the delay, I wrote letters to the Army addressed “To
whom it may concern” and asked that I be released from the Aviation
Cadet program so that I could volunteer to be an airborne paratrooper.
Postage would have been expensive at 3 cents a mailing, but the gov-
ernment was generous with those in the military, and no postage was
required if “FREE” were written in the upper right corner of the enve-
lope. The Army’s response to my letters said that crews were needed
more to fly airplanes than men to jump out of airplanes, so I continued
my wait with great impatience. Later, when I watched soldiers jump
from perfectly good airplanes and float to the ground underneath a

4
 From Teenager to Fighter Pilot

canopy of silk, I realized how fortunate I had been that my request for
transfer was refused.

CLASSIFICATION CENTER
THE FIRST WEEK OF JANUARY 1943—two weeks after my 19th birthday—a
telegram arrived ordering me to report immediately to the Army Air
Corps Classification Center in Nashville, Tennessee. Nashville! Home of
the Grand Old Opry! Tennessee! A state I had never visited! My adven-
ture finally was beginning. Carrying only a change of clothes in a small
bag, I hugged and kissed my mother, shook hands with my father, and
caught a bus for a cold all-night ride from Zebulon to Nashville. I left the
bus in Nashville around noon on a dreary January day and caught an
Army bus to the Classification Center. I was stopped at the gate.
“What do you want here?” asked a guard.
“I have a telegram that told me to report here,” I responded.
“Let me see your orders,” directed the guard.
“Orders? What are orders? All I have is a telegram.”
“No orders? What’s your serial number?” the guard asked.
“I don’t know. I just got here.”
The guard called an officer, who repeated the request for orders.
“All I have is a telegram,” I told him. After reading the telegram, the
two accepted my word that the telegram substituted for orders, and they
pointed the direction for me to walk through the sticky mud to a long,
narrow, wooden building—one of many thousands hurriedly built to
handle the rapid build-up of the Army Air Corps. I clutched my little
bag, shivered in the cold, and began walking. I slipped and slid eight
blocks down the muddy street and came to the headquarters building
described by the officer. It was warm inside. I felt better.
“Can I help you?” asked a soldier wearing two stripes on his sleeve.
“I have a telegram telling me to report here,” I replied.
“Let me see your orders,” the soldier said.
We went through the same routine I had experienced at the gate.
“But everybody has a serial number,” the two-striper exclaimed.

5
 A Pilot’s Story

I looked totally confused. “Not me,” I said.

He took the telegram and began looking through a stack of papers.
After what seemed an eternity, he pulled a paper out. “Yeah,” he said,
looking daggers at me. “Where have you been? You were supposed to be
here last Friday!”
This was my introduction to the U.S. Army Air Corps, apparently
on the wrong foot.
The Army taught me a lot of things, including some very dirty
words to incorporate into my vocabulary. I met people from places I
never knew existed, and I found that I did have a serial number:
14102508.
The letter ordering me to report for active duty and containing my
serial number had been sent to Zebulon, Georgia, instead of Zebulon,
North Carolina. It caught up with me 10 days later.
You could tell a lot about a guy from his serial number. The first
numeral—”1”—indicated I was a volunteer. Serial numbers beginning
with “2” were given to members of the National Guard and Army
Reserve. Those beginning with “3” were given to draftees. The second
numeral indicated the Army Corps area from which a soldier came. The
Fourth Corps area included North Carolina.
The two-striper went to the door and pointed to a barracks
three blocks through the drizzle. “There’s your home,” he laughed.
Once more I picked up my little bag of civilian clothes and walked
through frigid drizzle and mud. I paused at the door of the barracks
and listened. I heard loud voices inside. Laughter. A moan. I slowly
pushed open the door and looked. There were about 15 men, most in
civilian clothes, some in their underwear. Six were on their knees
between two bunks shooting craps. They were the ones laughing and
moaning as two white cubes bounced across the floor and against the
wall. Several others were dozing on cots. Two were hanging clothes
on wooden rods fastened to the wall. One saw me and called, “Come
on in. You just get here? I guess you can take that bunk at the other
end. It’s empty.”

6
 From Teenager to Fighter Pilot

By late afternoon, we had 30 men in the barracks. Introductions

began. Six long-haired Latinos were from Tampa, Florida. They regaled
us with stories of making cigars, humorously describing how cigar wrap-
pers are sealed with spit. “Yes,” said one small fellow named Gomez, “we
don’t waste any tobacco. Tobacco in the middle of the cigar is what we
sweep off the floor.” I was happy not to be a cigar smoker.
By 5:30, it was dark outside. I learned it was “1730” military time
using a 24-hour clock. A sergeant strode through the door, blew a whis-
tle, and shouted, “Alright, men, up and at ’em. Fall in! On the double! It’s
chow time!” We rushed out of the barracks and, with the sergeant prod-
ding us for being slow and clumsy, lined up in three ranks.
“Left face!” the sergeant barked. We were pathetic. We turned in
opposite directions and bumped into each other. We were as raw as any
recruits the Army had taken into its ranks.
I thought the food was good! Maybe it was because I was so hun-
gry. I had very little money, and I had spent nothing for food during the
all-night bus ride or after my arrival in Nashville. To me, the Army
chow was a feast!
Sleep came easily, but not before we cleaned the barracks. The ser-
geant had designated two of us to keep the barracks stove stoked with
coal throughout the night. At 5 a.m., a whistle shreaked, and we clam-
bered sleepily from our cots for the first of what proved to be the busiest
time of our lives. Sixty men elbowed their way into a crowded latrine to
shower and shave. Privacy was nil. One large shower with six shower
heads was available. Six toilet stools lined a wall. Soldiers with bashful
bowels were out of luck. I had a new Gillette safety razor my parents had
given me for Christmas. I proudly placed it on the ledge beneath a mir-
ror. No one noticed its beautiful pearl handle. That was disappointing,
but everyone was intent on getting out of the crowded latrine and back
to their barracks.
My first full day in Uncle Sam’s Army was a busy one. In addition to
stoking the stove, the sergeant ordered me to join three others in wash-
ing all the windows in the barracks! It was hard work inside and cold

7
 A Pilot’s Story

work outside. When the windows were sparkling clean, we were ordered
to scrub the barracks floor. After the sergeant was satisfied with the floor,
we dusted the woodwork. The barracks was built with unpainted, rough
timbers. I finished the day with dozens of splinters in my hands.
Marching was learned quickly. We marched to the supply room for
uniforms. I was given a garrison cap that must have been salvaged from
the first World War. Later I wore it only when it was specified as the uni-
form of the day. I preferred the overseas cap (some called it a “cunt cap”
because of its appearance). It was worn one finger over the right ear and
one finger over the right eyebrow. It could be tucked under the belt so it
would not be misplaced or forgotten when we “uncovered” our heads
indoors. I envied those who were issued wool overcoats with brass but-
tons. I was issued an overcoat with plastic buttons. “You are lucky,” a cor-
poral told me. “You won’t have to shine those buttons.”
From the supply room, we marched to the barber shop. My hair was
long and wavy. Girls loved it. It took the barber less than two minutes to
sheer all my locks within a quarter inch of my scalp. My barber was slow.
The barber manning the next chair scalped a Cadet in one minute thirty
seconds. When we returned to the barracks, no one was recognizable. It
was like being housed with strangers, especially so with the nearly bald
Latinos from Tampa. Introductions had to be made all over again.
After the first day, a sergeant called a formation of all the Cadets in
our area. “Who’s had military service?” he barked. Few hands went up.
One belonged to a former sergeant who regretted giving up his stripes. He
became acting Cadet squadron commander. The sergeant went through
the group until a Cadet admitted to having received Junior ROTC training
in high school. “You are the guidon bearer,” the sergeant directed. From
that moment on, we seldom saw officers or enlisted men with stripes on
their sleeves. Cadet officers and NCOs controlled the squadron.
The lucky guys were those who had typing skills. The morning of
our third day at the Classification Center, a sergeant stood in front of our
formation. “Anyone know how to type?” he asked. Two Cadets raised
hands. “Report to the orderly room,” the sergeant commanded. For the

8
 From Teenager to Fighter Pilot

remainder of our stay in Nashville, those two enjoyed a warm orderly

room while the rest of us nearly froze building board walks through the
mud in freezing rain.
We marched everywhere. Platoon leaders “dressed” us so that the
tallest men were in front. They took giant steps. I was 5’9” tall. It was dif-
ficult for me to stay in step. The little 5’5” men in the rear found it impos-
sible. “Put the small guys in front,” they pled. But the Army way was to
fall in with the tallest in the lead. Short-legged soldiers kept up as best
they could.
It took only a very short time for everyone to be identified by a
nickname. It might be “Hank” or “Speedy” or “Bill” but it was seldom
that given names were used in conversation. My handle was a contrac-
tion of my last name: “Dave.” I never was called by my first name.
For several days, we were tested. First was a lengthy written test.
Then we attempted to hold a steel wire centered inside a ring. Whenever
the wire touched the ring, it completed an electrical connection that trig-
gered a counter. Low score was best. Some Cadets thought that holding
the wire against the ring would increase the counter only a single num-
ber. Wrong! When the wire was held against the ring, the counter clicked
numbers like a machine gun.
Next came a coordination exercise during which a pointer had to be
held on a metal disc that oscillated on a turntable. This time high score
mattered, because the counter recorded the length of time the pointer
was on the disc. I was far from best, but I passed.
We were tested for both near and far vision. One of our Hispanics
from Tampa could not look cross-eyed. He sat on his bunk and practiced
for hours, alternately focusing his eyes on a finger or a pencil to pull
them to the center. But nothing worked. He was a good guy, but try
though he might, he never could cross his eyes. Four days later we told
him “goodbye,” and he was gone.
We marched into a large recreation hall wearing only raincoats and
shoes. One after another we posed before a doctor. “Turn around, bend
over, and spread your cheeks,” the doctor commanded. We lifted rain-

9
 A Pilot’s Story

coats, bent over, and did as the doctor ordered. He walked the line peer-
ing up our rears and pronouncing us fit to fight.
The doctor looked me over from head to foot: “Second degree flat
feet!” he said. I didn’t know I had flat feet. For days I studied the bottoms
of my feet and worried that they might wash me out of the Cadet pro-
gram. When testing continued, I found that flat feet were no bar to flying.
Our final interview was with a psychiatrist. We marched back into
the recreation hall still in our raincoats. The big room was lined with
small tables. Behind each table sat an officer. Most of them looked little
older than I was. All looked bored.
“Sit down, Mister,” one said to me. After looking at a paper with my
name boldly printed at the top, he began asking questions. “Married?
Have nightmares? Walk in your sleep? Have panic attacks? Wet the bed?
Why did you enlist? Do you masturbate?” I gave him the answers I
thought he wanted until, evidently out of questions and totally bored, he
said, “You’ll pass.”
I stood, saluted, pulled my raincoat around me, and left.
That evening in the barracks, Cadets laughed as they recounted
their answers to the psychiatrists’ questions. “I told that doctor that, hell,
yes, I jacked off,” boasted a big Pennsylvanian. “I said there are not
enough girls around to keep me satisfied.”
“Who wants to fly the China Clipper?” a sergeant yelled in the bar-
racks early one morning. Along with a half dozen volunteers, I jumped
up. “O.K., follow me,” the sergeant commanded.
He led us to the mess hall where we found the “China Clipper” was
the big area where we spent the remainder of the day washing pots and
pans. The guys were right when they advised, “Never volunteer!”
There were no open posts for us … no chance to go into Nashville
and enjoy the Grand Old Opry. Continuing outbreaks of German measles
among Cadets kept us quarantined. Each day, we reported to the recre-
ation hall wearing only raincoats and shoes so a doctor could examine our
chests and stomachs for evidence of the disease. None of the Cadets in my
squadron was infected, but we continued to be restricted to the post.

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 From Teenager to Fighter Pilot

We were asked what type training we wanted. My first choice was

pilot. Second was navigator. My brother, Ferd, was a navigator. He was a
brain. If I couldn’t fly airplanes, then I wanted to show him that I could
achieve whatever he could. I definitely did not want to be a bombardier.
Fortunately, I was given my first choice. I was ordered to Preflight at
Maxwell Field, Alabama, to prepare for flight training. The Air Corps
needed pilots more than it needed navigators and bombardiers.
Three weeks after arriving in Nashville, I was on a train car filled
with Aviation Cadets headed for Alabama. My barracks bag was filled
with GI uniforms, underwear, socks, and the two sets of civilian clothes
I had worn until I was issued military uniforms. From the time I arrived
in Nashville with no orders until I was trucked to the train station, I
never left the post. During my stay, it seemed I had washed 15 trainloads
of pots and pans while on KP duty and helped build at least five miles of
plank walks through the mud.

PREFLIGHT
IN 1943, PREFLIGHT TRAINING at Maxwell Field, Alabama, was patterned
after West Point Military Academy. Barracks had been built years earlier,
and they were very nice—especially after living in the wood buildings at
Nashville, which were simply one big room covered with tar paper, unin-
sulated, unfinished on the interior, and heated with a single coal-fired,
pot-bellied stove. Maxwell Field probably had been used for Preflight
training long before World War II.
My barracks was a long building containing a line of five rooms and
an orderly room. Each room had its own bathroom with shower. Three
double-deck cots in each room provided accommodations for six Cadets.
Discipline was rigid. For 4½ weeks, Cadets were underclassmen, obliged
to be at the beck and call of upperclassmen, who pictured themselves as
wise and experienced, and who were eager to award demerits. Too many
demerits meant hours of walking tours, marching smartly around an
open area between barracks, making flank movements, and cursing the
Cadets who had turned in the demerits. An hour of walking removed a

11
 A Pilot’s Story

single demerit. Some Cadets spent entire weekends marching around the
rectangle. I was lucky. I walked tours only twice. First I was caught wear-
ing a tarnished belt buckle; another time I was caught checking for my
mail before upperclassmen returning from class had collected theirs.
The upperclassmen who lorded it over us were mostly former non-
commissioned officers. Some had made it as high as staff sergeant. They
knew regulations, knew how to march, and knew how to command. We
learned that as underclassmen we could give but three answers to ques-
tions from upperclassmen: “Yes, sir,” “No, sir,” and “No excuse, sir!”
When upperclassmen inspected us, the command usually was: “Pop
to with a twang, mister!” We were expected to stand at rigid attention,
our shoulder blades touching, and emit a long “t-w-a-n-n-n-g!” One
Cadet, James Wilson, could sound off like a string on a base violin. Time
after time, upperclassmen had him “pop to” just to hear his “twang.”
Upperclassmen frequently demanded: “Sound off, mister!” We
stood in a brace, chests out, chin in, shoulder blades together, and shout-
ed our names and initials. My initials immediately caught the attention
of upperclassmen when I gave my name: “Aviation Cadet Davis, B.S., sir!”
“B.S.? What does B.S. stand for, mister?”
I faced disaster if I answered other than, “Bull shit, sir!”
We were issued Enfield rifles, vintage 1913. The rifles were soaked
with cosmoline and wrapped tightly with a waterproof material. We were
ordered to clean the rifles and polish them until they were in mint con-
dition. After hours of hard work, the rifles were as coated with cosmoline
as when we received them.
“I’ve got it!” exclaimed Louis Cyr, one of my five roommates. Louis
turned on the shower and scalding water flowed. He stood his rifle
underneath. It took only minutes for the cosmoline to melt under the
steaming water. Another ten minutes and Louis dried his rifle, swabbed
the barrel with a cleaning rod, laid on a light coat of oil, stood it against
the wall, and flopped back on his bunk. The rest of us followed his lead,
and in less than an hour we were sleeping soundly, our rifles stacked in a
corner ready for inspection.

12
 From Teenager to Fighter Pilot

Sleeping during duty hours was against the rules. We could lie down
during rare moments of the day when we were permitted to escape to our
rooms, but woe to the Cadet who failed to keep at least one foot on the
floor when lying on his bunk during daylight hours.
Only twice during my stay at Maxwell Field did my name show on
the roster for guard duty. It was not a difficult 24 hours—just boring. We
had memorized the General Orders and knew we were responsible “for
my post and all government property in view.” It was two hours on post
and four hours off. Marching was required on some posts. For others, all
that was required was standing tall, looking military, and staying awake.
We were armed with our glistening Enfield rifles but no ammunition.
Nothing untoward happened during either of my tours of guard
duty, but it was interesting listening to the wild tales related by other
Cadets of their experiences while on guard. One laughed as he told of
challenging a member of the civilian mess hall crew when the man
reported for work at 4 a.m. “I made him halt and asked him for the pass-
word,” related the Cadet. “He said he didn’t know anything about a pass-
word, so I told him I reckoned I’d just have to shoot him. I slammed the
bolt on my rifle closed, and he started running. The last I saw of him, he
was still running eight blocks down the street.”
Some time in the past, Cadets had added to the General Orders, and
we were required to know the additions. The last of the added General
Orders was recited: Not to lay my wick in the crack of a Wac nor my head
on the breast of a Wave.
Studies were intense. We had theory of flight, meteorology, aircraft
recognition, weapons, Morse code, and close order drill until we could
do an about-face while sleeping, and we learned to eat “square meals” in
the mess hall. “Square meals” were a challenge. With my eyes fastened on
a spot six inches in front of my plate, I had to get food on my fork, lift the
fork straight up until it was in line with my mouth, then move it hori-
zontally to my mouth. Failure to move the fork in straight lines and make
only square directions with it or to keep my eyes on the designated spot
on the table meant demerits. I had to memorize the words on the

13
 A Pilot’s Story

Worcestershire sauce bottle and sing them to the tune of Yankee Doodle.
I sang them loudly but not well.
Those were the days of a segregated U.S. Army. Occasionally, an
upperclassman ordered one of us to lift our eyes, look across the room at
the black women on the serving line, and then answer the question:
“What color are those women?“ If a Cadet answered, “Black, sir!” the
upperclassman would bark, “You haven’t been here long enough, mister!
Attention!”
Because of constant harassment by upperclassmen, we seldom
could eat a full meal. Most Cadets kept boxes of Hershey bars in their
rooms for snacks. Hershey bars with almonds were called “males.” They
had nuts.
Physical training was tough. No one liked it. Instructors were big,
muscular guys with Adonis-like builds who kept us jumping, kicking,
swinging our arms, and running for hours without let up. On days when
we were not jumping sidestraddle, twisting, bending, and doing pushups,
we ran in formation around the airfield, a distance of nearly five miles.
Competition between Cadet squadrons was torrid. We did not know
Cadets in the other squadrons, but we knew we would never let them
outdo us. Many a time during the run around Maxwell Field, Cadets
staggered from exhaustion, pained with cramps, and catches in their bel-
lies. None was permitted to fall out. The fatigued men were dragged
around the course by other Cadets, who kept them from the ground by
grasping an ailing Cadet’s arms, lifting them over their shoulders, and
hauling them whatever distance remained of the run.
By the end of two months in the Army, I had put on 10 pounds,
weighed 158, and was in the best physical condition of my life.
The day came for training with gas masks. Wearing fatigue uni-
forms, we marched to the gas chamber. A sergeant instructed us briefly
on how to don a gas mask, and then we formed into groups. One after
another, groups marched into the gas chamber. Tear gas filled it, and
there was a mad scramble to get the masks over our faces. Long after
their masks were on, Cadets slow in donning them suffered terribly with

14
 From Teenager to Fighter Pilot

burning eyes and streaming tears. Following the gas mask training, we
marched to a darkened classroom for instruction in aircraft recognition.
Half way through the class, the civilian instructor apologized. “I don’t
know what’s wrong,” he said, “but I can’t stop crying.” The tear gas had
saturated our fatigue uniforms, and the fumes coming from the cloth had
all of us crying. The class ended quickly.
Ground school was easy. All my life I was fascinated with airplanes,
reading everything I could about them. Theory of flight proved no prob-
lem. I could have instructed the class on lift created by an airplane’s wing.
When I was 12 years old, I had an argument with my best friend, who
insisted that an airplane had to be bumped into the air before it would
fly. He never believed my explanation of how “lift” is generated. My eas-
iest subject was Morse code. To pass the course, we had to be able to
transmit and receive code at 12 words a minutes. Years earlier, an older
brother, Ted, returned home from Navy service knowing Morse code.
Prior to the war, I learned code from him while he practiced to pass the
examination for his amateur radio license. Thanks to this prior knowl-
edge, my grade in Morse code was a perfect 100.
We lived by the West Point Honor Code. No lying. No cheating. No
stealing. The Code was enforced. It was a new experience for many
Cadets. Violate the code, and you’d be washed out.
At 2 a.m. on a frigid February morning in 1943, whistles blew, and
we were ordered to get into formation on the parade field. Five hundred
shivering Cadets stood at attention trying to pull our hands up into the
warm sleeves of our overcoats and wondering why the early morning
formation. Then an officer read a paper stating that a Cadet had been
convicted of violating the Honor Code. We watched as he was marched
from the field. He had been washed out of the program. He’d never get to
fly as an Air Corps pilot. Nobody spoke when we returned to our bar-
racks. The lesson was learned well. Some might cheat in the future, but
we all determined that we never would get caught.
We marched in formation wherever we went, and we sang or count-
ed cadence as we marched. We memorized The Army Air Corps Song and

15
 A Pilot’s Story

Into the Air, Army Air Corps. We lustily sang I’ve Got Six Pence, bellow-
ing the final chorus:
Happy is the day when the airman gets his pay,
As we go rolling, rolling home—dead drunk!
Three and a half weeks after we arrived at Maxwell Field, we held
tryouts for appointment as Cadet officers who would command the
squadron when we became upperclassmen. I knew nothing about close
order drill and spit-and-polish military stuff except what I had been
exposed to since joining the Cadet program, but I competed anyhow.
Southerners described the tryouts as “hog calling.” We stood at attention
by the barracks, and we shouted commands. I thought I did pretty good,
but the tactical officers knew better. I couldn’t qualify for Cadet corporal,
much less squadron commander. I was destined to be a follower, not a
leader, but I would continue to be an Aviation Cadet.
Preflight at Maxwell was supposed to last nine weeks. At the end of
four and a half weeks, the tactical officer called me into the orderly room
and told me that I would be accelerated from Class 43-K to Class 43-J,
and I would leave immediately for Primary Flying School with the class
that had been ahead of me. It was a big surprise and a slight disappoint-
ment. Now I’d be leaving my buddies, and I would not enjoy the pleasure
of being an upperclassman at Preflight. I saluted the tac officer, did an
about-face, and started for the door.
“Mr. Davis,” the officer called. “Just tell me one thing. Who do
you know?”
I confessed that I knew no more than did the tactical officer about
why I was accelerated. My 100 average in code did not seem enough to
enable me to skip half of Preflight. The next day, with members of Class
43-J—the scoundrels who had taken such pleasure in harassing me—I
boarded an ancient passenger car on a train headed northwest from
Montgomery, Alabama, to Union City, Tennesseee. It dawned on me that
I had seen less of Montgomery than I saw of Nashville.
My fellow Cadets looked at me as the stranger I was to their group.
What was I doing with them after only four and a half weeks of Preflight?

16
 From Teenager to Fighter Pilot

How come I was accelerated? Why was I going to Primary with only a
portion of the education they were required to acquire at Maxwell? I had
no explanation.
The train stopped in Memphis, Tennessee, where the passenger cars
were shuttled to a side track. We had five hours of free time in Memphis
while we waited for another locomotive to pull us to Union City. One
Cadet had sung with a band prior to volunteering for the Aviation Cadet
program. The band was playing at a club on a hotel rooftop in Memphis.
“Let’s see my band,” the Cadet urged.
I never had been to a nightclub. I never had heard a big band play.
I felt I was straight out of the sticks, which I was, but I was willing to be
educated. With six other Cadets, including the former vocalist, I went to
the hotel, rode an elevator to the rooftop, and tried to act with savoir-faire
when we were ushered to a table near the band.
A waiter rushed to our table. “What would you gentlemen like to
drink?” One Cadet ordered a martini. Another asked for scotch on the
rocks. When the waiter arrived at my elbow, I said, “Lemonade.” The
bored-looking waiter raised an eyebrow, but I got my lemonade. It cost
75 cents, a huge amount to a Cadet making $75 a month. It was my
introduction to the high cost of the good life.
The night was a fine reunion for the musical Cadet and the band.
Our classmate performed well, singing three numbers. We stood and
applauded until diners wondered about the commotion. He sang anoth-
er song.
A half hour later, time ran out. The band played a salute to the Army
Air Corps, and we left the hotel and walked to the train station. Flopped
back on a train seat, I thought: “It’s been a great evening.” It was worth
every penny that the 75c lemonade had cost.

PRIMARY FLYING SCHOOL

UNION CITY was a neat, little town in northwestern Tennessee where
Embry-Riddle, a private contractor, operated a primary flying school for
the Army Air Corps. The school was new. We were housed in bay bar-

17
 A Pilot’s Story

racks, each serving about 36 Cadets. We slept in steel double decker cots.
A single latrine at the end of the barracks provided a community show-
er, toilets, and lavatories.
I latched on to a bottom bunk. Sleeping above me was Bob Dengler,
One night after taking a shower, he bounded up on his bunk and sat on
its edge writing a letter. The springs sagged under his weight, and his
naked testicles hung between the bedsprings and the metal edge of the
bunk. Bob needed another sheet of paper and jumped from the top bunk.
Unfortunately, when he lifted his weight, the spring rose against the bed’s
metal frame, capturing his testicles. Bob screamed with pain, but he and
his balls survived. From that night, he was known to our barracks not as
Bob Dengler but as “Bullnuts” Dengler.

PRIMARY FLIGHT TRAINING at Union City was in PT-17 Stearmans. Those

rugged, fabric covered biplanes had 220 hp radial engines, two open
cockpits, no radios or other electrically operated components, and a nar-
row landing gear that made every landing a challenge. Civilian flight
instructors took young men who had never been in an airplane and
taught them to fly in Stearmans.
Our class began its flight training in early March. Fur-lined jackets,
leather helmets, and goggles couldn’t protect us from the frigid wind that
slipped around the windshields. Several Cadets suffered frostbite on
exposed facial skin.
To communicate with students, the instructor, sitting in the front
cockpit, spoke into a funnel connected to a rubber tube that carried his
voice to the rear cockpit. His student plugged the rubber tube into a
metal connection that branched to earpieces in the student’s helmet.
Conversation was one way. The student could not respond verbally to
anything the instructor said. Occasionally, a frustrated instructor held
the funnel in the windstream sending a frigid 80-mph breeze into the
student’s ears. That always got a Cadet’s attention.
One Cadet soloed after only three and a half hours of instruction.
He held a private pilot’s license before enlisting. The average time from

18
 From Teenager to Fighter Pilot

first flight to solo was eight to nine hours. I managed to solo after seven
hours. On the fateful day of my first solo, my instructor, Mose C. Jones,
a civilian from South Carolina, flew with me to a cow pasture used as an
auxiliary field. We made two landings, and then we stopped. He unfas-
tened his seat belt, climbed from the front cockpit, and commanded,
“Mr. Davis, go around once and pick me up.”
Go around? Without Mr. Jones sitting in
front of me? What was the man thinking? I
advanced the throttle and taxied to the end of
the field, turned into the wind, and gave it the
gun. Without the instructor’s weight, the
Stearman lifted off quickly. I looked at the
ground below, the clouds above, and marveled. I
was in the air alone … and a little lonely. I flew a
perfect rectangular pattern, crosswind, down-
wind, base leg, and final. The landing was not
perfect, but it was successful.
I taxied toward where Mr. Jones was stand- Mose C. Jones, my patient and
ing, and he waved me to take off again. Elated, I skilled primary instructor, who
overlooked serous problems with
poured the coal to that 220 hp engine and sailed my flying and enabled me to
achieve my ambition to be an Air
into the air once more. Crosswind, downwind, Corps pilot. With him is John
base leg, and final. Things were looking up for “Bullnuts” Dengler, who suf-
fered when he earned his nick-
Aviation Cadet B.S. Davis, sir! name.

I flared for landing. The wheels touched the ground, and the ground
roll began. Then all hell broke loose. Before it stopped, the Stearman
whirled to the left, spun like a top, and finally it came to a stop with no
damage. I had groundlooped!
With hands and feet trembling, I taxied a second time toward my
instructor. I couldn’t believe what had happened! Mr. Jones came to the
airplane and told me to go for a third takeoff and landing. I taxied
downwind, turned around, and for a third time, solo, I pushed the throt-
tle to the stop and headed into the blue. The pattern was no problem. I
turned on final, and all I could think about was my previous disastrous

19
 A Pilot’s Story

fouled-up landing. I crossed the fence, flared, touched down, and again
hell broke loose. The Stearman spun to the left more quickly and fierce-
ly than before. Its right wing dropped, and I threw the stick to the left as
far as it would go—the wrong action—all the time praying that the wing
tip would come up and the plane would stop its maddening spin. It did-
n’t. Instead, the right wing dug into the ground. When the Stearman
stopped rotating, it was obvious that there were cracked ribs in the right
aileron. I knew this was the end of my flying career. I taxied back to a
dejected Mose C. Jones.
Without a word, he climbed into the front cockpit. Then he spoke
into the tube: “I’ll take it.” He remained silent for the first few minutes of
flight, then he said with a sob, “Mr. Davis, sometimes you make me feel
like I could cry!”
He kept the controls as we flew back to Embry-Riddle’s base airfield,
and for the next 20 minutes, Mr. Jones had me taxi at high speed from
one end of the field to the other.
“Hold the stick back; kick the rudders; look where the plane is
going!”
I sweated. I cursed silently to myself. I wished there were some way
to yell back at Mr. Jones. Finally the terrible punishment ended. We tax-
ied to the line, and I helped a lineman tie down the biplane.
“Tomorrow,” Mr. Jones ordered, “you will do better.”
I stared in amazement. He was not washing me out. I would fly
again the next day. Before I could thank him, Mose C. Jones turned on
his heel and left.
That afternoon Cadets threw me, fully clothed, into the shower with
others who had soloed that day, but I was not happy. What should have
been a joyous accomplishment was tarnished. I had groundlooped on
two of my first three solo landings.

MANY CADETS NEVER MADE IT through primary. One of my barracks

mates had difficulty coordinating stick and rudder. Following his
instructor’s suggestion, he spent hours each night sitting in a chair with

20
 From Teenager to Fighter Pilot

a broom between his legs pushing the broom handle to the right and
stomping an imaginary rudder with his right foot, then slamming the
broom to the left while stomping with his left foot. That did not help. He
was washed out by the end of our second week. He was not alone. Day by
day and week by week, more beds were empty in the barracks. As more
Cadets failed flight tests and disappeared, the PT-17 Stearman justified
its nickname of “Maytag Washing Machine.”
On March 27, 1943, I was piloting the Stearman as we returned
to the base airfield. Suddenly, Mr. Jones shouted into his mouthpiece,
“I got it!” We spiraled down. Then I saw a Stearman barely clearing
a fence on its way to a forced landing. Mr. Jones whipped our plane
around and flew straight to Embry-Riddle’s main field. We landed,
and while I helped tie down the plane, Mr. Jones rushed to tell oper-
ations the location of the downed plane. The instructor and student
were back at the field in a half hour; the Cadet telling excitedly about
the forced landing and the instructor bitching about poor engine
maintenance.
April brought longer, warmer days. We advanced to horizontal 8’s
over crossroads of northwestern Tennessee and “S” turns down the
straight roads. The first time we flew above clouds, I wrote my mother an
8-page description of the thrill that filled me when I looked below at the
cottony, white puffs. That one flight was worth all the previous agony I
had endured.

AEROBATICS WERE EXCITING. Mr. Jones showed me how to advance the throt-
tle, dive to 110 miles an hour, pull up the nose, and thrill to a loop. I watched
the ground change to blue sky, saw the opposite horizon come into view
while I was upside down, then the nose pointed straight down before the
horizon returned to view and the Stearman returned to level flight.
During my next solo, I tried a loop. I dived to 120 mph, pulled back
on the stick, saw blue sky, then horizon, and then the Stearman stalled
upside down. Dirt and grit rained from the floor of the plane into my
face. It was an experience I’d never known. The biplane flipped over, its

21
 A Pilot’s Story

nose dropped, and it began to spin. After what seemed an eternity, I

recovered. It was days before I risked another solo loop.
Next came snap rolls. Mr. Jones had me dive to 110 mph, lift the
nose, pull the stick back sharply, and kick right rudder. The Stearman
executed a snap roll to the right. We did the same maneuver to the left. I
had great trouble recovering to straight and level flight. Slow rolls were
even more difficult. The 220-hp engine kept the Stearman in the air, but
I’d let the plane fall out either a quarter or three-quarters of the way
through the roll. No matter, I learned to slow roll, but an 8-point roll
completely escaped me.

PRIMARY WAS HALF OVER. For four and a half weeks I had survived. My fly-
ing improved gradually.
A new class arrived at Union City and began training. Because I was
accelerated to Class 43-J, I had never known the joy of being an upper
classman. Now I could lord it over the new arrivals. But harassing under-
classmen was no fun. Instead I found greater satisfaction in searching out
those who needed assistance. I helped them solve their academic prob-
lems so that they could continue to enjoy flying as much as I did.
While growing up, I often had a wonderful dream during which I
could stand at the head of the stairs, reach down with my hands, pick up
my feet, and sail down the stairs, through the back door, and across the
yard. I could bank and turn just as I saw airplanes bank and turn, and in
my dream I could fly as long as I held my feet off the ground. The dream
was one I relished. Gradually, as I became more proficient and comfort-
able in the Stearman, I enjoyed the same thrills in an airplane that my
treasured dream had given me.
During free time, we “old timers” gathered around the perimeter of
the airfield to watch Class 43-K make its first solo landings. The under-
classmen made all the mistakes we had committed. They flew into the
ground. They bounced. Some groundlooped. One attempted a landing
more than 50 feet in the air. The rugged Stearman dropped straight to the
ground and hit with such force that the Cadet’s back was sprained. He

22
 From Teenager to Fighter Pilot

had to be lifted from the cockpit and transported to the infirmary. But
the Stearman was not damaged at all.

OPEN POST WAS PERMITTED only on weekends. Saturday mornings were

for drill. By early Saturday afternoon, I was ready for town. Union City
was small. There were not many girls, but on the second floor of one of
the downtown buildings, the townspeople provided a club for Aviation
Cadets. A juke box blared music. Soft drinks were available. And each
evening a wonderful lady named Mrs. Baker was present to greet us and
to ask what help we needed. She was a godsend. I had the civilian clothes
I wore from home to the Classification Center at Nashville, Tennessee. I
had hauled them to Maxwell Field, Alabama, then to Union City,
Tennessee. There had been no opportunity to send them home.
“Can you ship them home for me?” I asked Mrs. Baker.
She said she would be happy to do it. The next weekend, I
brought the clothes to her. Two weeks later, I received a letter from
my mother. The clothes had arrived in good shape. This was an
example of the big heart shown us by Union City citizens. It was an
eye-opener to Cadets from New York, Boston, Philadelphia,
Baltimore, and other big cities. They had their first taste of Southern
hospitality, and they liked it.

MY BEST BUDDY during Primary was John F. (Jack) Dunn, who hailed
from Laflin, Pennsylvania. During late hours, Jack told me about his
home town—a coal mining community. He told me of the men who
worked in the mines.
“You ought to be there for a Polish funeral,” he exclaimed. “They roll
the body out the front door and roll a barrel of beer in the back door. It’s
a great time!”
Jack made friends with Mrs. Baker’s daughter, Emmie, who intro-
duced me to Frances Kerr, a beautiful teenager. We were permitted to
visit with Emmie and Frances, but we never could go into their homes.
Our courting took place during weekends in daylight on the front

23
 A Pilot’s Story

steps of their homes. Later our most intimate moments were in the
theater, where we held hands. I never kissed Frances, and I never saw
Jack kiss Emmie.
Every weekend Mrs. Baker worked at the soda fountain in a Union
City drug store. The most popular equipment in the drug store was a
doughnut machine—a square, glass-sided tower about seven feet tall and
30 inches on each side. Ingredients were poured in a hopper where they
were mixed thoroughly while the oil heated. Then a lever was pushed,
and doughnut mix was pumped from the ingredient reservoir and
dropped into the hot oil. Small arms moved the doughnuts through the
oil, and, after a half circle, another arm flipped them. The doughnuts
completed a circle in the hot oil and then were flipped out. They slid
through an opening, delicious and ready to eat. We Cadets enjoyed our
weekend visits with Mrs. Baker. She let favored Cadets operate the
doughnut machine. Our pay was in doughnuts.

A RENTED HOUSE IN TOWN served as a club for the civilian flight instruc-
tors and the site of a party that the flight instructors staged for each grad-
uating class. During the last week of Primary, we had our party. It was a
revelation to be able to laugh and joke with instructors who for nine
weeks were nemesis to Cadets. Bottles of whiskey sat on every table.
There was plenty of food. It was a glorious celebration.
One unexpected guest at the party was Hilda Schmidt, the gor-
geous, blonde wife of Cadet Hans Schmidt. She had driven to Union City
to spend the weekend with her husband. Hans was an inch over 6 feet
tall, handsome, blonde, from a wealthy family, and a pilot before enter-
ing the Air Corps. He was believed to have gone to bed with every agree-
able female in Union City. With a beautiful wife like Hilda waiting at
home, some of us wondered how he could be satisfied with second best.
Every girl I met rated no more than second in looks and personality to
Hilda Schmidt.
I never remembered boarding the bus that carried us back to the
airfield after the party, nor do I remember undressing and climbing

24
 From Teenager to Fighter Pilot

between the sheets. The next day was Sunday. I woke with a miserable
headache, a stomach that growled and churned, and bloodshot eyes. I
swore my first time binge would be my last.
The following weekend brought our last Saturday night in
Union City. I found myself with Jack Dunn and three girls. After four
beers, I forgot the vow taken the previous Sunday. I was loaded,
ready for anything.
“Let’s go to Henry’s,” said one of the girls. It was a dare. Anyone who
refused going to Henry’s was chicken. We piled into somebody’s car and
drove out of Union City and through the country.
“I need to pee,” complained one of the girls. We stopped. She
bounded out of the car, squatted by the rear bumper, and relieved herself.
I sat in the back seat trying to appear nonchalant and refused to hear the
trickle of the girl’s urine as it hit the ground. Then she pulled up her
panties, straightened her skirt, climbed back into the car, and it was
down the road again.
We arrived at Henry’s, a roadhouse. Inside, the juke box was blar-
ing. Couples were moving in tight embrace on the small dance floor. We
found an empty booth and crowded in.
“Beer,” we said when a waitress asked what we’d like to drink.
I was sitting in the booth, sipping my beer, when Jack Dunn sat beside
me. “Dave, I got us a couple of girls. Come on with me,” he commanded.
The meaning of his invitation escaped me, but, embolded by the
beer, I was eager to learn what he was talking about. I followed him
across the dance floor. He introduced me to two Tennessee girls. They
both obviously were as far gone as I was. One of the girls led the way out
the door, across the yard, and to a small tourist cabin.
“Who’s paying for this cabin?” I asked. “It don’t matter,” said the girl
who had latched on to me. She was nice looking. Jack’s girl was a bit more
than pleasingly plump.
Those were the days when many small tourist courts consisted of a
string of separate cabins. These cabins were connected by carports so
automobiles could be parked out of the weather. We entered the cabin

25
 A Pilot’s Story

door from the carport, and inside the room were two beds, a table, a mir-
rowed chest of drawers, and two chairs. The room was lighted by a sin-
gle bulb hanging from the ceiling. It was clean but bare.
Jack’s girl fell into bed. He climbed in beside her. My date quickly shed
her clothes and was under the sheet on the second bed. The bare light bulb
shone harshly. I took off my blouse, tie, shirt, socks, shoes, and pants. My
underwear was next. Then I approached the bed. The girl looked at me
and laughed. “Aren’t you going to take off your hat?” she asked.
It was new. It was different. It was neither earthshaking nor partic-
ularly memorable. At age 19, I lost my virginity to a girl I’d never seen
before and never saw again. Only much later did I find that love was a
missing ingredient.
“Let’s go,” Jack said. He pointed to the girl beside him. “She’s too
drunk to do anything.” His bedmate had passed out.
While Jack and I dressed, my date put on her clothes and left. Jack
and I caught a cab back into town. All I could think about were those
training films telling of the dangers of venereal disease. One showed a
soldier whose throat was eaten away. The last scene in the film pictured
the GI as he rasped: “Don’t do what I did, fellows!”
If that girl had been so easy with me, how many others had she
let screw her? I searched for the prophylactic station located near the
Union City bus station. I found it and went inside, asked for a pro kit,
and leaned over a urinal. I scrubbed my privates, then scrubbed
them again. I inserted the sharp end of a tube up my penis and
squeezed the tube. It burned like fire. If that didn’t kill syphilis and
gonorrhea, nothing would. Was it worth it? Maybe. At least I was no
longer a virgin.

THE NEXT DAY, BAGS PACKED, we loaded on buses and were transported to
Malden, Missouri, a short distance across the Mississippi, where our
flight skills would be enhanced in Basic Flying School.
We made it through Primary. We could fly! Basic flight training and
bigger airplanes were next!

26
 From Teenager to Fighter Pilot

BASIC FLIGHT TRAINING

F ROM U NION C ITY, T ENNESSEE , we traveled by bus across the
Mississippi River to Malden, Missouri, where we were the first class
to train at the new Army airfield. Everything was military. We moved
into new, unpainted barracks, each with six rooms that housed four
Cadets each. The barracks obviously had been constructed in a
hurry. Floors were concrete. The rooms were divided by thin
sheetrock partitions so that two Cadets shared each of two cubicles.
The latrine was a separate building. It was crowded during early
morning hours when nearly 50 Cadets attempted to shit, shower, and
shave simultaneously.
Tactical officers were brand new graduates of Officer Candidate
Schools—90-day wonders, we called them. They received commissions
as second lieutenants after only 13 weeks of military service. Most
members of Cadet Class 43-J, to which I had been accelerated, had far
more time in service than the officers. They had little respect for the
new “shavetails.” Time and again, while obeying to the letter the orders
of the tactical officers, the old-timers among the Cadets made the offi-
cers appear ridiculous. One day we heard the order, “Forward, march,”
on a curving street, and the former NCOs led us straight into a ditch
before the new lieutenant could remember what command would keep
us on the street.
Outside each barracks were fire extinguishers filled with water.
Late during hot afternoons after returning from the flight line and eat-
ing chow, Cadets engaged in water fights using fire extinguishers as
water guns. It was then that I learned of antagonism that still existed in
1943 between the Irish and the Jews—none of whom I had known in
North Carolina. Benjamin Dugan was a big Irishman from Boston—
“Bahst’n,” he called it. Bernard Epstein was a little Jew from New York.
They hated each other. During one water fight, Epstein seized the hose
from Dugan’s fire extinguisher, and, while Dugan was pumping furi-
ously, Epstein held the nozzle in front of Dugan’s face. The harder
Dugan pumped, the wetter he got. We cheered!

27
 A Pilot’s Story

FOR TWO WEEKS at Malden Army Air Field, food was wonderful. Steaks.
Ribs. Ice cream. Dishes you would never expect in the Army. Then came
reality. The mess sergeant received his money for food at the beginning
of the month. He was supposed to budget to make the money last
through the month. When our inexperienced mess sergeant reported for
duty, he found his month’s food money waiting. He spent it quickly, and
we ate like royalty. But two weeks later, the funds were nearly gone, and
a change came in the menu. The next two weeks we existed on watered
soup, cheap cuts of tough beef, bread, and lots of potatoes. It was a long
time before we had another decent meal.

BASIC FLIGHT TRAINING was conducted in BT-13s—a low-winged mono-

plane jokingly called “Vultee Vibrator.” The BT-13 had a 450 hp radial
engine, fixed landing gear, and enclosed cockpit. In contrast to the PT-17
Stearman we flew in Primary, the student sat in the front and the instruc-
tor sat in the rear, where he could see very little of what was ahead. The
BT-13 had flaps that were cranked down by hand, and a propeller con-
trol that gave us two pitches—low and high. We used low pitch for take-
offs, landings, and during climbs; and high pitch for cruise. The wide
spaced landing gear made landings easier than those we had experienced
in the PT-17 Stearmans.
Some didn’t make it through basic. Phil Norden was one. He did
well until we began spins. The BT-13 wound up quickly, and it took a
hard kick of opposite rudder and a quick push forward on the stick to
stop the spin. If the pilot timed the recovery wrong, the spin continued.
Center the rudder pedals too late, and the plane spun in the opposite
direction. Even with his instructor coaching, Phil never got the timing
correct. One day he decided to try a solo spin. He never pulled out; he
bailed out! Later that day, sitting beside the latrine, Phil described how
the stick had escaped his grip. He bruised both arms trying to capture the
wildly flopping control. The BT-13 spun faster and faster until Phil gave
up. He hit the silk.
“I’ll never get in an airplane again,” Phil exclaimed. He was gone the

28
 From Teenager to Fighter Pilot

next day, having voluntarily washed himself out of the program.

EACH MORNING WHEN WE FILED FLIGHT PLANS, a corporal—probably near

30 years of age—recorded them. One day I asked for a pencil, and the
corporal gave me one.
“Thank you, sir,” I said.
“Mister, you don’t have to say ‘sir’ to me,” he responded.
“Is it OK if I do?” I asked. He laughed and went back to his work.
All 19 years of my life I had been taught to address my elders as “sir” or
“mam.” I couldn’t break the habit.

BASIC FLIGHT TRAINING caused me little trouble. My instructor, Lt. Jesse

French, was good. Better, he was patient. He taught me the basics, but I
taught myself other maneuvers while flying solo.
I learned that rules can be bent and sometimes broken without pun-
ishment. Lt. French lived with his wife in two rented rooms of a farm
house several miles from Malden Army Airfield. During two of our
flights, Lt. French pushed the prop into low pitch and dived at the house
where he and his wife lived. The BT-13’s propeller snarled as we passed
low over the roof of the house. His wife came running out and waved.
With a satisfied grin, Lt. French turned the controls back to me, and we
headed toward the base airfield.
Formation flying skills developed in similar fashion. Instructors
occasionally would join formation, flying closer and closer until the
planes’ wings overlapped. Once another instructor moved his wing tip
over ours, and the wings touched. The position light on our right wing
tip shattered. That formation flight ended immediately, and we returned
to the airfield. I heard nothing more about this event, but I wondered
what story Lt. French used to explain the broken light.

DURING BASIC, I experienced my first instrument flying. Sitting in the

back seat of a BT-13 with a hood concealing everything outside the cock-
pit, I learned to fly a plane using only three instruments—needle, ball,

29
 A Pilot’s Story

and airspeed. The needle told the pilot whether the plane was going
straight or turning; the ball showed whether the flight was coordinated;
and air speed was the quickest indication of whether the plane was
climbing or descending. In addition, we were introduced again to Link
trainers, those cursed boxes which drove some students crazy in Primary
as they tried to fly using only the gauges. I liked the Link trainer. It was
a challenge. The skills I acquired in Link trainers and under the hood
saved my life more than once.
Night flying also was fun, especially our first night cross-country.
“You will take off and follow the light line to St. Louis,” the briefing offi-
cer said. “Then make a 180 turn and come back. Fly on the right side of
the light line so that you don’t run into each other.”
BT-13s took off in the darkness. Towers on the airway to St. Louis
were spaced 10 miles apart and formed a line leading north from
Malden. Lights on the towers blinked red in Morse code. By knowing the
sequence of letters that flashed in code from the towers, a pilot could
determine his location. W, U, V, H, R, K, D, B, G, and M. It was a crazy
sequence of letters. We flew the west bank of the Mississippi to St. Louis,
checking the letters carefully to monitor our location; then turned and
retraced our path to Malden. Everything went as planned. Night flying
was a success. We lost no Cadets or planes.

DURING MY FIFTH WEEK AT MALDEN, a boil puffed out in the small of my

back. It was terribly painful, and it grew until I could not lean back in the
seat of the airplane. In my early teens, I suffered a bout of boils on my
legs that kept me in bed for nearly two weeks. I was sick with worry that
this single boil was the precursor to many more.
“Go on sick call,” Lt. French directed. I did, fearful that I might be
grounded and washed out of the program. The doctor’s office was a small
room in the recreation building. It contained a desk, a chair, and a med-
icine cabinet.
“Stand up with your back to me,” the doctor ordered. He took a
scapel and lanced the boil. The pain was excruciating. My knees sagged.

30
 From Teenager to Fighter Pilot

The room whirled, and I fell into a chair. The doctor, unconcerned,
slapped a bandage on my back. “Keep it clean, and if it keeps hurting,
come back tomorrow,” he said.
I told myself that no matter how much I suffered with the boil, I
never would see that doctor again. And I didn’t. Each morning and each
night I stood in the shower letting hot water pour over my back. The
treatment worked. The boil soon was gone, and my back healed without
my missing another period of flight training. The boil left me only with
a scar and some bad memories.

ON A HOT, DRY SPRING DAY, the wind was blowing too strong to risk
Cadets in the air. Nothing had been scheduled other than close order
drill. We got drill out of the way as the wind increased. Then came
dust—more dust than I had seen ever. It blew until visibility was
reduced to only yards in front of us. I realized the plight of those who
were driven from the dust bowl in the thirties. Dust came in the bar-
racks’ windows, around doors, and drifted in large piles along the
walls. The wind continued until long after darkness fell, and we slept
with heads under blankets to escape the dust in our rooms. Early
next morning, tactical officers were barking orders for us to clean up
our “pig pens.” We pushed to complete the task before marching off
to the flight line.

MALDEN, MISSOURI, held little interest for me. I visited the town only
twice during my nine weeks of basic flight training. Union City,
Tennessee, continued to hold a soft spot in my heart. As a free weekend
approached, Jack Dunn suggested we return to Union City for a visit.
“Great!” I exclaimed, “but how?”
“We’ll hitch rides,” Jack responded.
So early Saturday morning we rode the military bus into Malden,
found a street corner, and lifted our thumbs. Three rides later we had our
thumbs up again just miles from the Mississippi River.
A flatbed truck stopped. It was carrying a 1928 Model T Ford.

31
 A Pilot’s Story

“Ain’t got room for you boys inside, but you can ride in the T Model,”
said the driver. We climbed on the flatbed, then up into the Model T,
and we rode in high style to the river, onto a ferry, and across the river
to Tennessee. A final ride took us to Union City where we found a
room on the second floor of a cheap hotel. It sported a double bed, a
chair, and a chest of drawers with a mirror. A community toilet down
the hall served six rooms.
Union City and the attitude of Cadets there had changed in seven
weeks. Cadets in Embry-Riddle’s primary flying school showed little
interest in what we were doing in basic flying school. Jack and I decided
to see a movie instead of bragging on our flight skills. When we entered
the theater, Jack spotted a girl he had known while we were in Primary.
“I’ll see you at the room, Dave,” Jack said, as he left me to go sit by
the girl.
I sat alone in the theater. The picture ended, and I walked back to
the hotel, which appeared vacant. I went to our room and looked
around. A bare bulb cast a harsh light over worn and torn furniture. I
checked the chest of drawers. Nothing in the top drawer. The second
held a nicely wrapped package. “Somebody forgot this,” I said to myself
and placed it on top of the chest. Carefully I unwrapped the package,
and inside was a large pile of human dung. A recent hotel guest had
found it easier to get relief inside the room than to walk four doors
down the hall to the toilet. I carefully rewrapped the contents and
placed the package in the hall.
There was nothing to read, not even a Gideon Bible, no radio, and
nothing else to do. I went to bed, then to sleep, and never heard Jack
come in whenever he returned.
On Sunday only four rides were required to get us back to Malden.
I never asked jack what he had done after the movie. I never told him
what I had done.

BELIEVE IT OR NOT, I enjoyed marching, especially when we sang or

counted cadence. Our Cadet squadron commander took delight in

32
 From Teenager to Fighter Pilot

marching us past the headquarters building where WACs worked, while

we sang lustily:
Mary Ann McCarthy, she went out to dig for clams.
Mary Ann McCarthy, she went out to dig for clams.
Mary Ann McCarthy, she went out to dig for clams,
But she never got a goddamned son-of-a-bitch of a clam.
A week later, word came from the base commander that only the
Air Corps Song could be sung in the vicinity of headquarters.

THERE WAS EXCITEMENT at Malden Army Air Field when a twin-engined

B-25 Mitchell bomber landed. We were curious, because it was the
biggest airplane we had seen on the ground since entering the Aviation
Cadet program.
An enlisted man rushed up. “Mister Davis, you have to report to
Operations,” he panted.
I double-timed to the Operations building, slowing to admire the
bomber as I passed it. A group of officers was standing in front of
Operations. One looked familiar. It was my brother, Ferd, now a Second
Lieutenant, who had taken advantage of a training flight to navigate the
B-25 to Malden. I didn’t know whether to salute or hug his neck. I settled
by shaking his hand. It was a short reunion—only 15 minutes—then Ferd
and the bomber crew climbed back inside the B-25, taxied to the runway,
and were gone. For the remainder of that day, I was special, enjoying my
fifteen minutes of fame.

WITH BASIC FLYING COMPLETED, we were a step closer to pilot’s wings. We

boarded a train in Malden. Our destination was Dothan, Alabama, for
advanced flight training.

ADVANCED FLYING SCHOOL

NAPIER ARMY AIR FIELD, located in Dothan, a small town in southeastern
Alabama, had been around for a while. Dothan had been around longer.
Its radio station acclaimed it to be “the home of Johnny Mack Brown,”

33
 A Pilot’s Story

who was a popular western movie star.

Military officers did the instructing. We flew the AT-6 Texan. It was
powered by a 650 hp radial engine. The landing gear retracted. It had a
constant speed prop. It was a very nice airplane, good for aerobatics and
good for instrument flying. Later, in motion pictures filmed following
WWII, the AT-6 frequently substituted for the Japanese Zero. The AT-6s
we flew were armed with a single .30 caliber machine gun that fired
through the propeller arc. I looked at the landing gear. It was narrow and
reminded me of my serious problems with landing the Stearman. Each
time I landed an AT-6, I had that gnawing feeling that the landing could
end in a groundloop.
Training included more formation flying, instrument work, and
aerobatics. Gunnery was added to our ground school subjects. More
hours of night flying were scheduled, and others faced the same problem
with the narrow landing gear that plagued me.
One night a student flying solo suffered a ground loop while
landing, wiping out the gear and bending a wing. “Oh, good God,”
cried his instructor, actually shedding tears. “He’s my best student, and
he groundlooped!”

THIS WAS NOT THE WORST EPISODE of our night training. We made a night
cross country, flying a triangular course of about 200 miles. All planes
returned except one. For the next three days, futile searches were made
for the missing plane. The mystery of its whereabouts was solved a week
later when a postcard came to the base commander.
“One of your airplanes is in my pasture,” the card said, “and I wish
you would come get it.”
The plane has crashed 40 miles from Napier Field, and the farmer
never went close to it. The dead Cadet pilot was still in the wreckage.

OUR ADVANCED FLIGHT TRAINING in the AT-6 was nearly complete. All
that remained was gunnery at Eglin Field on Florida’s Gulf coast. We
flew AT-6s in formation from Dothan to an Eglin satellite field locat-

34
 From Teenager to Fighter Pilot

ed in the middle of a pine forest. Enlisted pilots, some with two stripes
on their arms, some with three, flew the planes that towed the cloth
sleeves that were our aerial targets. A small operations shack featured
a sign reading: “Rag Draggers Local No. 69.” The pilots, we heard, were
former officers who had done something that fouled their military
careers and cost them their commissions. Rather than give them a dis-
charge or sentencing them to other punishment, the Air Corps decid-
ed to continue benefiting from their flying skills but reduced their
ranks to private. A few had managed to gain promotion to corporal,
even fewer to sergeant. While the “rag draggers” enjoyed each other’s
company, there was little fraternization with other soldiers and no mil-
itary courtesy nor salutes.

THE PAVED RUNWAY nestled in the pines had strange lines painted on it.
Here, we learned, was where Jimmy Doolittle had trained his B-25 crews
for their 1942 mission to bomb Tokyo. The paint stripes marked the
takeoff space available for takeoff on the Navy carrier that carried them
across the Pacific. Jack Dunn and I walked the length of the delineated
space, and we doubted that an AT-6 could get into the air with such a
short takeoff run.

AT EGLIN, we lived in hot, humid barracks. We ate out of mess kits. We

fought mosquitoes at night and the hot sun during the day. There was no
complaining. The thrill of aerial gunnery made it worthwhile.
We practiced shooting skeet, taking turns as shooters and working
the machines that launched the “birds” into the air. This taught us the
necessity of leading a target—a fact of utmost importance when shooting
at an enemy plane fleeing at 400 miles an hour.
Instructors explained the pursuit curve, proper lead, and the impor-
tance of never—absolutely never—firing at the sleeve target from dead
astern. Two planes had been shot down by eager Cadets trying desper-
ately to hit the target. Our gunnery went well. Only two Cadets failed to
achieve the required number of hits. They graduated with the class but

35
 A Pilot’s Story

were ordered to train as bomber pilots.

With gunnery finished, we were given an afternoon to enjoy swim-
ming in the Gulf of Mexico. After an hour of diving through the waves,
I had trouble getting all the water from my right ear. I thought it would
drain out during the night, but the following day as I flew back to Napier
Field at Dothan the water still sloshed deep in my ear.

TWO WEEKS EARLIER, tailors had measured us for our officers’ uniforms. I
stood straight and tall while the tailor took my measurements. “Your
mother must have raised you to be a soldier,” remarked the tailor. My
chest went out another two inches. That evening I repeated the tailor’s
remark. “God, Dave,” said Jack Dunn. “That guy told every guy he meas-
ured that same thing!”
We ordered the Army’s beautiful green wool jacket, both green and
pink wool pants, pink and green wool shirts, and poplin shirts.
When we returned from Eglin, our new uniforms were waiting for
us at Napier. We ran to the Post Exchange to purchase insignia, neckties,
and shiny, brown, low quarter shoes; plus, of course, an officer’s cap with
visor and a “cunt cap” with officer’s braid on it. The shoes cost us money
plus a ration stamp. Graduation was coming!

NEXT TO THE LAST MORNING of our Cadet days at Napier Field, selected
Cadets were given money, loaded on buses, and taken to the state-owned
Dothan alcoholic beverage store. One after another, we went in the store
and bought a fifth of whisky. I was 19 years old, nearly two years under the
legal age to buy whiskey, but no one asked about ages. Returning to the air-
field, we deposited the bottles of booze in the Officers’ Club and gave
change received with our purchases to an officer. It was clear that our grad-
uation party would be a good one. And it was … except that I remembered
the headache I experienced following the instructors’ party in Union City.
That memory caused me to temper my drinking to a single shot.
The next morning we dressed in our new green jackets, poplin
shirts, pink pants, tan neckties, and low quarter, brown, shiny shoes. We

36
 From Teenager to Fighter Pilot

marched in formation to the base auditorium. We lined up and, right

hand raised, quickly took the officer’s oath. Custom was that a dollar was
given to the first person to salute a newly commissioned officer. Greeting
us outside the building were smiling enlisted men waiting to give that
first salute with their right hands. They had bundles of dollar bills in
their left hands.
Some Cadets were not commissioned second lieutenants. They
became Flight Officers, a new rank in the Army Air Corps. We never
determined how the Air Corps decided who of us were to be Flight
Officers. That rank was below second lieutenant and not a commis-
sioned rank, but no one knew whether it was equal to warrant officer.
Still, though, a Flight Officer in the Air Corps received base pay equal to
that of a second lieutenant.
Before departing Dothan, I received orders fresh off the headquar-
ters Mimeograph machine. They confirmed that I was a second lieu-
tenant, Serial No. O-811865, and a pilot, single engine. They also direct-
ed that after 10 days leave I was to report to Tallahassee, Florida, for
assignment to a fighter training base. Most of us already had packed. We
grabbed our bags and headed for the train station. We wanted to get
home and show off our new wings and bars. We were officers and pilots
of the United States Army Air Corps. In the excitement, I hardly noticed
that my right ear had continued to swell.

ONLY A SHORT DISTANCE separated Dothan from Tallahassee, Florida’s

capital city, where I was to report next; but I detoured to North Carolina.
The train was packed from Alabama through Georgia and South
Carolina all the way to Raleigh, North Carolina. I sat on my duffel bag in
the space between two passenger cars. Frugal to a fault, I spent no money
in the dining car, eating instead the candy bars I had remembered to pur-
chase at the Post Exchange.
Manpower was short, even for railroads, and, with too few employ-
ees to clean its cars, smoke, cinders, and soot dirtied the train. I looked
more like a bum than a military pilot when I arrived in Raleigh, just 20

37
 A Pilot’s Story

miles from home. My right ear was badly swollen from the infection
caused by the water from the Gulf of Mexico. I looked like I had bor-
rowed my right ear from Dumbo, the flying elephant.
My father, now 69 years old, met me at the Raleigh train station, and
we drove to Zebulon. He was not one to show great affection, but it was
evident he was proud of me. My mother could not conceal her pride. She
embraced and kissed me, and tears ran down her cheeks.

EAGER TO HELP in the family newspaper operation, I offered to set type on

the Linotype while I was home, so they would not have to work so late on
“paper night.” That was a mistake. A Linotype is a complicated machine
that assembles brass letter molds called “mats”—short for matrices—then
pumps molten lead against the letter molds, forming individual lines of
type called “slugs.” The matrices are housed in a magazine—1,800 of them
that are used over and over as line after line is cast and ejected from the
Linotype. If a different type is needed, the magazine on the Linotype is
replaced by another magazine containing mats of the desired font and
size. While changing a magazine, I failed to seat it properly, and all 1,800
mats spilled in a pile on the floor. For the next four hours, I straightened
and replaced the mats in the magazine. Instead of finishing their work
sooner, my folks were up an hour later than usual before that week’s issue
of The Zebulon Record was printed and in the mail.

A NEPHEW, BOB POTTER, insisted that I come to Raleigh to speak to his

sixth grade classmates about being an Air Corps pilot. When he saw me,
he attempted to withdraw his invitation, because my right ear was huge
and stuck straight out from my head. His mother—my sister—insisted
that I fulfill the speaking engagement. After telling of the thrills of flight,
I asked for questions. One student raised her hand.
“What’s your question?” I asked.
“Flying an airplane doesn’t sound hard,” she said, “but why is your
ear so big?”

38
 From Teenager to Fighter Pilot

MY WEEK AT HOME passed quickly. I walked up and down Arendell

Avenue—Main Street—to talk with friends. I shook hands with my
father, hugged and kissed my mother, climbed on board a bus to Raleigh,
and caught a train headed South to Tallahassee, Florida.
What was next on the schedule?

39
A Pilot’s Story

40
 Fighter
Training

EPTEMBER 10, 1943. I arrived by train in Tallahassee, Florida, in mid-

S afternoon. A city bus took me to Dale Mabry Field. Familiar faces

appeared as other Second Lieutenants and Flight Officers of Class
43-J reported. We were billeted in a large house beside the airfield. Its
furniture had been replaced with canvas cots. One of our group, Earl
Carver from New York, did not report. He was AWOL. Two days later,
Earl appeared, obviously distraught. He paced the floor, frequently curs-
ing. We tried to reason with him.
“Calm down, Earl. Take it easy. What’s your problem?”
Earl exploded. Following graduation from pilot training at Napier
Field, he had taken a bus home, arriving about bedtime. He told no one
he was coming, planning to surprise his fiancée. He really surprised her!
He walked into her home and found her nude on a couch in the midst of
making passionate love with Earl’s supposedly best friend. The girl was
furious. She raised hell with Earl for not telling her that he was coming
home and for failing to knock before entering the house. Earl fled to a bar
to drown his sorrow and finally sobered up in time to report for duty
only two days late. He received no punishment. We were not slated to
leave Tallahassee for another two days, and Earl’s absence meant one less
mouth for the Army to feed.
My right ear continued to swell and became totally deaf.

41
 A Pilot’s Story

Reluctantly, I went on sick call. After I waited an hour, a private first class
gave me a pan to hold under my head. For 20 minutes he squeezed hot
water into my ear. All kinds of crud washed out and into the pan.
“OK,” he said. “Take a couple of aspirin, and you’ll be fine.”
He was right. The swelling
soon was gone from my right ear,
my hearing returned, and in two
days everything was normal.

WE DID HAVE EXCITEMENT at Dale

Mabry Field. One early afternoon
we heard sirens at the airfield.
With nothing else to do, we
rushed to see what was happen-
ing. A twin-engined plane had
fouled up a landing, wiped out its
landing gear, and bent a wing. It
did our hearts good to learn that a
major was pilot and a captain was
copilot. During my entire Air
19 years old, ready to fly fighters
Corps career, it was seldom that
junior officers felt sympathy for senior officers who had flying troubles.

FINALLY WE HAD OUR ORDERS. We were assigned to Fort Myers, Florida,

wherever that was, for fighter training. We felt good thinking about fly-
ing fighters, because some of our group were to be trained as bomber
pilots. Early one morning, we climbed aboard buses headed south. I
knew little about Florida’s geography, and the trip was long. At noon, we
stopped at a bus station in Tampa.
“We’ve got an hour here,” the driver announced and headed for the
rest room.
“Let’s get some decent food,” yelled someone near the front of the
bus. I joined a group going to a restaurant two blocks up the street

42
 Fighter Training

from the bus station. Six of us sat around a table. A waiter came to take
our orders.
“Gimme a T-bone steak—the biggest you have,” Bernard Dugan
said. I had never seen a T-bone steak. John Fornegay ordered a shrimp
cocktail. I remembered the appearance and the price of a shrimp cocktail
from the rooftop club visit in Memphis. I ordered Southern fried chick-
en. I knew what that was.
Bernard smacked his lips over his T-bone. It was different from
round steak sometimes served at my home when a few extra bucks were
available in the grocery budget. My mother had to pound round steak
with a hammer to make it tender enough to eat. The T-bone had a bone
that occupied almost as much space as the meat. The shrimp cocktail was
disappointing. Six little white shrimp hanging on the rim of a small glass
containing some kind of red sauce. I enjoyed my Southern fried chicken.
An hour later, we were back on the bus moving south. Some slept.
Others of us gathered in the back of the bus and began singing. Soon we
tired of the Army Air Corps Song. We sang the Whiffenpoof Song, and the
mood turned sad. Then we ran through the Sixpence Song. Finally, Ben
Atwood started a new one.
I used to work in Chicago in a department store.
I used to work in Chicago. I did but I don’t any more.
A lady came in for a hat one day.
I asked her what kind at the door.
Felt, she said, so felt her I did!
I did but I don’t any more.
When the first verse was finished, we started the second. Ben
pointed his finger at another pilot, who came up with words for the
third verse:
A lady came in for a cake one day.
I asked her what kind as before.
Layer, she said, so layer I did.
I did but I don’t any more.
The song continued as imaginative pilots chimed in with addi-

43
 A Pilot’s Story

tional verses. Soon those sleeping woke and joined the singing. The
trip from Tampa to Fort Myers seemed much shorter than that from
Tallahassee to Tampa.

FORT MYERS WAS A BEAUTIFUL, SMALL TOWN that handled its military
guests well. In addition to the Fighter Training Center at Page Field just
south of town, Buckingham Army Air Field was east of Fort Myers. At
Buckingham, aerial gunners were trained prior to assignment to bomber
crews. They received their training in the B-26 Martin Marauder twin
engine bomber and the B-24 Consolidated Liberator 4-engine bomber.
We could see them flying overhead. The Gulf of Mexico was a short dis-
tance to the west, and it was their aerial gunnery range.
Ours was one of the first classes to report to Page Field. The wood-
en buildings were new and plain. They were covered with tar paper, and
none were painted. We were billeted, two to a room, in long barracks.
The latrine was a separate building and served several barracks. The
night of our arrival, the temperature dropped to a record low for
September in Fort Myers. We shivered with only a mattress cover for
warmth. Many slept in their uniforms.

TRAINING BEGAN IMMEDIATELY. We received copies of the P-47 Thun-

derbolt flight handbook.
“Memorize it!” a captain commanded.
I sat in the cockpit of one of dozens of Thunderbolts aligned on the
ramp and studied the instruments until I could identify all of them while
blindfolded. I listened to instructors describe the flight characteristics of
the big airplane. Finally, I was given a parachute and told to make my
first flight in the P-47.
I carried my parachute to the flight line, searched for a plane with
my assigned number on its side, and walked between two other Thun-
derbolts to reach it. As I walked past the nose of one P-47, I saw an enlist-
ed man standing on a box hanging on to the feet of another enlisted man,
who was headfirst in the air intake for the plane’s turbosupercharger.

44
 Fighter Training

“What’s happening?” I asked.

“Joe dropped a wrench, and it slid down inside, and he’s trying to
reach it,” was the explanation. That’s when it really struck me how big an
airplane I was about to fly. There was plenty of room for a man to slide
down the air intake.
The P-47 cockpit was huge, but it had only one seat. There was no
place for an instructor. This would be a solo flight, unlike our initial
flights in the PT-17, BT-13, and AT-6. I started the Thunderbolt’s huge
Pratt & Whitney R-2800 2,000 hp engine. It sputtered then roared to life.
With tower approval, I headed down the taxi strip toward the take-off
end of the runway. Visibility over the big nose was impossible. Open cowl
flaps made it even more difficult to see around the nose. The tower gave
clearance for takeoff. I slowly and carefully taxied onto the runway and
lined up as best I could by looking out the sides of the cockpit. I shut the
canopy, made a last minute check of fuel gauge, fuel selector valve, throt-
tle, propeller pitch, and mixture, then checked my other instruments,
and pushed the throttle forward.
The faster the P-47 rolled, the tighter I held the stick. The plane
broke ground and began to climb, and I was filled with excitement. I was
flying the big fighter! A Thunderbolt! And I was solo!
The marshes and swamps that make up the Everglades in southern
Florida stretched to the south and east. I looked at the Gulf of Mexico to
the west. After 30 minutes, I returned to the field and called the tower for
landing instructions. Watching my airspeed carefully, I adjusted prop
pitch, flew a wide pattern, dropped the gear, put down flaps, turned on
final, and approached the field. Over the runway, I broke my glide, and
after all eternity the plane stopped flying, touched down, and rolled.
That’s when I realized I could not control my feet. Both were shaking vio-
lently on the rudder pedals. No matter. I had taken off. I had toured
southern Florida. I had landed. I had flown the Thunderbolt!

GROUND SCHOOL consisted of instruction in formation flying and aerial

gunnery. Occasionally a flight surgeon gave advice on staying healthy.

45
 A Pilot’s Story

We were told what food to avoid to prevent gas in our bowels, and we
were warned never to have sex so we would escape venereal disease.
Hardly anyone listened to the warning about sexual diseases.
A dapper little captain was introduced as a veteran of North African
fighting. Flying a P-40, he had shot down three huge six-engine Me-322
transports as the Germans tried desperately to ferry their defeated troops
from Tunisia to Sicily.
“Look at the man on each side of you,” he began his presentation.
“Look at them good, because two out of the three of you won’t be com-
ing home from the war.”
I turned right and looked, turned left and looked again. I said to
myself, “I’m going to miss you guys.” Then I realized how much my atti-
tude had changed. When I took the oath of enlistment, I never expected
to live out the war. On this day, I expressed regret that of the three of us,
I would be the only one returning from combat. I was adopting the men-
tality of a fighter pilot.

WE HAD BEEN AT FORT MYERS only a few days when we were provided
a vivid lesson that taught us that being daring may be OK, but being
stupid is deadly. Martin B-26 Marauder bombers and Consolidated B-
24 Liberators flew from Buckingham Army Air Field. Some were
flown by frustrated wannabee fighter pilots. They watched the
Thunderbolts cavort in aerobatics. One of them insisted that the twin-
engine B-26 could be rolled. Despite what the handbooks said, and
regardless of how others argued the point, he was determined to prove
he was right.
Unfortunately, the pilot had a copilot and six gunnery students on
board the B-26 when he chose to prove his point. He got the bomber
nearly inverted before it headed down, diving bottom side up, nose first
into the Florida swamps.
We had little sympathy for the pilot, but we mourned the loss of the
seven victims of his stubborn stupidity. What a terrible sacrifice to some-
one’s pride!

46
 Fighter Training

AFTER WEEKS OF FORMATION FLYING and aerobatics, we began aerial gun-

nery. Our targets were cloth sleeves pulled by other P-47s over the Gulf
of Mexico. The Thunderbolt was armed with eight .50 caliber machine
guns. We fired only two—one in each wing. We were to break off when
the firing angle was no less than 20 degrees. Occasionally, a pilot became
so intent on shooting that he continued firing until dead astern. Twice,
after landing, the tow plane pilot stormed into operations and confront-
ed an errant lieutenant who had put holes in the tow plane.
The noses of our bullets were coated with colored paint. When the
sleeve target was dropped at the airfield, pilots rushed to check the num-
ber of holes that were surrounded with their colors. To pass gunnery, we
should score with a certain percentage of our bullets. Some pilots scored
near zero. I know of no one who failed the course for that reason.
We learned to field strip .50 caliber machine guns and link ammu-
nition. I pocketed two live rounds. The next time we had a class on the
.50 calibers, I separated a projectile from the brass, inserted the brass into
the chamber of a machine gun, and fired into the ground. Then I did the
same with the second round. I cleaned the machine gun and polished the
brass, inserted the bullet back in the brass, and took the trophies to my
room, where I hid them until I had opportunity to ship them home.
As gunnery training became more frequent, we took turns linking
ammunition, with every fifth round a tracer. A belt of .50 caliber ammu-
nition was heavy. It was a chore linking the rounds. We were happy it was
not our regular job to link the bullets and place the belts in the wings of
the big P-47.

THEN WE HAD OUR FIRST FATALITY. After alerting the tower that he had an
engine failure, a pilot was cleared for an emergency landing on the runway.
The tower told him if he thought he could not make the runway to jump.
A hundred pairs of eyes watched as he glided toward the field, losing alti-
tude rapidly. Lower and lower he flew. At 500 feet, he decided he was not
going to make the runway and bailed out. His parachute opened just before
he hit the ground in an orange grove. When an ambulance arrived where

47
 A Pilot’s Story

he hit, its crew found leaves from an orange tree grasped tightly in the dead
pilot’s hands. I don’t know why, but the thought of that pilot being con-
scious and still trying to save himself as he crashed through the limbs of
the orange tree affected me far more than I expected.

I DIDN’ T HAVE TIME to brood about it. The training pace increased as
instructors worked to complete all requirements before our departure
date. For survival training, we were trucked into the Everglades where
tents were pitched on a small patch of dry land. We marveled at scor-
pions that ran up and down tree trunks and wondered whether we
were sharing the swamp with alligators. A demolition team demon-
strated dynamite and a plastic explosive that looked like modeling
clay. The plastic was wrapped around a tree before being detonated.
There was a great “boom” and the tree fell, narrowly missing mem-
bers of the team.
For the evening meal, we ate “C” rations supplemented with candy and
fruit we carried to the swamp in our gas mask bags. Sleep was difficult,
because huge mosquitoes were not deterred by insect repellent or netting. At
2 a.m., there was a great commotion outside the tents when a group of enlist-
ed men, playing the part of the enemy, splashed out of the swamp and
through the tent area, firing blanks and shouting. We gave them little atten-
tion. Only a couple of guys peered from tents to see what was going on. Wet
and fighting mosquitoes, the invaders gave up their attack, climbed into
waiting trucks, and returned to their barracks at the airfield.
The next morning, after a breakfast of “C” rations, we climbed into
trucks and followed the trail the enlisted men had taken back to Page
Field. I’m not certain what that exercise was supposed to teach us.
Soldiers need little instruction on how to be miserable.
Skeet shooting provided both recreation and good training in lead-
ing a target moving across the line of sight. Pilots who grew up on farms
and pilots from wealthy families did well, having learned from bird hunt-
ing and from skeet shooting how to lead the clay pigeons. I was no more
than average.

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 Fighter Training

During one skeet session, Ben Atwood looked up, saw a flock of
water birds passing overhead, and blasted away. One blue heron fluttered
down. Now that Ben had killed the bird, there was nothing to do except
leave it where it fell. It seemed a terrible waste.
Skeet was not a high priority subject for us. Scores were not record-
ed even for the best shooters.

AS OFFICERS, we had far more freedom than we had experienced as

Aviation Cadets. We could go into Fort Myers every night. Weekends
usually were free from Saturday noon. Jack Dunn and I became fans of
the Fort Myers high school football team, watching all its Friday night
home games.
The town was beautiful, and we enjoyed walking its streets. One
Saturday afternoon, we stood on a sidewalk admiring a home that towns-
people said belonged to Henry Ford, the automobile magnate. An older
gentleman was working in the large flower garden. He stopped and asked
if we would like to tour the home.
“Of course. Please!” Jack and I said simultaneously.
The house was not huge, but it was larger and nicer than any either of
us had visited. Our guide was talkative, humorous, and kept a running com-
mentary on the various rooms we passed through. Sharing a Coke with us,
he explained that he stayed in the house when the Fords were not present,
which was most of the year. He was wealthy himself, having retired with a
fortune, and he liked digging among the flowers and manicuring the lawn.
He laughed. “One day I was working in the yard,” he recalled, “when
two ladies stopped and asked if I could show them the house. I did. When
the tour was finished, they stood at the gate and had a great debate over
whether to tip me a nickel or a dime. Finally, they offered me a nickel.”
“Did you take it?” I asked.
“Certainly,” he replied. “Wouldn’t you?”

OFTEN BORED and with nothing else to do, Jack Dunn and I argued about
almost anything. One day we saw a beautiful plant in a florist’s window.

49
 A Pilot’s Story

“That’s a pretty poinsettah,” Jack remarked.

“It is not a poinset-tah,” I corrected him. “It is a poinset-ti-ah.”
An argument ensued over the correct pronunciation of the name.
We asked the location of the town’s library, and we walked 14 blocks to
find it. Opening a dictionary, we turned its pages, and I chortled when
we saw my pronunciation was right.
The librarian shook her head and laughed. “What difference does it
make,” she asked.
That’s an example of the breath-taking excitement we had when we
were not on duty.

CAMPBELL K. EVANS from Atlanta was six feet tall, weighed 190 pounds,
and had a personality like a puppy dog. Everybody liked him, but none
of us considered him a fighter pilot. Nobody was surprised when
Campbell failed to recover from a flat spin in a P-47, but everybody was
happy he parachuted safely and reached the ground with no injuries. He
told us that he did everything that instructors had taught us trying to
recover, but the Thunderbolt continued to spin. He climbed out on the
wing and then realized he had not unplugged the connections to the
microphone and headset which were in his helmet. They were still
latched to the airplane. Climbing back in the cockpit, he unplugged the
wires and once again stepped onto the wing of the spinning plane. Finally
he stepped off the back of the wing, counted to ten, and pulled his rip
cord. He landed safely. His P-47 crashed 10 miles north of Fort Myers.
A flying evaluation board was convened to determine Campbell’s
fate. After testimony from instructors, he was barred from further fight-
er training. “Lt. Evans can not think fast enough to be a fighter pilot,” a
member of the board said.
Campbell K. Evans was transferred from Fort Myers, but he contin-
ued flight training in a B-26 Martin Marauder. The B-26 was one of the
same planes destroyed by the pilot from Buckingham Field—a hot, fast,
twin-engined bomber that had so little wing it was called “the flying
prostitute” because it had “no visible means of support”. It also was nick-

50
 Fighter Training

named “the widow maker.” Years later, I heard that Campbell K. Evans
survived the war.

NEAR THE END OF OUR TRAINING at Fort Myers, the owners of the slot
machines placed in the officers’ club provided a party for graduating
pilots. The slot machines were popular, and they minted money for their
owners. To show appreciation, the owners feted each graduating class
with a party at a lodge in the Everglades. There was an unlimited supply
of liquor and plenty of food. Early after our arrival at the lodge, most of
us were drunk.
Few were experienced drinkers, and we did not know when to stop.
As near as I remember, we had a great time. Second Lieutenant Isaac
Benning introduced me to “milk punch.” Take some milk, pour lots of
any kind of alcohol in it, add some fruit juice, and “chug-a-lug” the con-
coction. It was dynamite!
I recall climbing into a truck for the return to the airfield. My next
memory is standing in the shower while someone advised, “Turn on the
hot water. Now the cold. Now the hot.” A half hour later, I had sobered
enough to see the guy giving instructions. Another half hour and I stag-
gered to the barracks and bed. In the morning, holding an aching head,
I swore once again never to drink so much.
A week later during a visit to the PX, I recognized the fellow who
had helped me in the shower.
“You saved my life!” I exclaimed.
He laughed. “You needed help from somebody,” he said.

THE FOLLOWING WEEK, Jack Dunn and I were walking from the barracks
to the theater. For the past five weekends, he had disappeared on
Saturday afternoons, and I never saw him again until Monday morning.
He had a worried look.
“Jack, what’s the trouble?” I asked. He said nothing. “Jack, tell me.
What’s the trouble?”
He stopped walking. “Dave,” he said, “I think she’s pregnant.”

51
 A Pilot’s Story

“Who?” I exclaimed.
Jack confessed that he had been shacking up every weekend, which
explained his absences from the barracks.
“God, she’s beautiful, and she’s sweet,” he exclaimed. “Look at her
picture,” I looked at a photograph of a very pretty brunette.
“All I had to do was caress her breasts from the bottom up,” Jack
continued, “and she was ready to go. And now she says she’s pregnant.”
Jack was concerned for the girl friend. He wondered whether he
should marry her, although he did not love her. We were soon to finish
our fighter training and ship out. What should he do? I had no answer.
The answer came without help from us. The following weekend the
girl told Jack her period had begun. His relief was obvious!

IN NOVEMBER, we completed training in the P-47 Thunderbolt and were

back in Tallahassee for reassignment. This time, we were billeted on the
second floor of a bay barracks, sleeping on cots sixteen to a bay. The
latrine was downstairs. It was a make-shift arrangement. We lived out of
our B-4, duffel, and musette bags. Nobody told us how long it would be
before we received orders, and we were afraid to send out laundry,
because it might be left behind.
I chanced that we would be around at least five days. That’s how
long it took for a Tallahassee printer to print some Christmas greetings
that I designed. I spent a day addressing envelopes, inserting the folders,
and mailing them to everyone whose address I knew. Postage was of no
concern, because the U.S. Postal Service still accepted first class mail
from servicemen free of postage.
Jimmy Fournegay had played for a band in pre-war days that earned
its keep performing on passenger liners criss-crossing the Atlantic. He
bought a plastic tonette, a small musical instrument played much like a
flute. The tonette looked easy to play, and Jim’s music sounded great. A
half dozen of us rushed to a Tallahassee music store to buy tonettes so we
could join Jim in his music. We found there is more to playing a tonette
than it appears to be. Two guys were able to play a slow tune, but failure

52
 Fighter Training

was the first result for the rest of us, even with Jim’s good-natured coach-
ing. Eventually we learned several songs, and, with Jim’s help, we man-
aged fairly good harmony.
Fred Simpson had been a medical student before volunteering for
the Aviation Cadet program. During late night bull sessions, he com-
plained that his medical training had ruined his love life. “Now when I
look deep into a girl’s eyes,” he said, “all I see is evidence that her liver is
giving her problems.”
Florida State College for Woman (now Florida State University) was
located in Tallahassee. We wandered around the campus until we found
the indoor swimming pool. It was heated and a popular place for the girls
on winter evenings. It proved even more popular for us. We drooled as
the girls climbed up onto the diving board, posed prettily, and dived deep
into the pool. Swim coaches monitored the pool, making certain that we
pilots kept our distance. The girls knew we were watching. Several obvi-
ously did all they could to tempt us. If we tried to show our appreciation,
the coaches invited us to leave.
Sissy probably was the sweetest looking of any of the Florida State
students. She belonged to a sorority which had its own house and toler-
ated visits by pilots. One pilot after another returned to the barracks
boasting of the fun he had with the little girl, who looked much less than
her 19 years. Fred explained it. “Sissy has round heels.”

JACK DUNN HAD NOT REPORTED to Tallahassee by the fourth day of my

return. I checked the orderly room and learned that his uncle had died
the day of our departure from Fort Myers. Jack contacted the Red Cross,
which wired the Air Corps, which granted Jack an extra two weeks of
leave to attend the funeral of his uncle and get over his grief. That long
leave brought a permanent separation for me and my long time buddy. I
was gone from Tallahassee before Jack returned from leave. When final-
ly he showed at Tallahassee, he was sent to the Pacific where he flew P-
38 Lightnings against the Japanese.
My next information about Jack Dunn was in 1947, two years after

53
 A Pilot’s Story

my release from active duty. I received a telephone call from Jack’s father
in Roanoke, Virginia. Jack’s family had continued to live in Laflin,
Pennsylvania, but Jack gained employment with the FAA and remained
in the Air Corps Reserve after his release from active duty. He worked in
the control tower at the Roanoke, Virginia, airport, and flew AT-6s as a
member of the Reserve in Roanoke. On a routine training flight, his
plane collided with another, crashed, and Jack was killed. War time or
peace time, flying can be dangerous.

DECEMBER 15, 1943, was my brother Ferd’s twenty-fourth birthday, and

already he was fighting the Japanese as group navigator with the 5th
bomb Group, 13th Air Force, in the Pacific.
That day, orders were cut for shipment overseas of 18 of our group.
The orders stated that we were “FR801JH” and we had to stencil that on
everything we owned—our B-4 bag, musette bag, duffel bag, parachute
bag, foot locker, everything. Some guys took indelible ink and wrote it on
their hips.
Our parachute bags, each containing a parachute and other flight
gear, and our foot lockers were taken from us for shipping. We carried
our B-4, musette, and duffel bags. They were a load!
Then it was on a train. No one would tell us where we were going,
and we narrowed our guesses as the train traveled north through Georgia
and South Carolina. Some thought it would be New York. Ben Atwood
hoped for Boston.
The train stopped at the Raleigh, North Carolina, train station, 20
miles from home, and I spotted a pay phone on the wall of the station.
Risking being left, I hopped off the train, ran to the station, grabbed the
phone from its cradle, put in a dime, and dialed the Zebulon newspaper
office—AN9-2561. My mother answered.
“Where are you?” she asked excitedly.
“I’m in Raleigh!” I exclaimed.
“Are you coming home?”
“No, I’m on my way overseas.”

54
 Fighter Training

“From Raleigh?”
“No, I don’t know where from,” I answered, “but we are on our way.
And, mother, I don’t know where we are going.”
The train whistle blew.
“Mother,” I said with a catch in my voice. “The train is leaving. I
have to go. I love you.”
There was a pause. “I love you, too,” my mother replied. “Please take
care of yourself.”

DECEMBER 17, 1943. The train pulled into Norfolk, Virginia. Buses were
waiting to take us to Camp Patrick Henry, the staging area for the port of
embarkation. It consisted of temporary buildings, dirt streets, and thou-
sands of soldiers waiting to load on ships. Our accommodations were
sparse. We were parceled out to tar-papered bay barracks. Once again we
used a latrine situated 30 yards from the four barracks. The weather fit-
ted our mood—gray skies, an almost constant chilly drizzle, and nothing
to do except cultivate our loneliness and debate where we would leave the
ships after we crossed the Atlantic. Most chose England.
Pay phones filled the walls of a nearby small building, and GIs wait-
ed impatiently in long lines leading to each one. Calls were monitored,
and, if a soldier told anything that gave evidence of his location or his
overseas destination, the call was terminated.
All mail from Camp Patrick Henry was censored. As officers and
gentleman (by act of Congress), we were given duty as mail censors. I
never realized that reading other people’s letters could be so boring! We
were liberal with enlisted men’s mail, using our black markers and knives
on very little they wrote. Officers’ mail did not fare so easy. The higher
the rank, the more we censored. A bird colonel’s letter was lucky to have
the salutation and the signature remaining after it had been censored by
a second lieutenant.
Of all the mail I censored, I remember what was writen in only one
letter. A young soldier penned to his wife: “Honey, I had a dream last
night, and if you had been here, that dream would have been junior.”

55
 A Pilot’s Story

HOW DO PILOTS entertain themselves when there are no airplanes to fly,

no girls to court, and their only duty is to wait for shipment overseas? We
dug out our bayonets and threw them at a target placed on a pine tree
beside the barracks. We were disappointed to find the bayonets were
made of cheap metal with points that bent easily and blades that could
not be sharpened.
Endless poker games were in progress, and a great deal of money
changed hands.
Sammy Stewart got an infection on his penis and was circumcised.
During his recovery, buddies took great delight in visiting Sammy in the
camp hospital and showing him photos of nude girls.
Jim Freed got drunk in the officers’ club and couldn’t find his way
through the darkness back to the barracks. He showed next morning in the
filthiest uniform we had seen, having spent the night lying in a coal bin.
December 24, 1943. I’ll Be Home for Christmas was banned from the
juke boxes at Camp Patrick Henry. Too many soldiers were going crazy
listening to its lyrics. Bing Crosby’s White Christmas was played over and
over. The weather was turning colder, and we thought we would soon be
suffering a white Christmas.
But we were not at Camp Patrick Henry on Christmas day. Early
December 24 we were told to pack up and move out. Buses carried us to
a Norfolk Naval Base dock where a troop transport was waiting. As we
walked up the gang plank, one pilot after another tossed canvas leggings
into the water. We never had worn them, and we were tired of carrying
them around.
It was dark when the troop ship left Norfolk harbor and entered the
Atlantic Ocean. I shared a room with seven other pilots. Four double-
decker bunks, one small table, and one chair constituted the furniture.
There was one tiny porthole through which a tall person standing on tip-
toe could see the ocean.
Christmas night, 1943. I was feeling sorry for myself. I did not know
where we were headed. I didn’t know when we’d get there. The ship was

56
 Fighter Training

blacked out. It was making a solo passage to wherever was our destina-
tion. At short intervals it altered its heading. We were told that the ship’s
frequent change of course permitted too little time for a submarine to
aim, launch a torpedo, and have it hit us. We hoped that was true.
As officers, we had few duties aboard ship. An Army colonel com-
manded all troops, including us pilots. He had a very small staff. Every
day orders were cut detailing officers to stand watch at various posts on
the ship. My post was at the base of the stairs a deck or two below water
level where the enlisted men were billeted. It was a hell hole! Their bunks
were hammocks stacked four high. The area was dimly lit and stank. At
the base of the stairs was a large GI trash can where, during rough weath-
er, a line of nauseated men waited to upchuck. The contents of many
stomachs sloshed in the can. The floor was slippery with vomit from
those who failed to reach the can. If the motion of the ship failed to sick-
en a GI, the putrid smell of vomit did.
The enlisted men were permitted to leave their quarters only for
meals and a once-daily break on deck. They relished the fresh air so
much that they pushed and shoved to get a position in the prow of the
ship, even on stormy days when waves were breaking over the rails.
My two-hour stints below deck seemed like eternity. I felt that the
enlisted men preferred to take on any enemy rather than suffer much
more of the voyage.
I left our crowded stateroom and ventured to other areas of the ship.
I heard music—a piano playing softly. Strange! I continued through the
darkness until I came to a dimly lighted large room. The ship transport-
ing us was a liner that had been converted into a troop ship. This room
must have been the original dining room. At the far side a GI played
Christmas carols on a piano. O Come All Ye Faithful … Silent Night … O
Little Town of Bethlehem. I stood in darkness for a half hour listening
until the soldier closed the keyboard, rose, and quietly left.
I was in a deep funk and wondering how my brother Ferd was mak-
ing out in the Pacific and how my parents were faring at home. I returned
to my room, where a rowdy gang was engaged in a poker game. I shucked

57
 A Pilot’s Story

my clothes and climbed up into my bunk. It was near dawn Christmas

day when the poker game broke up. Nobody won much. Nobody had
much to lose. Nobody cared.
The next day we were startled when the ship vibrated and the sound
of rapid-firing weapons was heard. I rushed up on deck and saw the last
of a drill for the anti-aircraft gunners. Each morning, they took their sta-
tions and fired about 50 rounds from their guns, which looked like
20mm weapons. Afterward, they devoted another hour cleaning them.
Five days out in the Atlantic, moving at a reported 20 knots, and still
zig-zagging to thwart submarines that might have been in the neighbor-
hood, we were told our destination—Africa! Why Africa? The fighting in
the Mediterranean area had moved up to Italy. A day later, we stood on
deck and watched a PBY Catalina flying boat circle the ship twice and
then disappear to the east. We felt a little more secure thinking the
amphibian had checked the ocean for submarines before it left.
Seven days after departing Norfolk, we arrived at Casablanca,
Morocco, on the east African coast. The slow entrance into the harbor
gave us time to gaze at a sunken French battleship, reportedly scuttled by
French sailors who refused to oppose American landings the previous
year. Soon after the troop ship was tied to the wharf, we grabbed our B-
4 bags, our musette bags, and our barracks bags, and walked down the
gang plank to shore. It seemed that the ground was rolling and heaving.
It took a while for our sea legs to evolve once more into land legs.
Trucks were waiting. Those of us with “FR801JH” stenciled on our
belongings were told to board one. It took us through the streets of
Casablanca. We looked at the ancient city with great interest, trying to
spot scenes we had seen in the popular movie, Casablanca, that starred
Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. We saw nothing that looked
liked the motion picture, but we did see Arabs squatting in gutters reliev-
ing themselves.
An hour later we came to a French military post near the city. North
Africa was considered a combat zone, and 10% was added to our pay.

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 MATS
Home of the Ferry Pilots

1944 IN NORTH AFRICA was cold! We shivered, but we were

J
ANUARY
fascinated with the sights as the eighteen of us were moved through
Casablanca on a 2½-ton truck. The sights were interesting but not
pretty. We arrived at the old French Army post where we were fed C
rations, and each of us was issued a mattress cover and two blankets.
“You’ll sleep in this barracks,” directed a young second lieutenant—a
ground pounder. We peered inside the door. It was a long, narrow build-
ing with concrete walls and floor. There was no furniture. No beds. No
cots. No chairs. No stoves. Windows were just square holes in the concrete
walls. The weather was getting colder, and we were getting a new perspec-
tive on how the Army could treat its “officers and gentlemen”.
A field of dry straw was nearby. With dusk approaching, we hurried
to the field and stuffed straw into the mattress covers. They looked fat
and lumpy, but that was preferable to lying on the bare concrete floor.
The temperature dropped quickly as the sun set. We scrounged
through our duffel bags for extra clothing to wear while we slept. A yell
of joy was heard as Earl Carrington bounded in the door.
“I got it!” he announced.
“Got what?”
“We’ll keep warm tonight!” he yelled. “We’re going to have heat! I
got us a can and a bottle of gas.”

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 A Pilot’s Story

Earl went outside and filled the can with dirt. He rushed back inside
the barracks, set the can on the floor, and poured the gasoline in the dirt-
filled can, letting it soak into the dirt until it was puddling on top.
“Be careful!” Ben cautioned.
Earl placed the bottle on the floor behind his back. Quickly he
struck a match over the can. There was a WHOOSH! Then a dull
BOOM! Flames were everywhere, leaping from the can, following the
fumes through the air to the half filled bottle, and then another BOOM!
as the bottle burst, and flames seemed to fill the entire barracks. We
scrambled for safety, only to see Earl fighting flames from his clothing.
Ben grabbed a blanket and wrapped Earl in it, smothering the fire. But
Earl was painfully burned. Two pilots walked him to the nearby orderly
room, where they waited until medics took Earl to a doctor.
The fire in the barracks burned out quickly, and the concrete build-
ing was none the worse for wear. We waited for the smoke and fumes to
disappear through open windows, then placed our straw-filled mattress
covers on the floor, lay down, and tried to sleep. We don’t know what
weather records are maintained in Morocco, but that January night must
have set a new one for low temperature.
There was no sleep. By midnight our bodies had warmed the straw
inside the mattress covers, waking little biting bugs that were happy to
find tender flesh conveniently close. The next six hours the little
boogers feasted.
Dawn came. The sun rose. We began stretching and scratching. A
few ventured outside their mattress covers, which were frozen to the con-
crete floor. It had to have been the most miserable accommodations I
ever suffered.
We were in Casablanca only two days. There were no duties, but
neither was there transportation nor recreational facilities. We were
stuck with wandering around the small post pondering our future.
Italian POWs cleaned latrines, worked on the chow line, and did
maintenance work. Some spoke a little English. One saw pilot wings on
our chests and enjoyed practicing his English conversing with any of us

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 MATS Home of the Ferry Pilots

who would talk with him. He told of fighting Americans in Tunisia and
exclaimed with awe at the speed and power of Lockheed P-38 Lightning
twin-engine fighters. The Lightning scared him with its cannon and
machine guns. He did not know its name, but he drew the Lightning’s
picture in the dirt, wrapped his arms around his body, and shivered with
fear. We were impressed.
Before noon of our third day at the Casablanca base, 18 second lieu-
tenant pilots were ordered to mount a truck and were taken to a railroad
yard. We watched a locomotive pull a string of little boxcars and stop on
the track near us.
“You’ll travel in that car,” said a captain after checking a number
chalked on its side.
“Where to?” Bob Bass asked.
“Tunisia,” the captain replied.
“Where’s that?” Bob continued.
“You’ll find out,” the captain said. “Climb aboard. Your rations are
at the end of the car. Here are your orders.”
Each of us was given an envelope. Inside each envelope was a
mimeographed order listing 18 names assigned to a fighter training cen-
ter in Tunisia. We didn’t know where we were going, but that was noth-
ing new. Soon we would be on our way.

WE CLIMBED INTO THE SMALL 40X8 BOX CAR, named by the French for its
maximum cargo—40 men or 8 horses. We did not know how long we
would be housed in the freight car, but from the number of C rations
stacked in boxes at one end, this would be our home for a long time.
We all were second lieutenants. No one was in command.
Somebody suggested that the lowest serial number would decide the
commander, but that wasn’t acceptable. When we were commissioned,
serial numbers were issued alphabetically by last name. We knew that
Ben Atwood’s number was lowest, but no one could stomach the idea of
the Bostonian being the boss. Through the following week, decisions
were made by consensus.

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 A Pilot’s Story

The space occupied by the C rations left too little room in the box
car for everyone to lie down. The solution was simple! Spread the boxes
of C rations across the floor. It worked. Some slept on the box car’s wood-
en floor. Others slept on the C ration boxes. As days passed and we ate
the C rations, there was more room on the floor.
Except for the train crew, we were the only living creatures aboard
that train. We departed Casablanca and for two days rumbled across
North Africa. To accommodate bodily functions, time and patience
were imperative. There was no rest room in our box car nor anywhere
else on the train; but beside the railroad tracks in small towns, one
army or another had left toilets—the type built of a box with holes in
the top placed over a hole in the ground. If the train stopped near one,
there was a mad rush to be the first to sit. Relief was wonderful, even
though it had to be achieved in the open while Arabs stared at us as
they passed by.
C rations came in two cans. One can contained the main course:
hash, stew, or something similar. A second can had powdered coffee and
milk, sugar, wafers, three cigarettes, and maybe a couple of pieces of candy
and a little toilet paper. The main dish was edible when cold but was much
tastier when hot. When meal time was near, we waited until the locomo-
tive was laboring, pulling the train slowly up a hill. We ran beside the train
to the locomotive, where we placed our cans of food in a depression above
the steam cylinder. We went back to our box car until the next hill slowed
the train, and then we ran and retrieved our hot meals.
Some time later, we crossed the border between Morocco and
Algeria, passed through the city of Oran, and arrived at Algiers. There
was no sight-seeing. The train spent a half day rearranging itself, bounc-
ing us around inside our box car, and then continued our travels east-
ward toward Tunisia.
Much of the scenery was beautiful, but riding a box car grows bor-
ing. Ben Atwood and Earl Carrington loaded their .45 automatics and
challenged others to outshoot them using as targets cans and other trash
that lay along the track. Nobody could hit those from the moving train,

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 MATS Home of the Ferry Pilots

and crossing signs where roads crossed the tracks became easier targets.
Happily, ammunition was exhausted before anyone was hurt.
Eight hours out of Algiers we tackled a hill that proved too
much for the single locomotive pulling the train. We sat stationary
for a half hour. The whistle blew, the train shook, and we backed
down the hill. For six hours we moved backward. The whistle blew
again, the train stopped, and a second engine moved from a side
track and was coupled to the front of the train. Once again we head-
ed up the hill, this time making it over the top. As we moved down
the far side of the hill, whistles on both locomotives sounded blasts
of triumph.

SOMETIME DURING THE FOURTH DAY of the journey, Harry Hensen

announced he was tired of running forward to the engine to heat his C
rations, and he was tired of the cold that permeated the box car. When
next the train stopped in a little town, he jumped to the ground, searched
around the tracks, and came back to the car with a large, flat piece of iron
and some sticks of wood. He ran to the coal car, grabbed an arm load of
coal, and rushed back to dump it on the floor of the box car. As the train
pulled away from town, Harry placed the wood carefully on the piece of
iron, laid coal on top, and lighted a fire. Much to our surprise, the fire
blazed quickly, filling the box car with smoke.
“Put it out,” Ben Atwood shouted, “before we suffocate!”
Someone slid the door open, and frigid air swept through the car,
scattering sparks and ashes over everything.
“You damned fool!” Ben Atwood yelled. His face was beet red with
anger as he kicked what was left of the fire out the open door. Smoke con-
tinued to come from under the iron. Ben kicked it toward the door, and
another pilot booted it out. The box car floor where the iron had been
now sported a smoldering hole where fire had burned completely
through the wood.
“From now on,” Ben yelled at Harry while pointing to the hole in
the floor of the box car, “that’s your place to sleep.”

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 A Pilot’s Story

ABOUT MIDDAY the train halted at a station with a French name we could
not pronounce.
“Everybody off,” a sergeant called. He directed us to a 2½-ton truck.
We heaved our bags over its tailgate and climbed aboard. Ten miles up
the narrow Tunisian road, the sky turned dark, and we heard a sound
new to all of us. Millions and millions of locusts absolutely blotted out
the sun. Most flew overhead, but many struck the truck and were
crushed under its wheels. So many littered the road that the military
vehicle began to slip and slide on the pavement. For the first time, I had
some understanding of the plight of the Mormans when locusts played
havoc with them in Utah.
Five miles further we moved safely past the swarm of locusts. We
scooped up those that lay on the bed of the truck and threw them out. I
wondered how any of the sparse vegetation was left after that cloud of
insects had eaten its fill.

FIGHTER TRAINING CENTER! The name sounded great! We saw it up the

bumpy road as we neared our new home. After a week riding in a 40x8
box car across North Africa, we smelled bad, looked bad, and our out-
look on life also was bad. The installation appeared to have been a post
for the French Foreign Legion. A mile further was a runway with sever-
al Spitfires parked near one end. Tents housed operations and mainte-
nance facilities. We approached a wall that encircled several buildings,
and two big doors swung open. We passed through the wide entrance.
The truck stopped in a court yard surrounded by small buildings con-
nected by the walled perimeter. There were stucco buildings that once
had been white but now were a dirty gray. A captain greeted us and
pointed to a line of tents we could see outside the gate. He announced,
“There are your quarters.” The tents were to be our home for the next
week and maybe longer. They were not much, but they were better than
a box car.
We never flew at that fighter training center. We never got near the
British Spitfires. They did get flown, but we didn’t know who flew them.

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 MATS Home of the Ferry Pilots

Ours was a dull existence. We ate, we slept, we killed time however we

could. The fighter training center staff obviously was at a loss as to what
to do with 18 second lieutenants. Some makeshift classes were conduct-
ed. Aircraft recognition. Sanitation. More aircraft recognition.
Nights were devoted to drinking orange brandy at the center’s small
bar. The center was nothing more than a stopover for pilots fresh from
the States. From the center, pilots were parceled out to wherever they
were needed.

ONE DAY BEN ATWOOD, Dave Hansen, Arthur Fitch, and I decided to walk
around the countryside. We dressed casually—me in a cotton T-shirt and
white shorts—strapped on our .45 automatics, and headed out. Two
The Arab natives were
not impressive. Their
clothes were rags.
Raising sheep was their
livelihood. We learned
they also were skilled
with weapons, of which
they had quite a supply,
salvaged from the battle
fields where Germans,
Italians, British, and
Americans had battled.
At right are Art Fitch,
me, Dave Hanson, and
Ben Atwood. The Arabs’
names are unknown.

miles from the center, we came on a small Arab settlement. Three Arabs
met us and struck up a conversation—mostly in French, although it
could have been Greek, so far as I knew.
The Arabs admired our pistols. From his words and motions, we got
the idea one wanted to examine a weapon. Ben Atwood took the maga-
zine from his pistol and handed the unloaded weapon to the Arab, who
looked first at one side, then at the other. Our mouths dropped open as
he field-stripped the gun completely, holding the parts in his hands for a
moment before reassembling the weapon. He smiled. “Very nice,” said
the Arab in English as he returned Ben’s gun to its owner.

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 A Pilot’s Story

Later we learned that the Arabs had thousands of weapons and

ammunition of all kinds stashed away. They had scrounged them
from the Tunisian battle fields. Many weapons were taken even while
battles between the Germans and the Americans and English were
being fought.
During another day’s hike across the Tunisian countryside, we came
upon two Arabs herding sheep. They spoke decent English and asked for
cigarettes. We bartered packs of smokes for eggs. The Arabs knew quali-
ty. For Camels, Chesterfields, and Lucky Strikes, we received five eggs per
pack. For Pall Malls and Wings, they gave us only three.
The eggs were big! A large omelet could be cooked with a single egg.
It was strange, we thought, that the Arabs had eggs, but we never saw a
chicken. The mystery was solved when we watched Arabs taking eggs
from storks’ nests. I wrote home about the experience. “Don’t you feel
like cannibals eating those stork eggs?” my mother responded.
The Arabs were eager to bargain. A mattress cover could bring us
$50. Anything we owned could be sold to them for American cash. They
also had items other than stork eggs for sale. One offered me his sister.
The asking price was only slightly more than what he was willing to pay
for a mattress cover.
“What can I do with your sister?” I asked.

Ten eager fighter pilots wait in

Tunisia at a Fighter Training
Center for their next assignment.
Little did they suspect their next
duty would be as ferry pilots. What
they really wanted was combat.
Kneeling are Bob Bass, Jack
Barrett, and David Hanson.
Standing are Ben Atwood, Henry
Greve, Arthur Fitch, Bob Johnson,
Barrie Davis, Joe Harper, and one
whose name I have forgotten.

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 MATS Home of the Ferry Pilots

“Oh,” he exclaimed. “She is very good. She washes. She cooks. And
she is brand new … never been used!”
Later I wrote to my mother about refusing the Arab’s offer. “You
should have bought her and sent her home,” my mother wrote back.
“Household help is impossible to find in North Carolina.”

THE LINE OF TENTS that housed us was about 50 yards outside the wall sur-
rounding the permanent buildings. A captain warned us to be alert and
never place anything near the tent walls. Some paid little attention to the
captain’s warning. The third night of our Tunisian stay we understood
why the captain had warned us when someone—an Arab, they said—slit
the side of a tent and stole everything he could reach. No one sleeping in
the tent knew the theft had occurred until the following morning.

NEAR OUR TENTS was a very small stream. The only grass and trees in the
neighborhood grew along its banks. We sat in the shade under a tree
killing time, wondering how long we would be exiled to the fighter train-
ing center. One afternoon we spotted a four-foot long column of cater-
pillars slowly moving scross the ground, the head of one caterpillar
pressed tightly against the tail of the one at its front.
“Watch this,” Bob Bass directed and pushed the leading caterpillar
around until its nose was pressed against the tail of the last caterpillar in
the file. The furry circle went around and around, little caring that it was
getting nowhere, only satisfied that it was moving.
“They’re Army worms,” Bob announced. “They follow their leader
wherever he goes.”
We went back an hour later, and the column of caterpillars was con-
tinuing its slow march around and around. Bob was right. They must be
Army worms.

NEAR DUSK ONE DAY, we heard a Spitfire make passes across the area. It
buzzed low over the headquarters building, made several circles and
screamed down the runway, then returned for another pass over the

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 A Pilot’s Story

buildings. Its climbing turns were uncoordinated, and it slipped and

skidded as it pulled up from multiple passes.
“Is that guy drunk or crazy?” I asked Bill Murphy.
We didn’t have long to wait for the answer. Two more passes, and
the Spitfire began a wide circle of the field before turning on final
towards the runway. As it descended, it began to porpoise. The pilot was
over-controlling badly. Up went the nose. Down went the nose. Up!
Down! Then a final down and the Spitfire smashed the ground. Flames
shot up. There was an explosion. Then there was a moment of almost
total silence before the crash crew roared out to extinguish the blaze.
Who destroyed the Spitfire? A frustrated American mechanic had
watched young pilots enjoy flying until he could not resist temptation.
With absolutely no training, he took to the air. His first flight was mem-
orable, and it also was his last.

THE FIGHTER TRAINING CENTER’S personnel officer called a meeting of all

pilots waiting assignment. A dozen of us gathered in his office. A lieu-
tenant offered us chairs and, seating himself in the front of the room, told
us that we would be asked what assignment we preferred. The personnel
officer failed to appear, so the young lieutenant kept us occupied by relat-
ing what had taken place during a similar earlier meeting.
An emissary from the Far East had visited the center on a recruiting
mission. That was news to us. We thought neophyte fighter pilots were
given no choice of assignment. They went where they were told and did
what they were ordered to do. Anyhow, a famed former University of
Michigan football player was assigned to the training center waiting orders
to join a combat outfit. We knew of him. We had read of his piloting a B-
25 Mitchell twin engine bomber on a ferry mission from the States to
South America. Over Brazil his plane had engine trouble. He said he
ordered the crew to bail out. Surprisingly, the former gridiron player, who
should have been the last to leave the crippled plane, was the only survivor.
When the recruiter from the Far East finished his spiel by claiming
the Japanese pilots were cream puffs compared with the “first team”—the

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 MATS Home of the Ferry Pilots

Luftwaffe—the football hero was quick to volunteer to go to the Far East

to battle the Japanese. After the war, the story of the former gridiron
great choosing to fight the Japanese fitted with what I read in a book
credited to him. In the book, he told of an air battle during which he “saw
Japanese Zeros coming from 3 o’clock, so I turned to 9 o’clock.” That
meant that, seeing the Zeros, the football great turned tail and ran.
The personnel officer finally appeared and asked us what type of
combat unit we wanted to join. I remembered the training films I had
watched which showed the consequence of bad food on pilots flying high
altitude missions.
“I want to be with a high altitude escort fighter group,” I told the
officer. Surely the Air Corps fed good food to its pilots who flew high
altitude escort missions.

MID-JANUARY 1944. Orders were published which stated that eight of our
group would be on detached service with the Mediterranean Air
Transport Service—MATS. We were to report to Algiers. My hope for a
combat assignment was dashed.
I remembered Algiers. We had passed through the city on our train
ride from Casablanca across North Africa to Tunisia. We were in Algiers
again for an hour while a second locomotive was attached to the train to
help the locomotive that could not get us over the mountain on its first
attempt—just long enough for Bob Achely and Earl Carrington to pur-
chase bottles of wine from Arabs. They drank most of the wine, and for
the next 24 hours both had been deathly sick. What little we had seen of
Algiers was enough for me.
MATS was no combat unit, and Algiers was not my goal in life. But
once more we packed our bags and climbed into the back of a 2½-ton
truck. After a 30-mile ride we came to an airport and were loaded on a
C-47 twin engine transport. The flight to Algiers was shorter than we
expected. We landed at Maison Blanche Airport, jumped from the plane,
collected our bags, and were directed to a small building just east of the
tower. There a major—no wings on his chest—welcomed us and pointed

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 A Pilot’s Story

to a building 300 yards across the area.

“That’s where you will sleep,” he said. “The mess (food) is just
beyond.”
Maison Blanche once was Algier’s main airport. It had long run-
ways, nice taxiways, and several large hangars. The French had joint
use with Americans of some hangars. Americans had assembly lines in
others for fighters that had been shipped on freighters across the
Atlantic. Our job would be to fly the newly-assembled fighters to com-
bat units in Italy.
Bill Murphy, Bob Bass, and I picked up our bags and walked to our
new quarters. Once they had been French Army barracks. Now there
were no doors at entrances and no glass in the windows. Double-decker
wooden bunks were the only furniture. Ropes stretched across the bunks
served as mattresses. We scrounged cardboard and placed it on the ropes,
and then we spread whatever we could find on top of the cardboard to
provide a little cushion between our bodies and the ropes. Eventually we
managed to have comfortable beds.
After unpacking, we returned to the headquarters building where
the major repeated his welcome.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “We’re glad to see you. You are on detached
service with the Mediterranean Air Transport Service. Our unit has no
table of organization and equipment. Your mission is to fly planes to Italy
and then return to Algiers to fly more planes to Italy.” If a unit has no
table of organization, there can be no promotions. If we were on
detached service, we faced a double whammy! Our dreams of glory
crashed—but at least we could fly airplanes.

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, showered, shaved, and in clean uniforms, we

reported for duty.
“Have you gentlemen flown the P-39?” asked the major.
None of us had.
“Then read the handbook, sign out one, and go fly it,” the major
directed. “Tomorrow you have to take four to Naples.”

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 MATS Home of the Ferry Pilots

“Naples?” I thought to myself. “Isn’t that some place in Italy?”

We scanned the handbook, went to the operations desk, and com-
pleted flight plans for our orientation flights. Then we searched for our
assigned P-39 Airacobras. Six were parked in a line between a hangar and
the taxiway. Four of them were assigned to us for the day.
Our only experience in fighters had been in P-47 Thunderbolts
during fighter training at Fort Myers, Florida. It had been over two
months since our last flights. We were rusty, and the P-47 and the P-
39 were as different as two single-engine fighters could be. The P-47
had a huge 2,200-hp radial engine mounted in its nose. The P-39 was
powered by an Allison V-12 liquid-cooled engine which was mount-
ed behind the pilot with a long shaft carrying power from the engine
to a gearbox in the nose. A second shaft from the gear box drove the
propeller. The P-47 stood high in the air on a conventional landing
gear—main wheels under the wings and a tail wheel in the rear. The
P-39 looked small and neat, riding a tricycle landing gear—the first
we had seen used on an American single engine fighter. The P-47
sported a huge cockpit covered by a canopy that rolled back, making
it easy for pilots to climb in and out. The P-39 had a small door on
each side and a tiny cockpit. At 5’9”, I fit nicely in the P-39, but a 6-
foot man has to bend over to sit in it.
Taxiing the P-39 was unbelievably easy. We used brakes for steering,
and there was no need for S-turns required for the P-47, because visibil-
ity was exceptional in all directions. The flight handbook warned against
excessive use of the multiple disc brakes, because they overheated quick-
ly. Other than the brakes, there seemed little concern with transitioning
from the Thunderbolt to the Airacobra.
For an hour we flew P-39s, cautiously attempting power-on and
power-off stalls, because we were aware of the Airacobra’s reputation for
flat spins. We looked at the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the tough
landscape around Algiers. Finally, a call to the Maison Blanche tower,
and we were told the active runway. We joined formation, pitched out,
and made a wide landing pattern.

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 A Pilot’s Story

Landings were nicely done—except for Ray Fornegay! He had scanned

the P-39 flight manual, but he failed to note the warning about excessive brake
use. By the time he reached the runway for takeoff, his brakes were smoking.
On take-off, he felt the spinning wheels vibrating as the gear retracted. Ray
pressed the brakes to stop the wheel spin, and the red hot brake discs welded
themselves into a solid mass. Ray did not know his main wheels would not
turn, but he found out when his beautiful landing went totally out of control.
A tire blew, and his P-39 careened into a French-owned Vultee Vengeance
dive bomber parked alongside the runway. The dive bomber caught fire. Ray
popped open the door and scrambled out of the P-39, hit the ground running,
and got himself as far as possible from the Vultee, the P-39, and a neighbor-
ing B-25, which caught fire from the heat of the burning Vultee.
Crash vehicles at Maison Blanche were crewed by Free French sol-
diers. When they saw their beloved Vultee dive bomber flaming, they
cranked up their fire trucks and drove, sirens screaming, across the run-
way. Totally ignoring the group of U.S. warplanes surrounding the obso-
lete Vultee, they gave the French-owned dive bomber their full attention.
The fires finally were out, but not before two B-25 Mitchell bombers,
Fournegay’s P-39, and a C-47 had been consumed. Our first day of flying
in Africa was more exciting than we expected.

THE FOLLOWING DAY, four of us were assigned to fly P-39s to Naples. The
trip was uneventful. We left early in the day, refueled at Tunis, crossed a
short stretch of the Mediterranean to Sicily, landed for more fuel at
Catania near the base of volcanic Mount Etna, crossed the Straits of
Mesina, and flew up the western coast of Italy past Mount Vesuvius to
Naples, where we landed at Capaduchina Airport.
The little Airacobra was fun to fly, easy to land on its tricycle gear,
and gave no problems. A 65-gallon belly tank was attached, but it was
empty and not to be used, so our range was limited to internal tanks. The
37mm cannon and .50 caliber machine guns were loaded, but there was
no reason to use them. It was a delightful mission, almost like a sight-see-
ing jaunt that took us over real estate we never had seen before.

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At Naples, we flashed the priority forms that operations at Algiers

had prepared for us. The form enabled us to bump anyone from a buck
private to a two-star general in order to get back to Algiers quickly. It was
no help in getting a flight that day, however, because the last flight to
Algiers had departed. We were directed to an Army-operated hotel sev-
eral blocks away. The hotel had suffered some war damage, but the mili-
tary cots in the rooms were nicer than our rope beds at Algiers. The mess
served good food. We didn’t complain.
Early the next morning, we were back at the airport. Once more we
flashed our priority slips. This time they got us seats as the only passen-
gers in a C-47 going directly to Algiers. We left Naples about 10 a.m., flew
across Sicily and on to Africa. After takeoff and on our way, we second
lieutenants grew tired of sitting on the aluminum bucket seats along each
side of the C-47. We gathered at the front of the cargo area and walked
together to the rear. Then we moved back to the front and once more
walked toward the back. The changing center of gravity caused the twin-
engine transport to nose down, then up, then down as the pilot puzzled
about its peculiar flight characteristics. Suddenly the door to the flight
deck flew open, and the head of an irate copilot showed. He looked at us
standing together and shouted, “Get the hell back in your seats and stay
there! Do you want to crash this damned airplane?”
It dawned on us that, except for the copilot standing in the door, we
had not seen the crew members. We did not know their skills. We were
making it not only tough for the pilot to fly the airplane, we were risking
our lives! Without a word, we took seats and hardly moved until we land-
ed back at Algiers.

ONE DAY BILL MURPHY, Bob Bass, and I were on the ramp at Maison
Blanche when two guys with a motion picture camera approached us.
“You are pilots?” they asked.
“Yes,” we said proudly.
“Could you help us?”
“Doing what?”

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“I want to get some pictures of an air crew leaving in a B-17,” one

guy answered, pointing to a Flying Fortress parked nearby.
“We’ve never been in a B-17, much less flown one,” I exclaimed.
“That’s OK,” the cameraman reassured us. “I just want to show some
pilots getting inside.”
First, we had to find a way to get inside the big bomber. We found
an access door, but then we had to practice swinging from the ground up
into the plane. After a half dozen practices, the cameraman decided we
were experienced. Twice the three of us climbed into the B-17 while the
camera was rolling.
“Thanks,” the cameraman said, and walked away. We thought that
was the last we would hear of our 15 seconds of stardom.
Six months later, I received a letter from my mother telling that
many citizens in my home town told her they “saw Barrie in the movies.”
The Wakelon Theater in Zebulon featured a motion picture report from
the war zone. One scene purported to show a B-17 crew boarding its
bomber for a mission over Germany. Bill, Bob, and I comprised the crew.
The projector operator at the theater clipped several frames from the
film to present to my family. After placing the film strip in an envelope,
he forgot to deliver it. Another theater employee cleaned the projection
booth and discarded the envelope. I never saw myself in the movies.

TWO WEEKS AFTER REPORTING to MATS in Algiers, our parachute bags

caught up with us. They contained all the flight gear we had been issued
in the States, including our parachutes. We had no idea where the bags
had been since they were taken from us prior to our departure from
Tallahassee, but we welcomed them gladly. Now we had our own equip-
ment. We didn’t have to beg and borrow what was required for us to fly.
After three more ferry missions, the operations major suggested
that we get our parachutes repacked. We carried them to the parachute
loft two buildings up the ramp, where we were told they’d be ready the
following afternoon. When we returned to the parachute loft, a sergeant
grinned and asked if we’d flown with those ’chutes recently.

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“Two days ago,” we replied, “on our last trip to Naples.”

“You won’t fly with them again,” the sergeant said. “Come look.”
The parachutes were hanging in the loft. They were discolored and
had missing panels. It dawned on us that the ship’s hold, where our para-
chute bags had been stored during that week-long voyage across the
Atlantic from Norfolk to Casablanca, probably was damp. For weeks our
flight gear had chased us across Africa, where the nights were cool and
the days were warm. Mildew had ample opportunity to grow on the silk
parachutes. We wondered how much luck we’d squandered flying with
them. Out first jump with one of those rotted parachutes would have
been our last.

“DID YOU HEAR ABOUT EARL CARRINGTON?” Bob Bass asked me late
one afternoon.
“No, what about Earl?” Earl was the pilot who went crazy when he
returned home on leave and found his sweetheart shacked up with his best
friend. We thought his luck had changed for the better when he was assigned
to a 12th Air Force fighter group instead of going with us to MATS.
Bob paused a moment. “He was killed,” Bob said slowly.
“Good God!” I exclaimed. “Did a plane or flak get him?”
“Neither,” Bob replied. “He got drunk and rode a jeep into a rock
wall on Corsica.”
Thus death took the first of 18 young pilots who shared a stateroom
on the troop ship out of Norfolk.

THE EASE OF FLYING P-39s made me complacent. During a trip from

Algiers to Naples, I refueled at Catania on Sicily and taxied back toward
the runway. It was mid-afternoon, and I was eager to get airborne and on
the ground at Naples well before dusk. I paid little attention to my speed
until I saw a bend in the taxiway ahead. I pushed the right rudder, but the
Airacobra’s speed kept it on a straight course. I pressed the right brake,
then pushed hard. The nose began to turn, but not before the left wing
tip had clipped the air intake of a British P-40 fighter that was parked

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alongside the taxi strip. I cut the throttle and braked to a stop on the
ramp beside the damaged P-40. After killing the engine, I climbed out to
see how badly the English fighter was hurt. A British enlisted man
walked over, gave the air intake a casual look, and started walking away.
“Soldier,” I called. “Tell your commander I’ll be back.” He nodded
and, as I climbed back into the Airacobra, he continued to walk toward
the far side of the ramp. I restarted the engine, taxied the P-39 back to the
refueling area, killed the eigine, locked the brakes, climbed out, and
hitched a jeep ride to the British operations shack. I had no idea what
rank insignia was worn by British officers, but an erect gentleman with a
thin mustache appeared to be in charge.
“I clipped one of your P-40s with the wing tip of a P-39,” I told him.
“Ah, yes!” he repled with a frown. “It will make for a dreadful amount
of paper work. Would you have time to write a report of what happened?”
He took me into a small office, gave me a pen and pad of paper,
and I began writing. I did not give the speed of the P-39 as I approached
the turn in the taxiway where the P-40 was parked. I wrote: “I pressed
the brake and the P-39 failed to turn. I pushed as hard as I could and
the P-39 turned slightly, but not quickly enough to avoid its wing tip
striking the air intake of the P-40.” That was not a lie. It just failed to
detail all the truth. After filling two pages of the pad with my report, I
signed both sheets, and the British officer vouched that it was my sig-
nature on both pages.
“Sorry to inconvenience you,” he said, “but I must have some docu-
mentation to explain the damage to our aircraft.”
He had two pages filled with a confession that any competent exam-
iner would know was written by a careless pilot. I left quickly, returned
to the P-39, and, after looking it over carefully, determined the wing tip
was little more than scratched, and scratches would not affect the flight
characteristics of the Airacobra.
Ten minutes later, after taxiing ever so slowly to the runway, I was
airborne for Naples, where I signed the P-39 over to the engineering offi-
cer of the 332nd Fighter Group. It was a terrible blow to my pride to have

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damaged the plane. Although no reprimand was placed in my personnel

file, I chastised myself unmercifully.

ONE MORNING IN MARCH, I walked into MATS operations at Algiers and

found excitement. Orders had come to send a team to ferry two P-40
fighters and a B-25 bomber from Cairo, Egypt, to Algiers. Three long-
timers—a major, a captain, and a first lieutenant—claimed they were
senior to all other pilots and would be team members. A fourth pilot was
needed to fly as copilot in the bomber. The non-rated major—I still did
not know his position in MATS nor his name—decided that straws were
his best method for selecting a copilot. I stood on the sidelines watching
with interest.
“Dave, don’t you want in on this?” Bob Bass asked.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I replied. “What’s in Cairo?”
“Take a straw,” the major commanded, holding identical looking
straws between his fingers. I pulled a straw, and Bob Bass exclaimed:
“Hell! Dave got the long straw!”
“OK,” the major said. “Major Black, Captain Ford, Lt. Dunn, and Lt.
Davis are going to Cairo. Sgt. Jernigan is going as crew. You’ll leave
tomorrow morning—Tuesday—and you’ll return to Algiers Friday.”
Four days: one to fly to Cairo, one to check the planes, and two to
fly back to Algiers. That evening I threw several changes of underwear
and socks in my B-4 bag, added a shirt and an extra pair of khaki pants,
tossed in my shaving kit and a towel, and I was prepared for a four-day
ferry trip. I was more excited about being copilot in the B-25 than I was
about seeing Cairo.
It was late Tuesday afternoon when the five of us boarded a beauti-
ful four-engine Lockheed Constellation at Maison Blanche airport.
There were only eight passengers. A brigadier general sat alone on the
front row of seats where there was more leg room. Our group sat near the
middle of the passenger compartment over the wing, where we knew we
would have the smoothest ride.
An hour into the flight, Major Black walked to the front and intro-

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duced himself to the general. We watched as the general extracted a chess

board and bag of chessmen from his brief case. The general and the
major set the board on the seat between them and began to play. Forty-
five minutes later, Major Black returned to sit with us.
“How’d it go?” Captain Ford asked.
“Oh, I knew better than to win a chess game with a general,” the
major responded, “so I let him win.” I had been a second lieutenant
long enough to know better than to question the veracity of all the
major’s statement.
Thirty minutes later, we peered through the windows and, as the
rotating beacon illuminated the wing, we saw ice building rapidly on its
leading edge. Deicers on the wing were not doing their job. Major Black
frowned and headed for the flight deck. Ten minutes later he was back.
“The fools aren’t worried about the ice,” he exclaimed. “We’re down
to 125 miles an hour. I told them to get up over this stuff before we end
in the desert.”
We listened as the pilot added power to the four big radial engines.
The build-up of ice ended as we gained altitude, and soon the ice on the
wings evaporated. The remainder of our flight to Cairo was uneventful.
The pilot made a nice landing at Payne Field in Cairo, Egypt, and we fol-
lowed the general down portable steps to the ramp.
Wednesday morning, MATS operations at Cairo told us our three
airplanes were at a repair depot at Deversoir, a repair base near the Suez
Canal. A driver with a truck was told to take us across the desert to
Deversoir. We were disappointed. There would be no time for sight-see-
ing in Cairo. A jolting ride across badly worn roads took us to the small
airfield at Deversoir. In my mind, I had pictured the maintenance base as
a huge installation. It may have been large when General Rommel and
his Panzer troops were threatening to kick the British out of Egypt, but
now major fighting was hundreds of miles to the west, and Deversoir had
only three hangars and a few small buildings.
We were directed to the commanding officer. Rubbing the dust
from our shoes and straightening the creases in our pants, we knocked at

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his door and were invited inside. There sat First Lieutenant Mack Bass,
the lanky, pipe-smoking commanding officer of the Deversoir mainte-
nance facility. On his chest were Service Pilot’s wings, which indicated he
had experience in the flight game prior to the war. He very obviously was
a man of experience.
Mack Bass was from my home state—North Carolina. He had
learned to fly six years before World War II, and he had accumulated
tremendous experience in aircraft maintenance working to earn money
to finance his love for flying. When the war began, the Army Air Corps
commissioned him a second lieutenant, gave him Service Pilot’s wings,
and put him through a series of interesting assignments that provided
good memories but only a single promotion—from second to first lieu-
tenant. Mack loved his work at Deversoir. The little officers’ club had two
pool tables and a bar, and Mack was one of only three officers assigned
to the base. The other two were the club officer and the mess officer.
There were officers’ quarters, an officers’ mess, and plenty of war-
weary aircraft of all types that Mack could fly. And he could fly them all.
He was commanding officer, engineering officer, chief test pilot, and held
whatever other title appealed to him. The mess officer handled mainte-
nance, and the club officer took care of all paper work.
The bad news was that our planes were not ready. We had to spend
the night. Chow was good, our beds were far more comfortable than
those at Algiers, and, all in all, we had no cause for complaint.
More bad news the next day—Thursday. The B-25 had problems
with its right engine. But no sweat. Mack’s great mechanics would have it
running smoothly in another day.
We wondered how we could kill another 24 hours. Sergeant
Jernigan was helping the maintenance crew work on the B-25. Already I
had learned the other offiers were experts at pool and could take my
money. What else was there to do?
“Let’s see the Suez Canal,” Major Black said. All we lacked was trans-
portation.
“Do you have a vehicle we could use,” Major Black asked Lt. Bass.

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The lieutenant frowned, then thought for a moment. “The only

thing I have is a truck,” he said, “but you are welcome to that.”
We climbed into a beat-up, old English truck, its steering wheel on
the right side, and we struck out across the desert. Major Black was driv-
ing. A half hour later we were on the west bank of the Suez Canal. A
quarter mile to our right, the canal entered Little Bitter Lake. I don’t
know exactly what I expected, but I was disappointed with what I saw. I
had read of the tonnage that moved through the canal. I thought I would
see something like a busy boulevard with fleets of huge ships moving
north and south between the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. What
I saw was a ditch with sharply sloping sand banks and not a ship in sight.
“Well,” I said, “I can brag of seeing the Suez Canal, but I can’t make
it sound exciting.”

A DAY LATER, the B-25 and two P-40s were deemed ready to fly.
“Dave,” said Major Clark. “Captain Ford and I will fly the fighters.
You fly copilot with Dunn in the B-25.”
I was a little disappointed not to fly one of the P-40s, but I’d never
been in a B-25. The thought of flying in a plane like those used by Jimmy
Doolittle’s group to bomb Tokyo intrigued me.
“Fly this lane to Cairo,” Mack Bass advised. “The English antiair-
craft doesn’t get much to shoot at, and they practice on any plane that
flies outside the lane.”
The short flight to Cairo was uneventful. We experienced no flak.
We had planned to top our tanks and fly on to Marble Arch, just across
the Lybian border, but the weatherman told us there were huge sand
storms over the desert. He advised us to RON (remain overnight) in
Cairo. We did. The next morning, the report was the same. More sand
storms, and they were forecast to continue through the next day. Major
Black smiled.
“Let’s see Cairo,” he said.
We rode a bus from the airport into the center of Cairo and caught
a cab to the pyramids. They were as advertised: huge, awesome, unbe-

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lievable. We walked partially around the base of the largest, climbed a

distance up its side, and decided climbing to the top was too much like
work. We visited the Sphinx, wondered how many more centuries it
could withstand the blowing desert winds and sand, and marveled that
men living thousands of years earlier could construct the pyramids and
Sphinx without modern tools.
The Egyptians were eager to make money from tourists. One held a
camel near the largest pyramid. “Have your picture made on the camel,”
the Egyptian urged, speaking in English. The idea was irresistable. One
after another, we climbed aboard the sitting camel, which stood up on his
gawky legs and grunted and spit as a photographer made pictures.
The photographs were far better than we expected. They showed
each of us sitting uneasily on the camel with the pyramids in the back-
ground. Lt. Dunn said he would get them mailed to our homes. Each of
us addressed a kraft envelope, placed a picture inside, and gave it to Lt.
Dunn. That was the last we saw of our pictures.

T WO DAYS LATER, Payne Field operations advised that the weather was
good across the desert, but Sgt. Jernigan reported the battery on the B-
25 was dead. He visited every maintenance facility at the airfield.
There was no other battery available that would fit a B-25. We’d be in
Cairo another day.
“Let’s tour Cairo,” said the venturesome Major Black. This time we
went shopping. We visited a perfume shop where an accommodating
Egyptian merchant explained that he sold only the “essence” of perfume,
not the kind found in American stores that had been thinned with alco-
hol. He had all types of fragrances and gave us ample opportunity to take
a whiff of each.
I was no connoisseur of perfumes. After the first eight fragrances, I
could not tell one from another. Eventually I chose “Lily of the Valley,”
because this was the only fragrance that I had heard my mother praise.
The price startled me. The hundred bucks I had when I left Algiers was
fast disappearing.

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We visited small shops where bargaining was a requisite. At age 20,

I was no better at bargaining than I am today. A shopkeeper displayed a
magnificent set of chessmen carved from ivory and onyx, packed in a
beautiful box that opened into a chess board. Its squares were formed of
ivory and mahogany. This time I bargained, finally driving the price
down to US$20 for the chessmen and the box that contained them. The
shopkeeper took my money, placed the box of chessmen in a bag, and
gave the bag to me. Dark had fallen when we left the shop.
“Let’s eat,” Major Black said.
“A great idea!” replied Captain Ford.
A colonel at the airport had told Major Black of Cairo’s most famous
night club. We found it. It was swanky, far fancier than any place I had
seen previously, but a kid from the Carolinas had little opportunity to see
fancy nightclubs. We walked inside, and the maître d’ came quickly and
directed a waiter to take my package. I tried to hold to the bag contain-
ing my treasured chess set, but the waiter grabbed it. Before I could react,
the bag tumbled to the floor. The crash caught the eyes of dozens of din-
ers. I stooped quickly, picked up the bag, and when I looked up, the wait-
er had disappeared. It was the next day before I dared look inside the box.
The impact had shattered more than half the chessmen. The box was
cracked. My $20 bargain was now pure junk.
The meal was expensive but tasteless. The floor show was good. A
featured attraction was a muscle dancer who could move muscles in his
body individually, in succession, together, and in unison. He was clad
only in a jock strap, his body was bronzed and oiled, and his perform-
ance earned a standing ovation from everyone, especially the ladies.
Frankly, I enjoyed watching an Egyptian belly dancer more. She could
shake and twist parts of her body in ways I never had imagined.

WHEN WE RETURNED TO THE BOQ (Bachelor Officers’ Quarters) at the

airfield, I checked my billfold. It contained $11.50 plus 150 French francs
worth $3.00. It was past time to get back to Algiers.
The next day, with little else to occupy my time, I wandered around

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the airport and came on a carpentry shop. Just what I needed. I wanted
a box to ship the perfume and broken chess set across the Atlantic to my
mother. No one would help me, so I appropriated a hammer, saw, nails,
and wood, and proceeded to construct a cube about 18 inches across
each side. It was substantial. I knew my father would have a delightful
time getting inside. The wooden box completed and packed, I went to
the base post office and shipped it. Anyone wanting to check it for con-
traband would have a major task getting inside.
We visited the famed Shepherds Hotel, a beautiful, large wooden
building that was a favorite lodging place for the British military. A resi-
dent delighted in telling a story of a British officer who was court-mar-
tialed for chasing an Egyptian girl around the balcony while both the
officer and the girl were nude. His defense attorney succeeded in getting
the officer found innocent of any charges, however, by citing a British
army regulation that required officers to “dress according to the sport in
which they are engaged.”
While in Cairo, I posted a letter each week to my mother.
Censorship of military mail in Cairo was tougher than I experienced
anywhere else. The U.S. Army must have had officers with so little to do
that they gave them censor duties to keep them busy. When I returned
home, my mother showed me all the letters I had written. Any references
that could reveal my location had been deleted. Nothing remained of my
description of the Suez Canal, the pyramids, the Sphinx, camels, famed
Shepherds Hotel, or the fancy night club. Censorsorship was total. As a
result, my folks knew nothing of my stay in Egypt until the box contain-
ing the perfume and the broken chess set arrived.

ONE OF THE BEST PURCHASES that Major Black made in Cairo was a case of
Canadian Club whiskey. An ample supply of every brand was available,
but Canadian Club was what the guys back in Algiers had requested. The
case was placed carefully in the rear of the B-25 near the tail gunner’s tur-
ret. Two weeks passed. We paid little attention to how Sgt. Jernigan
occupied his time until we were short of money and no longer could

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patronize the officers’ club bar. Major Black agreed that we could take
one bottle of Canadian Club from the case. Captain Ford volunteered to
go for the booze. In a few minutes, he returned to the officers’ club.
“The case is empty,” he reported.
An immediate call for Sgt. Jernigan revealed why there was no more
Canadian Club. The crew chief spent every moment he was not search-
ing for a replacement battery sacked out in the B-25 enjoying the bever-
age. His search for the battery held a lower priority than did his enjoy-
ment of the Canadian Club whiskey. Major Black was philosophical.
“The guys in Algiers will have to go without,” he commented.
With the whiskey gone, two searches gained our atttention. The first
was for a battery for the B-25. The second was for money. We had
befriended the mess sergeant at the club. He never objected to our raid-
ing his kitchen after hours for leftovers so we would not starve. But cash
was required to purchase drinks at the bar.
We tried for a partial payment. The base finance officer refused us,
explaining that we had no papers to justify a payment. “We don’t have
papers because we thought we’d be gone only four days,” we retorted. Our
pleas were for naught. The finance officer refused to budge.

CAPTAIN FORD WAS AN ALCOHOLIC. He sometimes was so desperate for a

drink that he used his handkerchief to sop up drinks others spilled at the
bar. He squeezed every drop from his handkerchief into his glass and
sipped it contentedly. During one of his sober moments, Captain Ford
told us that he was a winner at poker. None of us had seen him play, but
he seemed our only hope. We pooled our resources and produced
$46.00. The following night, we used $2 to buy a drink for the little cap-
tain, and we handed the remaining cash to him as his kitty. Then we
watched while he began playing in the poker game that took place every
evening in the club.
Ford kept playing while ordering drink after drink. After an hour,
we were encouraged. At least he was not yet broke. In fact, he had won
enough to pay for all his drinks. Three hours later, we walked up, told

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Ford it was bedtime, and cashed in his chips. He had won over $250!
That’s how we financed the remainder of our stay in Cairo. We counted
our cash during the evening meal, took out $50 for Ford and his next
poker game, and then shared his winnings before hitting the sack.

“I’VE GOT A BATTERY!” Sgt. Jernigan reported. I volunteered to help the

sergeant get the battery. It was at the far end of the ramp, a full mile away.
We borrowed a tug—one of those four-wheeled, low-slung tractors that
are used for towing airplanes. With me hanging on as best I could, the
sergeant drove the tug down the ramp, stopped, and minutes later
returned from a hangar with a battery in his arms. He placed it on the
back of the tug.
“How about I drive back?” I suggested.
“I don’t know,” said Sgt. Jernigan. “This thing has a quick clutch.”
“Don’t worry,” I reassured the sergeant. “I’ll handle it.”
I climbed on the seat, started the engine, pushed in the clutch,
placed the shift in low gear, let the clutch out slowly, and the tug leaped
forward spilling the battery and Sgt. Jernigan to the ground.
“Are you hurt?” I asked, seeing the pained expression of Sgt.
Jernigan’s face.
“Not me,” he repled, “but the battery is ruined.” It lay on its side with
fluid streaming from a large crack.
The other three officers were not concerned about another delay.
They were content to stay in Cairo and let the war pass them by.

OVER THREE WEEKS after we departed Algiers, we had another battery, and
we left Cairo. Lt. Dunn piloted the B-25. Major Black and Captain Ford
flew the P-40s. I flew as copilot of the B-25, pulling up the gear, watching
the gauges, and doing whatever Lt. Dunn directed. We learned quickly
that the radios in all three airplanes operated only intermittently. We had
to depend on sight to keep up with each other. Sgt. Jernigan stayed in the
back of the bomber, content to catch up on his sleep. Our range was lim-
ited to that permitted by the internal fuel tanks of the P-40s.

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It was a beautiful day. Flying westward past Alexandria, we saw the

Mediterranean Sea on our right. To the left and ahead were endless miles
of desert. Below, we saw fortifications and tank tracks left from
Rommel’s futile attempt to capture Cairo and the Suez Canal. It was a
desolate looking landscape. A question entered my mind. How long
would we survive if we went down? Would starvation or thirst get us
first? There was no reason to worry. All three planes flew smoothly over
the African desert. Sgt. Jernigan continued to sleep peacefully in the rear
of the bomber.
We’d flown more than 200 miles. Soon after crossing the border
between Egypt and Libya, we saw our first refueling stop—Marble Arch.
The field was named for a beautiful marble arch that Mussolini had built
prior to the Axis invasion of Egypt. His plan was for victorious Italians to
march through the arch on their way to the Suez. The war had not pro-
ceeded as Mussolini had expected.
The Marble Arch airfield had a single runway. At its north end was
a large stack of barrels. We checked a windsock, and it indicated a breeze
from the north. Lt. Dunn flew a wide pattern, slowed the B-25 on final,
and made a fairly short landing, braking to a stop about 30 yards from
the barrels. From that distance, we read labels on the barrels. They were
filled with aviation fuel—gasoline! If a plane overshot the runway, the
resulting collision with the petrol-filled barrels would have been spec-
tacular. Major Black and Captain Ford landed quickly, rolled to a stop,
and followed us to a tie-down area near several tents. Not a soul was in
sight. We climbed from our planes, and still no one greeted us. Puzzled,
we walked to the largest tent and looked inside.
“I say, mates, come join us for tea!”
The invitation came from one of 20 British soldiers who were
seated at a table enjoying tea and crumpets—whatever crumpets
might be. We explained we wanted to refuel and be on our way. The
Brits told us courteously but clearly that no refueling would be done
until after tea time. Resigned to the delay, we joined them for their
mid-afternoon repast.

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When tea time was over, the British poured gasoline from barrels
into cans and from the cans into the fuel tanks of all three planes. They
were hospitable but in no hurry. Thirty minutes later, we started engines,
taxied to the runway, and the P-40s followed the B-25 into the air.
Another 250 miles across the desert brought us to Benghazi, a name
made famous by the battles between the British and Germans.
Americans manned the airfield, and our planes were refueled quickly. It
was late afternoon, however, so Major Black decided we should spend the
night there.
There was little to do or see at the Benghazi field. The American
contingent was small, and nearly everyone—officer and enlisted—gath-
ered in a small building used as a club. The most exciting thing we saw
was a cute, little hedgehog tamed by one of the enlisted men. The animal,
its spines bristling, ran from one person to another. The spines were not
barbed and were packed so tightly that the hedgehog could be handled
with no danger of being speared. The only place to pet the little fellow
was its head.
We were up early the next morning debating whether to fly straight
across the Mediterranean 250 miles to Misratah or take a long route
south, then northwest along the coast to Misratah. Common sense pre-
vailed. Unanimously, we voted to follow the shoreline to Misratah and
then to Tripoli.
After 300 miles of boring flight, we saw Tripoli ahead. About 20
miles south of the city was a British-manned airbase. We landed without
incident, and climbed from the planes into the hottest air I had experi-
enced. There was hardly any vegetation. Everything was housed in
tents—British made—with double walls and top. Air in the space
between the two tent walls heated during the day and rose to escape
through a ventilating hole at the peak of the tent. The circulation kept the
interior of the tent surprisingly comfortable.
Major Black decided we should stay overnight before continuing to
Tunis. He wanted to go into Tripoli, but British officers in operations rec-
ommended that we stay on the base. The Libyans in Tripoli did not like

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 A Pilot’s Story

Americans. A nighttime visit was definitely inadvisable. Again common

sense prevailed. With nothing else to do, we hit the sack early.
The remainder of our mission was routine. We flew west along the
Libyan coast into Tunisia, then north to Tunis. Americans refueled our
planes quickly, and we flew westward into Algeria, finally finishing our
mission at the Algiers airport.
No one in MATS explained why the three airplanes were wanted in
Algiers. The P-40 no longer was used in combat. The B-25 certainly was
too shop-worn for battle. We didn’t care. We were back “home” after an
interesting but not really exciting visit to Cairo.

EVERYTHING IN MY ROOM in our barracks at Algiers was just as I left it.

Bob Bass seemed glad to see me. He explained that Bill Murphy had
complained so much about living in the French barracks that the hous-
ing officer had put him in a room in the city. Bob was the only officer left
in the barracks. Although he was not thrilled with my company, it was
better than being alone.
Bill was delighted with his apartment in town. “I thought I was
going to have to eat in the mess in town,” he said, “but when I woke the
first morning a good looking girl opened the door and invited me to
breakfast.”
“What did you do?” I asked with interest.
“I ate breakfast with her, of course,” Bill replied. “She was my landlady.”
It was 10 days later when Bill announced he had gonorrhea and
went on sick call. “A couple of nights after I moved into that room, the
girl came in and said she was cold. I told her to get warm in the bed with
me, and she did. We’ve been sleeping together ever since,” he explained.
The medics used a new sulfur drug on Bill and quickly cured his
VD. He seemed little concerned about contracting the disease, other than
wanting it cured before he returned to the States and his wife.

MATS OPERATIONS IN ALGIERS received word that Mount Vesuvius just

outside Naples had blown its top in a spectacular fashion. Lava was flow-

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 MATS Home of the Ferry Pilots

ing down the sides of the volcano, and clouds of acid dust were blowing
downward from its peak. The last reported wind was from the southwest,
so the eruption was considered no obstacle for our flying P-39s to the
332nd Fighter Group near Naples.
Three of us left Algiers, refueled at Tunis, crossed the water to
Catania on Sicily and refueled a second time. Then we crossed the Straits
of Messina and started up the west coast of Italy. Thirty miles from
Naples the sky was hazy, but I could follow the coastline. I lost the other
two planes in the haze, but I continued toward Naples. A mistake! The
gray haze grew thicker. I flew below 500 feet to keep the coast in sight.
When it began to fade away, I dropped lower, and soon was flying at a
hundred feet and less. Our radios were not set up to communicate with
any receiver in Italy. We had no navigational equipment. We had fuel to
get to Naples, but it was too little to search out other landing fields.
I was startled to see ships below me. To my left and right were bar-

Mount Vesuvius, a volcano near Naples, blew its stack in early 1944. It succeeded in a fete the Germans were
unable to equal—destroying an entire group of B-25 bombers at one time. A combination of bad luck and stu-
pidity enabled me to cooperate with the volcano in making a total mess of a P-39 Aeracobra I was flying.

89
 A Pilot’s Story

rage balloons tethered to the ships. Steel cables hung from the balloons,
ready to tangle with any German plane that attempted a low level run at
Naples harbor. My P-39 was not German, and I prayed that the antiair-
craft gunners guarding the ships and harbor recognized it as American.
I knew there were high hills, including Mount Vesuvius, near Naples har-
bor, so I poured on the coal, climbed steeply into the gray, and set a
course northward over the water. In just minutes, I was in the clear with
beautiful sunshine brightening my day. Some time during the day, while
we were enroute from Algiers, the wind had changed direction and car-
ried the pumice and smoke from Vesuvius into our flight path. I looked
at the huge smoke screen, saw that everything was clear to the north, and
flew around the gray cloud. Thirty miles inland, I found an airfield and
landed. I was completely surprised. It was headquarters for the 332nd
Fighter Group!
The Tuskegee Airmen were not happy with the condition of the
Airacobra. Grit in the gray cloud had taken all the paint from the lead-
ing edges of the wings, rudder, and horizontal stabilizers. The propeller
was pitted beyond repair. The wind screen was sand-blasted until it was
nearly opaque. Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin Davis, the group com-
mander, stopped talking with a some pilots and walked around the plane.
He never said a word. He just shook his head, turned his back on the P-
39, and resumed his conversation with the pilots. Nevertheless, the
332nd maintenance officer signed for the plane.
I worried needlessly about the fate of my two buddies. A hundred
miles south of Naples, they decided to take a sight-seeing flight around
Mount Vesuvius, starting with the south and east sides. The air was clear
in that area, because of the unanticipated change in wind direction.
When they saw Naples covered with gray smoke, they landed at a
bomber base and avoided my problem.
In Naples, we heard that a B-25 Mitchell group based just south of
Vesuvius was not so lucky. Its commander was on leave in Cairo when
the volcano began to rumble, giving warning of the mighty eruption
soon to follow. Members of the bomb group called their commander for

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permission to evacuate the base.

“That mountain has been there hundreds of years and nothing has
happened,” the commander assured his men. “Don’t worry about it.” A
day later the rumblings increased.
“Colonel, we ought to move our planes,” the group operations offi-
cer warned. The commander, reluctant to cut short his R&R, again
refused permission to evacuate the base.
Mount Vesuvius exploded. All sorts of crud blew out its top, and a
great amount rained down on the parked B-25s. Then there was no need
to move them. The acid grit in the dust ate into the aluminum skins of
the Mitchell bombers, making the planes a total loss.
There was some of that story that we could not believe. We knew
that pilots—including commanders—enjoy a good leave to the extent
that they wait until the last minute before returning to duty; but we also
knew that Air Corps pilots love their airplanes enough to disobey a com-
mander’s order so their planes can be saved. Some of the B-25s may have
been lost, but all of them? Never?
Mount Vesuvius was a spectacular sight at night. During the day,
dull gray lava flowed down its sides. At night it was bright red and
orange. Lightning played in the clouds of smoke that spewed from the
volcano’s top. It was worth an extra night in Naples to enjoy the awe-
some sight.
By my next flight into Naples, the air around the volcano was clear.
We flew low over the slopes watching the lava as it flowed down the sides
of Vesuvius. When it came to a rock wall, the lava slowed momentarily,
then either pushed the wall down or flowed over it and continued on
down the hill. I could understand how Pompei was destroyed by fast-
moving lava. I wondered whether it would happen again.

FERRY FLIGHTS INTO NAPLES usually ended in late afternoon. We signed in

at operations and headed for an Army hotel. Accommodations were ade-
quate at the hotel—better than we had in Algiers. Actually, accommoda-

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tions anywhere were better than we had at Algiers. Food was above aver-
age. Occasionally air raid sirens blared, but antiaircraft fire was a rarity.
There was one night to remember when our lack of concern about
German bombers nearly proved costly. We had been in the sack for about
an hour when sirens sounded. We heard antiaircraft guns blasting.
“It’s too late to worry about now,” I advised Bill Murphy, who was
sharing the room with me. “I suggest we sleep.”
Then came a series of major explosions. The room shook. Windows
rattled. We heard a plane fly low overhead. Then silence. We went back
to sleep.
The next morning we walked from the hotel to the airport. Along
the way we came on hordes of Italians furiously digging through the
remains of an apartment building. A GI explained that the commotion
during the night was caused by a German bomber that had attempted a
night run on the Naples harbor. It had been hit by antiaircraft fire and
jettisoned its bombs as it glided low across the city. One of the bombs hit
the apartment building, which tumbled in on itself. Somewhere in the
rubble was an American soldier and an Italian girl. There was adequate
space for them to escape from under the rubble, but both refused.
A triumphant shout rose from the Italian rescuers. They removed
the last barrier between the couple and freedom. Then there was
laughter as they led the GI and the girl, both wrapped in sheets, into
the sunlight. They laughed even more as they explained that the cou-
ple had been in bed in a third floor room when the bomb hit the build-
ing. The building collapsed, and the couple fell three stories. Somehow
their bed landed atop the two, protecting them from all the beams,
bricks, mortar, and debris that covered them. The reason they were
reluctant to leave their refuge was that both were stark naked, and they
preferred remaining secluded in the wreckage to having the world see
them without clothes.

MY NORMAL CONTACT with the MATS major had been to pick up orders

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 MATS Home of the Ferry Pilots

to ferry a P-39 or P-47 to a combat unit in Italy. But one day there were
no ferry orders.
“Pack your bags,” said the major. “You’re shipping out.”
I looked at him blankly. “Shipping to where?”
“You’re being transferred to the 15th Air Force,” the major contin-
ued. “Here are your orders.”
There were about a dozen of us in MATS operations that morning.
We had come expecting the major to give us another of his lectures on
the importance of looking neat and shaving daily. Instead we learned that
our days as ferry pilots were ended. We were going to a combat unit. The
major actually looked sad to see us leave.
Packing took little time. Without a parachute, there was room in our
parachute bags for whatever we had acccumulated since landing in
Algiers. We reported back to operations, each of us with three bags: a B-4
bag with most of our clothes, a duffel bag, and a parachute bag—plus our
footlockers. We boarded a C-47, sat in bucket seats, and tried to look
bored as it taxied to the runway, ran up its engines, and made its takeoff
run. I peered out a window for a last look at Maison Blanc airport and the
city of Algiers, then settled back to wonder what the future held for me.
There were both happiness and concern over what my new assign-
ment might bring. I had trained for combat, wanted combat, and now I
was going to experience combat. Could I measure up?

93
94
 The Fabulous
Checkertail
Clan

APRIL 9, 1944, I had completed three months of flying air-

O
N
planes across North Africa and southern Italy for MATS. Now,
with orders in hand, I rejoiced that at last I would be doing the
kind of flying I had trained for—combat! We had only a day to pack our
gear and be ready to move out. It took hardly an hour. We polished our
gold second lieutenant bars until they gleamed, and we were ready for a
new life as combat fighter pilots.
The name of my best friend, Bill Murphy from Winston-Salem,
North Carolina, was on the orders with mine. Hank Greve from Upper
Manhattan, New York City; Bob Bass from Mt. Juliet, Tennessee; Jack
Barrett, Dave Hanson, and Art Fitch also were on the list that included a
total of twelve who had crossed the Atlantic with me and were assigned
to MATS.
April 10 was a long day. We had reported to operations early in the
morning, but it was mid-afternoon before we boarded a C-47 waiting on
the ramp. The pristine major who had lost patience with us so many
times gave us a quick salute as he stood in the door of Operations. We
threw salutes back and buckled ourselves in the bucket seats, and waited
for take-off.
The trip from Algiers to Foggia, Italy, was without incident. It was
near dark when we left the plane at Foggia to crawl into the back of a

95
 A Pilot’s Story

deuce-and-a-half truck. An officer, rank unknown, checked the roster to

be certain only those whose names were on orders were present. In a few
minutes, the truck was bouncing along rough Italian roads, but the
bumps never kept us from dozing.
After what seemed an eternity, the truck’s gears clashed a final time,
the brakes screeched, and we climbed over the tailgate to the ground. An
officer greeted us.
“Welcome to the 325th Fighter Group,” he said. Then he called
names to go to the 317th Squadron—Bass, Barrett, Davis, Greve,
Murphy—four more to go to the 318th, and the final three to the 319th.
Too tired to listen well, we loaded into a 3/4-ton truck and, after a short
ride, found ourselves in the middle of a tent area.
“Davis, you and Murphy will be in the last tent on the right. Bass,
yours is the third on the left.” He assigned Greve and Barrett to other
tents. This was our introduction, in the darkness, to the world’s finest
fighter squadron. Bill and I checked our dirt-floored tent. It contained a
small table, two cots, two folding chairs, and a small cast iron stove. The
tent was lighted by a single 40-watt incandescent bulb.
We were hungry. Overcome with weariness, however, we pulled
blankets from our barracks bags, spread them over the canvas cots, fell
on them, and quickly fell asleep, more tired than hungry, taking time
only to remove our shoes.
The next morning, we looked over the squadron area. Nothing
fancy. Absolutely nothing that looked anything like the facilities used by
fighter pilots in motion pictures. Squadron headquarters was a small
two-room building constructed of concrete bricks. The mess was in a
Quonset hut. Officers’ tents were aligned in two rows. The tent area was
void of grass except along a ditch by a dirt road on the south side of the
squadron area.
A half mile away, we saw P-47 Thunderbolts parked on each side of
PSP (pierced steel planking) taxiways. A small wooden control tower
stood on the far side of the PSP runway. We were happy to see
Thunderbolts on the flight line. We had flown them during fighter train-

96
 The Fabulous Checkertail Clan

ing at Fort Myers, Florida, and we had logged many hours ferrying them
from Casablanca and Algiers to combat units during a threee months
with the Mediterranean Air Transport Service. All the P-47s were razor-
backs and were painted green except one that was pure silver. It was
assigned to Warren Penny, and its name was Bad Penny. I loved that
name, because “a bad penny always returns”. I felt good knowing we were
to fly the Thunderbolt, nicknamed “Jug” because of its milk bottle shape.
The tails of the fighters were painted with a yellow and black checker-
board design, which was distinctive and made it easy to identify the
group that was flying the planes.
Officers began appearing from the rows of tents, stretching and
smiling toward the sun. We followed them to the Quonset hut that
served as the mess hall, where we were disappointed to find powdered
eggs to be the breakfast feature. But there was coffee—plenty of coffee.
We envied the easy camaraderie of older pilots. In most flying units, the
age of pilots was gauged more by flying experience than by chronologi-
cal years. Several pilots were talking about an early departure for home.
We wondered if we could be as relaxed after we flew our first missions.
On a wall of the Quonset was a roster listing pilots and leaders
assigned to flights. A picture of a black panther adorned another
wall. We were told it was a proposed squadron emblem that had
never been approved.
After breakfast, I adjourned to the four-holer that stood inside a
small tent by the road and enjoyed my morning constitutional. The mil-
itary promotes regularity. We found a 5-gallon GI can containing water.
Bill Murphy and I took it to our tent, fired up the small, gasoline-fueled,
cast iron stove that stood in the middle of the tent, and heated water in
my helmet. Then I shaved. Now fed and clean-shaven, I began exploring
the area with Bill.
We looked forward to our first noon meal with the 317th Fighter
Squadron. After enduring powdered eggs for breakfast, dinner had to be
good. We had watched training films during our Aviation Cadet days
that emphasized a good, balanced diet, which would generate no gas that

97
 A Pilot’s Story

could bloat the belly and be painful. One film seen during Preflight train-
ing had showed a B-17 bomber that met near disaster after its crew
enjoyed a wild, all-night party. The crew ate, drank, and made merry
(along with Sally, Susan, and Elizabeth). Only the copilot was a good boy
who behaved himself and went to bed early. During an early dawn mis-
sion, one after another of the crew was incapacitated. The pilot, having
eaten the wrong foods during the party, was doubled with pain as his guts
complained of the shits, called the “GIs” in polite society. The navigator,
bombardier, and six gunners also were too far gone to know or care what
was happening. The heroic copilot took the controls and brought the
plane safely home, saving a beautiful Flying Fortress and its disabled
crew for another day. The moral of the movie was to avoid excessive
booze and eat only those foods that would not fill your guts with gas. It
did not condemn a life that could include loving it up with females.
“Hallelujah!” we exclaimed. “We are going to eat good at this long-
range, high-altitude, Thunderbolt-flying fighter squadron.” At noon we
rushed to the Quonset hut, sat down, and our faces fell. The meal was
sauerkraut and wieners! A week later, a new officers’ mess constructed of
concrete blocks was com-
pleted by Italian workers. It
doubled as our squadron
officers’ club where we gath-
ered after missions and at
night for poker and bull ses-
sions.
The runway at Lesina ran downhill toward
the bottom of the photo. It and the taxi-
ways were constructed of PSP matting.
Seen at top left center is the tent area of the
317th Fighter Squadron. The knobs on
each side of the taxiways are where our
airplanes were parked, usually three to a
revetment. The 325th Fighter Group occu-
pied this site for over a year, and relations
between the small Town of Lesina and the
Air Corps units were so good that the town
plans to erect a monument to the group in
early 2014.

98
 The Fabulous Checkertail Clan

THE TOWN OF LESINA sat on the south shore near the western end of Lake
Lesina, a shallow lagoon located just west of the spur of Italy. The lake
ran nearly east-west parallel to the Adriatic coast, separated from the sea
by a low strip of coastal vegetation. The lagoon was about 13.5 miles
long, one to two miles wide, and no more than six feet in its deepest spot.
Our field also was near the western end of the lake west of the town of
Lesina. The runway sloped downhill toward the lake, with the south end
about 60 feet lower than the north end. South was the direction of most
of our takeoffs regardless of wind direction. Group headquarters and the
318th squadron were located on the west side of the field. The 317th
Squadron was on the south end of the field with the 319th between the
local “grand highway” and the lake.
The 325th Group had moved to Foggia, Italy, from Cape Bon,
Tunisia, in late December 1943, just prior to the date I had debarked
from the troop ship at Casablanca. After several days at Foggia Main, the
317th Squadron moved to another Foggia base, 10 miles north of Foggia.
On March 29, 1944, less than a month before I joined the squadron, the
Checkertails had come to Lesina. Everyone was working to improve their
tents and other areas.

A DAY AFTER I JOINED THE 317TH, a dapper looking major with no wings
on his chest named Oliver Kaufman directed us new arrivals to the tent
of Major Herschel H. Green, the squadron commander. We had our first
look at the legendary fighter pilot. He was with the 325th Group when it
crossed the Atlantic on an aircraft carrier in January 1943 and had flown
a P-40 off the carrier. The previous day, one of the older pilots told us a
little about Major Herky Green, the leading Ace of the Mediterranean
Theatre. He became commander of the 317th on March 25, 1944, just
days before its move to Lesina. Lesina was the most advanced air base in
Italy belonging to the 15th Air Force. We were eager to see Major Green,
but we were a bit disappointed. He was three inches taller than I was,
much thinner, had a somewhat beaked nose, and looked older than his
23 years. His tent was not fancy, especially considering that he was the

99
 A Pilot’s Story

squadron commander. The wall tent’s only special feature was a small
AM radio, salvaged from a wrecked fighter, which was tuned to Axis Sal
and her American songs.
“Sit down,” invited Major Green. He shook hands with each of us.
“Welcome,” he continued. “I want to tell you that the German air force
isn’t through. Their pilots are good, and they are dangerous. Don’t let
anyone tell you they are finished.” After a few more words of wisdom,
Major Green indicated we could leave, and we did.
Later I asked about the major with no wings who had introduced us
to Major Green. “Who is that officer who acts like he is in charge and wears
suede shoes?” I learned that fighter squadrons had non-rated executive
officers who ran ground operations. Oliver Kaufman was heir to a
Pennsylvania department store fortune. His uniforms always were immac-
ulate. They fitted him perfectly. I never saw him in issue clothing, and he
never wore regulation boots. Instead he wore brown suede shoes. His
clothes were tailored and came straight from Kaufman Department Store
in Pittsburgh. In a low key manner, he did his job efficiently and well.
My love was flying. I cared little for whatever it took to run the
squadron, so long as there was food at meal times and airplanes to fly.
Major Kaufman made certain the fuel tanks for our tent stoves were sup-
plied with gasoline, the water tank at the shower was never empty, and
the mess section did its job. There were airplanes to fly whenever I want-
ed to get in the air. I had found a happy home.

BILL MURPHY Was two or three years older than I was. We were tent
mates, the first time we had bunked together since he moved out of our
room in Algiers to escape the bickering between Bob Bass and me. I
liked him. He was the closest of my friends in the squadron. Bill left
what he described as a great job with Wachovia Bank in Winston-
Salem, North Carolina, to enlist in the Air Corps, and he was a good
pilot, not prone to take chances and quick to learn. He wrote almost
daily to his wife, and seeing Bill pen daily letters prompted me to send
weekly messages to my mother.

100
 The Fabulous Checkertail Clan

A day after our arrival, Major Kaufman said we would be wise to dig
foxholes beside our tents. The S2 Intelligence Officer had learned the
Germans planned a raid on American air fields.The squadron area never
had been strafed or bombed by the Luftwaffe, but he thought it best to be
prepared. Bill and I borrowed shovels from the supply room and began
digging the tough, compacted soil. Older pilots grinned as they watched
us sweat. Two hours later, our foxhole was barely 6 inches deep. Lt. John
Phillips, the assistant intelligence officer, suggested that we hire an Italian
to dig the hole. We did, at a cost of 100 lire—worth $1—and soon we had
a foxhole four feet deep, six feet long, and two feet wide with beautiful
square corners. Fortunately, we never had to use the foxhole, but it was
ready if needed.
Bill and I experimented with various burner designs for our cast
iron tent stove. We both were ignorant about how burners should be
constructed. We positioned rocks inside the stove so that aviation
gasoline could drip on a hot surface and burn easily. It worked. Of
course, aviation gasoline would burn on anything! Our experience
was better than that of some pilots who suffered loss of tents and
belongings when overheated stoves exploded, setting their tents on
fire. At intervals, our tents were coated with a waterproofing com-
pound that kept water out but could burn with alacrity. It was not
unusual when returning from a mission to see a tall plume of black
smoke rising from one of the squadron areas marking another tent
lost to fire.
We made our tent much larger by extending the side flaps to walls
we built from wing tank shipping crates. Three miles from our base, Bill
Murphy and I found a large stack of concrete blocks which we liberated.
We borrowed a jeep trailer, fastened it to our jeep, loaded the blocks on
the trailer, and hauled them back to our tent where they became a very
nice floor. The extra tent space and raised floor were fine improvements.
Small animals that some identified as ferrets took residence in the spaces
inside the concrete blocks, but we did not object, because we never again
encountered a mouse or rat in our tent.

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 A Pilot’s Story

Electricity was produced by a small generator located beside the

mess hall. The squadron wire section did a good job stringing electric
wires from tent to tent so that we all enjoyed the benefit of electric light-
ing with a 40 watt bulb. Sharing it equally proved a problem. Some offi-
cers cheated by using higher wattage bulbs, which overloaded the small
generator and choked it down. Many nights, we listened as the generator
labored slower and slower, finally giving a gasp and then—silence. Yells
were heard up and down the tent row: “Who’s using a damned big light
bulb?” Ten or fifteen minutes later, the generator was restarted after an
oversized bulb was replaced.
A souvenir many of us brought back to the States from Italy was
malaria. The flight surgeon made certain that we took daily doses of
atabrine, a yellow tablet that did not prevent malaria but kept malaria’s
symptoms under control. It is fortunate the Army had the medicine
because Lake Lesina was reputed to be the second worst malaria area in
the Mediterranean Theater. Mosquitoes learned that lights in our tents
were beacons leading to a pilots’ tender flesh. Every evening through the
spring, summer, and early fall, mosquitoes swarmed over us. We often
wrote letters home telling of our battles with the huge mosquitoes, and,
unlike fishermen, we never had to exaggerate the size of our attackers.
The Army also provided insect repellent—a sticky liquid in a small
glass bottle. Rather than repel mosquitoes and other insects, it seemed to
attract them. We soaked pieces of paper in the fluid and hung the paper
around the tent as fly paper. For that purpose, the repellent proved ideal.
We slept under mosquito netting. Before hitting the sack, we
sprayed bug killer all around our cots, then lifted the mosquito netting to
dive into bed. If we were quick, only a few mosquitoes were able to fol-
low us under the netting. Soon they had became stuffed with our blood,
and they stopped biting.
Our squadron supply sergeant was ingenious. He made periodic
trips to an Air Corps supply dump near Foggia to draw whatever he could
that was useful to our squadron. He noted that guards at the exit seldom
bothered to check trucks that were fully loaded. To avoid wasting time

102
 The Fabulous Checkertail Clan

having his load checked, the sergeant gathered whatever was unguarded
inside the fenced area and piled it on his deuce-and-a-half until it was
near top-heavy. The guards never stopped him as he drove through the
gate. It was interesting seeing what unrequisitioned items he brought
home. One day, he was surprised to unload large cartons containing air
mattresses, which were distributed to members of the squadron. We slept
much better on air mattresses than on bare canvas cots.
We were proud of our squadron shower. It was an engineering mar-
vel. Housed in a tent on the edge of the officers’ area, the shower was a
welcomed respite from the dust, grime, and mud that was Italy. Drums
were filled with water. A small pump powered by a gasoline engine
forced the water from the drums to pipes that divided the water so that
some went through a gasoline heater while the remainder bypassed the
heater. An Italian was hired to monitor the water temperature. He adjust-
ed valves on the water lines to keep the water at an acceptable degree of
warmth. He was prone to wander and often permitted the water temper-
ature to vary. When either scalding or frigid water reached the showers,
purple language brought the Italian rushing back to his post.
Next to the shower, another Italian worked as squadron barber. He
wasn’t an expert, but at least he cut hair without knicking a pilot’s head.
The barber was assisted by his small son. After completing a shave, the
barber beckoned, and his son splashed cognac on the face of the shavee.
We never knew the origin or name of the cognac, but from the way it
burned, we knew it was near 200 proof.
You couldn’t be shy in the military. Toilet facilities were rudimenta-
ry. On mission days, our last moments before takeoff were in the john
(latrine, to you fastidious types), which was situated near operations on
the flight line. Ours was not fancy, but we were proud of it. We boasted a
6-holer, while the best other squadrons could do were 4-holers.
The john that stood beside the road near our officers’ tents wasn’t as
fancy—just a box with four holes placed over a big hole in the ground
and concealed in a small canvas tent. Some of our best conversations
were enjoyed there while we sat side by side during deep meditation,

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pants dropped to our ankles. There were interruptions. More than once,
an Italian woman pulled the tent flap open, stuck her head inside, held a
basket in front of a sitting pilot, and asked, “Eggs, Joe?” Such an event
could take a guy’s mind off the task at hand.
The 325th Fighter Group had a dentist, and, at designated times, we
were ordered to report to him for dental check-ups. The dentist worked
in a small tent with a sign over its entrance that read: “Dr. Jeckyl and
Corporal Hyde.” The dentist was good, but his equipment looked as
though it were salvaged from the Civil War. Nothing electric there! If a
tooth required drilling for a filling, Dr. Jeckyl lifted his drill and ordered,
“Go!” Corporal Hyde pedaled hard, the drill began spinning, and work
progressed. I was lucky. Dr. Jeckyl looked inside my mouth, probed with
a sharp pick, and asked if any of my many fillings caused trouble at high
altitude. When I said, “No,” he sent me on my way.

DURING MY FIRST DAYS with the 317th Fighter Squadron, I enjoyed a half
dozen orientation flights, growing familiar with the location of the air-
field and the surrounding area. On April 16, 1944, I flew my first mission
helping provide withdrawal support for B-24s attacking Brasov,
Yugoslavia. We met no opposition, but two aircraft were lost for
unknown reasons. Flight Officer Jack Barrett, who had joined the 317th
with me, was last seen losing altitude at 2,000 feet over Yugoslavia. He
was lucky. He made a wheels-up landing with his Thunderbolt and was
rescued by friendly Chetniks whom he accompanied while they fought
both the Germans and the Partisans, a Yugoslav military group under
Tito. Jack was back with our squadron two weeks later. He was returned
immediately to the States per Air Corps policy with no opportunity for
more flying in the European Theater.
Herky Green thought it wrong that the Air Corps chose to make
some flight school graduates Flight Officers while others were commis-
sioned as Second Lieutenants. As quickly as regulations permitted, he
commissioned Flight Officers. It meant a cut in pay for the new lieu-
tenants, because Flight Officers received the same basic and flight pay as

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Second Lieutenants, but they enjoyed a 20% increase for combat pay
compared with only a 10% increase for commissioned officers. But no
Flight Officer complained of being commissioned. Jack was one of the
very few Flight Officers in the 317th Squadron who went down on a mis-
sion before the paper work providing a commission could be completed.
Jack was a friendly, introverted Irishman who enjoyed time away
from us more exuberant types. He also missed his big family, which
included many younger brothers and sisters. On non-mission days, he
walked to the little town of Lesina, where there were lots of youngsters.
He took his candy ration with him. One day, riding through Lesina, we
found Jack’s favorite part of town. He was sitting on the curb while 20 lit-
tle Italians marched briskly to and fro, doing turns, flank movements,
and following other marching commands as Jack barked orders. When
their performance pleased him, Jack rewarded the children with candy.
Jack’s stay with the Chetniks in Yugoslavia left him with varied
memories. Almost before the dust settled from his wheels-up landing,
Chetniks were busy with axes salvaging the machine guns and ammuni-
tion from the wings of his wrecked Thunderbolt. That task completed,
the Chetniks took everything else they thought they could use from the
Thunderbolt and set it afire.
Jack traveled with the Chetniks from place to place. It was a large
force that eagerly sought battle with the Germans who occupied that part
of their country. The Chetnik leader, Dragoljub “Draza” Mihailovic, had
no use for Tito and his Partisans, who had Communist leanings and
Soviet backing; and, even though both forces were from the same coun-
try, the Chetniks fought the Partisans with fervor equal to that they
showed when fighting the Germans.
One day, a particularly fierce battle with German troops ended with
over a hundred German soldiers captured by the Chetniks, who ordered
their prisoners to dig a long, deep trench. When the trench was com-
pleted, the German prisoners were lined facing it. As Jack watched in
horror, the Chetniks shot the Germans in their knees causing them to
tumble head first into the trench. With smiles, the Chetniks calmly shov-

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eled dirt on the Germans and buried them alive.

Two nights before he was brought out of Yugoslavia on a C-47 with
other flyers who had been rescued by the Chetniks, Jack shared a room
with a German pilot who had parachuted from his plane and was cap-
tured by the Chetniks. The German knew he would be executed the fol-
lowing morning, but he spent the night calmly talking with Jack, sharing
Jack’s American-made cigarettes, and comparing aircraft and tactics. The
Me-109, he told Jack, had a nasty habit. In dives from altitude, the canopy
frosted over inside, leaving the pilot nearly blind just when he needed
visibility the most.
As dawn broke over Yugoslavia and the sun came up, Jack and the
German pilot finished their last cigarettes. Two Chetniks came for the
German and left with him marching ahead of them. After a few minutes,
Jack heard rifle fire. Two days later, Jack was back in Italy. The German
never made it home.

ON APRIL 18, I was flying my second combat mission on the left wing of
Captain Robert Clark, the leader of the third flight. It was a fighter sweep
of the Udine area. I hardly knew Captain Clark and had never flown with
him. The element was echeloned to the right. I was flying Captain Clark’s
left wing. The squadron formed quickly and turned on course north
across the Adriatic. Soon we ran into scud clouds, and I tacked in closer
to my leader. I was satisfied with my formation flying.
Clouds became more numerous, and Major Herky Green, leading
the squadron, circumnavigated the largest. The continuous turns scat-
tered the flights, but the four of us led by Captain Clark stuck together. I
was so near my flight leader that there was no opportunity to take my
eyes off his plane to see what was ahead. Then we were in total soup. The
clouds were thicker than I ever had seen. I barely saw the two-ship ele-
ment to the right of Captain Clark’s plane. His flying became erratic as he
attempted to fly on gauges while taking quick looks outside his cockpit
for other planes in the clouds. I inched the throttle forward when we
began climbing, then retarded it when Captain Clark began a left turn

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into me. As our airspeed dropped, Captain Clark increased his climb and
his turn toward me. I knew other Thunderbolts were in the soup with us.
I attempted to stay ultra close to Captain Clark’s left wing.
His turn tightened even more, and our climb angle increased. I kept
on his wing. My P-47 was on the inside of the turn, and my airspeed was
the least of any in the flight. I thought about breaking radio silence to ask
the captain to straighten up and fly right. Before I could key my mike, he
banked sharply toward me. I pulled back the throttle, my plane stalled,
and I was flying no longer. I was spinning down through solid clouds.
Frantically I looked at my instruments. The artificial horizon had
tumbled. Airspeed was erratic. The altimeter was unwinding. The nee-
dle was pegged to the left; the ball was far right. I glanced outside and
saw nothing but gray. Desperately I pulled the stick back, chopped
throttle, kicked right rudder, watched the needle finally come near
center; and then I popped the stick forward. With the airspeed show-
ing 300 mph, I pulled back the stick again and breathed a sigh of relief
to see the airspeed coming down to near cruise. But it didn’t stop at
cruise. The altimeter showed my altitude increasing rapidly, then more
slowly, and then the airspeed dropped to dead zero! I fell over into
another tight spin.
Five times I recovered, each time at a lower altitude, always in the
clouds. Five times I watched my airspeed drop to zero and cursed at the
subsequent stall and spin. After the fifth stall, I stared as the instruments
reflected my Thunderbolt’s crazy gyrations, and I thought, “If this
damned thing is going to act like this, I’ll just let it destroy itself!” The
mood lasted for barely an instant, and then I was back at work recover-
ing from a stall and desperately attempting to return to level flight.
My seventh effort was successful, but my frantic fight to gain con-
trol of the plane left me shaking. Still on instruments and in thick clouds,
I began a gradual climb from 1,000 feet. I set my gyro compass on the
heading shown on the magnetic compass. I caged and uncaged my arti-
ficial horizon, and it settled down nicely. My heart was pounding. I
climbed for 20 minutes at a gentle 400 feet a minute, holding course with

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the gyro compass. Then it dawned on me that I was flying due north,
doing great work of maintaining a constant heading but flying across
northern Italy on my way to the Alps mountains and away from our field
at Lesina.
Continuing to climb, I made a very gentle left turn, ending on a
180 degree heading. At 16,000 feet, I broke out of the clouds, and the
sun was the most beautiful orb I ever saw. A hundred miles further
south, solid clouds changed to broken, and I saw the Italian coast
through the breaks. Fifty miles further, there were only scattered
clouds, and Lake Lesina came into sight. I called for landing instruc-
tions, landed, and taxied to the tie-down with wing tanks still attached.
During my desperate struggle to regain control of the Thunderbolt, I
never thought of dropping them.
My crew chief, John Mooney, greeted me. “Lieutenant, we were get-
ting a little worried about you. Everybody else has been back 45 minutes.”
It was too much trouble trying to explain why I was late. I wasn’t
proud of my poor flying, and I felt lucky to be alive. Whatever the
Germans could throw at me could not compare with what weather had
done to me that day. I did take time to urge Captain Clark to be a little
easier on his wing men when flying in the soup.
Twelve P-47s had returned early because of the terrible weather, but
35 managed to climb to 27,000 feet, above the overcast, and get to the tar-
get, where they descended below the clouds and swept the target area.
Eleven enemy fighters were seen, and three were shot down before they
could escape.
That mission was my only serious encounter with weather during my
combat tour, but others were not as fortunate. There was a period when we
lost more aircraft and pilots to weather than we did to enemy action.

ON MAY 5, we provided escort and target cover for B-24s attacking the
marshalling yards at Turnul and Severin, Romania. We fought off
dozens of enemy fighters that were determined to get to the bombers
by diving through the bomber formations and zooming nearly straight

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up for subsequent attacks. Our guys destroyed four Me-109s, but Art
Fitch was seen bailing out of his plane. He was the second of my group
of 12 ferry pilots who failed to return from a mission. Art survived the
war as a POW.
The next day, the 325th Fighter Group provided cover for B-24s
returning from an attack on marshalling yards at Craiova, Romania. Our
flight to the target was uneventful, but, as we picked up the bombers, a
horde of Me-109s swarmed against our big friends. We dived toward the
enemy planes, and I latched onto a Messerschmidt 109. He tried to
escape by breaking right. My P-47 Thunderbolt bucked as I wrestled it
into an ever-tightening turn trying to get my gun sight to lead the flee-
ing plane. I jammed the throttle to its stop and pulled harder with both
hands on the stick. Gradually I turned inside the Me-109. Then I began
firing. Bright flashes from eight streams of armor-piercing incendiary
bullets danced back and forth along the Messerschmidt’s fuselage, then
centered at the right wing root.
“Why doesn’t something happen to that guy?” I asked myself. My
Thunderbolt bucked a last time, stalled, and the Me-109 escaped.
At debriefing following our return to Lesina, I was so disgusted for
failing to down the Me-109 that I never claimed a “damaged.” A week
later, when we were reviewing gun camera films from the mission,
Marshall Gille saw the image of the enemy plane fill the screen, watched
my hits, and exclaimed, “Dave, how in hell did you get so close and let
him get away?” I asked myself that question a hundred times. So close
and yet so far!

BY MAY 18, I had been flying combat missions for just over a month. I
was beginning to feel very comfortable in the Thunderbolt. Our squad-
ron was recording an excellent record, even though I had contributed lit-
tle to its success. We were escorting bombers attacking a railroad bridge
near Belgrade, when Me-109s appeared in force and a major battle took
place. My flight broke apart quickly as we attacked the enemy fighters.
After twisting and turning and firing at numerous targets, I realized I was

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near the ground, my wing man was nowhere to be seen, and three Me-
109s were coming toward me.
A P-47 loses most of its advantage over a Me-109 at low altitudes. I
firewalled the throttle and began a steep climb. For the first time in com-
bat, I pushed the throttle past the stop to War Emergency Power, using
water injection. The big Pratt & Whitney responded with a welcomed
surge of power. I climbed through 5,000 feet watching the enemy fight-
ers and checking my tail. The three 109s climbed along with me. I kept
climbing, hoping to gain an altitude advantage.
Passing through 10,000 feet, the engine shuddered and lost power.
Then I was worried, really scared. I continued my climb, but slower. The
engine ran extremely rough until I reduced power. Manifold pressure
wasn’t what it should be. I had problems. I looked around. No friendly
planes were in sight, but then the three Me-109s surprised me. They dis-
appeared. Breathing more easily but still scared, I set course for Italy
with the Pratt & Whitney engine coughing and running rough. Ten
minutes later I looked up and saw formations of P-51 Mustangs coming
from the west. Not thinking clearly, I keyed the mike button:
“Welcome,” I shouted in my mike. “I’m glad to see you! There’s plenty
for y’all to do!” I felt foolish when I realized I was transmitting on our
squadron frequency. The incoming Mustangs were from another fight-
er group and never heard me.
My engine continued running rough as I crossed the Adriatic and
searched for the nearest field. It was a B-24 bomber base. I landed, inciting
the interest of ground crews who gathered around the P-47. “I’ve got an
engine problem,” I told a sergeant who appeared to be the ranking NCO.
“We’ll check it out,” he replied, grabbing a ladder and taking the
cowl from the Thunderbolt. While I watched B-24 Liberators circle and
land, the sergeant checked the engine.
“You’ve blown a spark plug clear out of the cylinder,” he called.
“We’ll get you another plug.”
Fifteen minutes later, I was in the air headed for Lesina with a
smooth running engine. Back at home base, my crew chief ran up the

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 The Fabulous Checkertail Clan

engine. It sounded good, but the blown spark plug had gone back
through the air intake to the turbosupercharger and wiped out all its
blades. My engine was not supercharged at all. Little wonder I had no
power at altitude. It was fortunate that I refused to battle the Me-109s.
The fear that shamed me probably saved my life!

IT WAS EARLY MAY and a strange order came to me. Report to Operations
for a photograph. My turn came to be photographed, and I was surprised
when told to take off my khaki shirt and don a white shirt, necktie, and
old coat.
Then came the explanation. The underground in France, Northern
Italy, Austria, Hungary, Poland, and some other areas had the ability to
counterfeit all the documents needed to help a downed pilot avoid capture,
contact friendly forces, and escape—except photographs. We took photos
being made by the group’s photographer on all flights over enemy territory

The underground could counter-

feit all documents except photo-
graphs. We shed anything that
looked military, donned a white
shirt, necktie, and civilian coat,
and these photos were the result.
We carried them with us on all
combat missions.

so they would be available if we went down. The photos were made the
exact size as those used on identification documents used by the Axis coun-
tries. We carefully guarded the pictures, because they could be life savers.

ON MAY 24, we flew our final combat mission in the tough Thunderbolts.
We covered bombers making an attack on the airfield at Wollersdorf,
Austria. Fifteen Me-109s began an attack and in turn were attacked by
our fighter group. Six of the enemy planes were destroyed, one by Bob
Bass, who became the first of our ferry pilot gang to record a victory. It

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was obvious that we envied him when we gave him warm congratula-
tions during debriefing following the mission. Scoring a victory helped
justify the investment the Army Air Corps had made in each of us.

WE WERE UPSET when a pilot from another 325th squadron attacked a

British bomber north of Naples. The Checkertail pilot thought he was
attacking a German Me-210, but his victim was a twin-engine English-
built Blenheim, which looked nothing like the 210. Our guy finally shot
out the Blenheim’s right engine, but no fire ensued, and the Blenheim
escaped. Nobody was hurt, and the bomber managed to limp back to its
field on one engine.
Our group commander, Colonel Chet Sluder, was outraged. We
were desperately short of pilots and could not afford to lose another.
There were no charges filed, but there was punishment. Colonel Sluder
decreed that the errant fighter pilot spend three hours marching around
the wind tee, his parachute bumping against the back of his legs. The
pilot was ordered to come to attention and present arms with a broom to
each of the wind tee’s three corners. That sentence was for being such a
poor shot that he could not down the hapless British bomber. For firing
on a friendly plane, the pilot was ordered to endure a dozen hours of air-
craft recognition training.
The Brits suffered again from a Checkertail mistake when a 325th
pilot returning from an escort mission made a firing pass across one of
their airfields, which was located between Lesina and the front lines. He
did little damage to the airplanes lining the runway, but he did kill a
British airman. Again we were humiliated. How could anyone make such
a serious mistake? Those who did not know the location of the front lines
at least should have realized there was no way the Germans would have
a field that close to us. British planes are well marked and easily identi-
fied. No antiaircraft guns greeted him, and that alone should have made
the pilot suspicious. It was a stupid mistake.
We could do nothing to bring back life to the dead Brit, but nearly
everyone in the 325th Group contributed to a fund that was sent to the

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 The Fabulous Checkertail Clan

airman’s survivors. We were told that the total collected was more than
the death benefit afforded by the British army, and we hoped our gift to
the dead Brit’s family communicated in a small way the sorrow we felt
that one of ours had killed one of theirs.

TOWARD THE LAST OF MAY 1944, I received a letter from my mother telling
that a cousin, Sgt. Harvey Farmer, Jr., from Richmond, Virginia, was with
a bomb group based on the heel of Italy. The first morning I was not
scheduled for a mission, I took to the air for a visit to the bomber base.
Thirty minutes later, I circled the bomber airfield’s control tower and
received landing instructions. The field had been used by the Italian Air
Force. Several large, bomb-damaged hangars were aligned with the
paved runway. A Thunderbolt landing at that field incited curiosity. After
I taxied to a spot in front of the tower, I had a half-dozen enlisted men
helping me tie down the plane.
Only minutes were needed to locate my cousin. He was working in
a nearby hangar and insisted that I look at his “toys.” We walked across
the ramp and into a hangar. In a corner was a motorized, steel-frame
tower on wheels. It stood about seven feet tall. At the top was mounted a
top-secret Norden bombsight. We climbed to the top of the tower, where
Harvey showed me knobs to turn and twist to operate the bombsight.
“OK,” he said, “I’ll be your pilot. The target is pictured on the floor
across the hangar. You get it in your sight and tell me which direction to
fly. When we get close to the target, you’ll take control of the plane.”
I put my eye to the sight, found the target, and began instructing
Harvey. “Turn left. OK. Now right. OK. Straight ahead.” We moved clos-
er to the target.
“It’s your airplane,” Harvey announced. Frantically I twisted the
knobs to keep the target in my sight. Had we been in a B-24, we would
have been whipping right and left from one 45-degree bank to another.
When I released the bombs, they would have hit at least a country mile
from the target.
We moved the training tower back across the hangar, and I tried

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 A Pilot’s Story

again. This time we came closer, but when the bombs were released, I am
not certain they would have fallen in the same country as the target. I
gained respect for bombardiers’ skill. A fighter pilot had an easier job.
Harvey and his enlisted buddies insisted that I eat noon chow with
them, so I took my gold lieutenant’s bar and Air Corps insignia from my
shirt collar, put them in my pocket, and went down the chow line as an
enlisted man with my new friends. As we finished eating, we heard an
aircraft engine winding up. We rushed to the door of the mess tent in
time to see a terrific explosion less than a hundred yards away. The fire
that followed was extinguished quickly.
“That damned fool did a half roll from 500 feet and came right in!”
a maintenance man exclaimed. “He didn’t try to pull out or nothing!”
“What was it?” Harvey asked.
“A Spitfire,” was the answer. “He went right in!”
We walked to the crash site and found small pieces of the plane scat-
tered around a hole in the ground. A bit of smoke was rising from the
hole. A British soldier used a shovel to poke anything he found that
appeared to be non-metallic. If it were spongy, he shoveled it into a buck-
et. He was trying to gather enough of the pilot to qualify as a body. What
he salvaged would be buried in Italy and possibly later would be trans-
ported to England to the pilot’s final resting place.
That ended my excursion. I climbed back into my P-47, started the
engine, received take-off instructions, and returned to Lesina. It had
been quite a visit!

DID YOU GET OVER BY THE LAKE?” Bob Bass asked me one afternoon.
I responded, “What are you talking about? What about the lake?”
Bob explained, “There is a woman over there and just about every-
body in the squadron has screwed her.”
How could something like that happen and apparently everyone in
the squadron except me knew about it? I checked with Bill Murphy and
John Simmons. Finally I heard the whole story.
A corporal in our squadron had set up an Italian whore in a tent by

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 The Fabulous Checkertail Clan

Lake Lesina. Just days earlier she had escaped from an Italian
hospital/prison where she was being treated for venereal diseases. She
worked cheap. The corporal served as her pimp for a share of her pay,
shuttling whoever was horny from the squadron area to the lakeside tent.
Business was so good that it attracted the attention of squadron brass.
The result was an end to the thriving enterprise and a court martial for
the corporal.
In the Army as in civilian life, an accused is entitled to representa-
tion by counsel. The corporal was provided with a genius masquerading
as a second lieutenant. In a dramatic defense, the young officer noted
that not one customer of the busy whore had contracted a venereal dis-
ease, but the lieutenant was unable to get his client off scot-free. The cor-
poral was convicted of a single crime, misuse of government property:
namely, a tent, a cot, two blankets, and the truck that had transported
happy philanderers from the squadron area to the lake. For that the cor-
poral suffered confinement to the squadron area for several weeks.

THE SQUADRON USED BURNED-OUT .50 caliber machine gun barrels for tent
stakes, and George Novotny was a pilot who made certain we had an ade-
quate supply. When George saw an enemy plane in the air, he began
shooting and never let his finger off the trigger until he downed the
enemy or was out of ammunition. The P-47 had eight machine guns.
George’s armorer knew that if George saw a bandit, there would be eight
barrels to change when he returned from the mission, because the lands
and grooves of all eight barrels would be burned smooth from continu-
ous firing. George’s combat style worked. He was an Ace with three vic-
tories in P-40s and five in P-47s.
“As long as you are shooting down those Germans, I don’t mind
putting in new barrels,” his armorer told him.

LATE MAY BROUGHT US our first P-47s with bubble canopies, replacing our
razor-backed versions of the Thunderbolt, which were transferred to the
332nd Fighter Group—the “Tuskegee Airmen.” Visibility to the rear of

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 A Pilot’s Story

the Thunderbolt was greatly improved. Most felt comfortable inside that
big glass house, but some pilots believed they were over-exposed. After
takeoff, Hubert Bittner, about 5 feet 6 inches tall when he stretched,
always lowered his seat until only his eyes and the top of his helmet could
be seen. Scrunched down inside the cockpit, he felt secure. Outside visi-
bility had to be nearly impossible for Hubert. He claimed one victory.
But, in fact, so far as we who flew with him knew, he never engaged in
combat, but neither had he become a casualty when I departed the 317th.
Bubble canopies caused some problems. During uncoordinated
maneuvers in that version of the plane, the P-47D rudder sometimes
locked in full left or right position. We were told the rudder lock was
caused by air crossing the vertical stabilizer and rudder at odd angles.
Only extreme pressure on the opposite rudder pedal could enable a pilot
to regain control. Several pilots reported having to use both feet on one
rudder pedal to overcome the lock. Republic Aircraft solved the problem
with a dorsal fin that was riveted in front of the vertical stabilizer of all
bubble-canopied Thunderbolts. The fin helped direct the wind stream
properly around the rudder no matter how uncoordinated a pilot flew.
We experienced the same condition with the first P-51D Mustangs
with bubble canopies. A dorsal fin solved the Mustang’s problem just as
it had the Thunderbolt’s. It made us wonder whether aircraft manufac-
turers ever talked with each other about the problems that developed in
their planes.

HERKY GREEN, fighter Ace extraordinaire and our squadron commander,

pulled rank to fly the 325th Group’s first P-51 Mustang from Algiers in
Africa to our Italian base. Late one afternoon, we were in the mess hall
when we heard the distinctive snarl of a Packard-built Merlin V-12
engine. The sound was significantly different from that of P&W R-2800
radial engines that powered our Thunderbolts. We rushed outside in
time to see Herky pass overhead so low that tent flaps shivered in his
prop wash. Herky entered a loop. Near the top, the inverted P-51 stalled,
wobbled aimlessly, and began a flat spin upside-down. Herky tried but

116
 The Fabulous Checkertail Clan

could not recover. We watched, fearing we were seeing the last of the
Mediterranean Theater’s top Ace.
Suddenly, the canopy fell away, a parachute blossomed, and Herky
floated down. The P-51 hit the ground with a big explosion, leaving only
a hole. A jeep brought Herky back to the field. He climbed out, looking
a bit pale, carrying his chute, its D-ring clutched tightly in his right hand.
Thus disaster greeted the group’s first P-51 Mustang.
Herky’s loss of control was the result of his having only a brief
checkout before flying the Mustang. Unlike the P-51A that he had flown
previously, the P-51B had an 85-gallon fuel tank installed behind the
pilot’s seat. A placard on the instrument panel warned that fuel in the
tank should be no more than 30 gallons during unusual maneuvers.
More than 30 gallons in the tank shifted the center of gravity dangerous-
ly to the rear. With excessive fuel in the fuselage tank, loss of control was
likely if more than a needle-width turn were attempted. Herky had never
read the placard.

THE P-51 MUSTANG was a great airplane, fun and easy to fly. It was better
one-on-one than anything the Germans put against us. Its 12-cylinder
Packard-built Rolls-Royce V-1650 Merlin engine ran smoothly deliver-
ing 1,649 horsepower—plenty to make the P-51 an agile fighter. We car-
ried 269 gallons of fuel internally in the wings and behind the pilot’s seat,
and 150 gallons under the wings in two 75-gallon droppable external
tanks. Maximum speed in level flight was claimed to be 427 mph, but
none of us could manage that.
We received both P-51B and P-51C models. We could find no dif-
ference between the two. Some thought the second speed of the -C
supercharger kicked in a couple of thousand feet higher than did that in
the -B model, but the altitude that the second speed took hold could be
changed on both models. The book claimed the -C had a hundred more
horsepower. We could not detect it. It was after the war when I learned
that the -C was basically identical to the -B except for the fact that it was
built in Dallas, Texas, instead of California.

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 A Pilot’s Story

We knew the P-51 was better than the P-47 for long range escort. A
Thunderbolt also carried two external wing tanks, and each contained
165 gallons of gasoline. It had 305 gallons of fuel in internal tanks, mak-
ing a total of 635 gallons. Although the P-51 had only 269 gallons inter-
nally and 150 in droppable wing tanks, it had much greater range.
Some of our pilots were apprehensive of the new plane, because
they knew the P-47s were bigger, more rugged, and had proved they
could bring pilots back after suffering unbelievable damage. The
Mustang, with a liquid-cooled inline engine and lots of plumbing car-
rying coolant and oil from the engine to the radiators in the rear of the
fuselage, seemed far more fragile. “One bullet could take me out of the
sky,” a pilot complained. In addition, the Thunderbolt had eight
machine guns. The P-51B and P-51C had only four. We felt almost
naked from the loss of firepower.
Other P-51s arrived quickly. Tails were painted with the group’s yellow
and black checkerboard decoration. Numbers were painted on the sides.
Names were painted on the noses. Crew names were placed below the
canopy on the left side of the fuselage. Orientation flights were conducted.
While our final P-47 mission—my 14th combat mission—was
flown May 24, our first Mustang missions were flown May 27, 28, and 29.
No enemy planes were sighted, and the three missions gave us time to
become familiar with the P-51.
I liked the look and the feel of the P-51. Handling the Mustang’s
heavy torque during take-off proved little problem. Carrying less fuel
caused us stress until we realized how much less the Merlin engine
burned than the Thunderbolt’s big Pratt & Whitney. We calculated the P-
51 consumed only about 60 gallons an hour at normal cruise, which
compared very favorably with more than 100 gallons an hour required by
the thirsty engine in the P-47. My first two missions in the Mustang each
lasted 6:30—nearly two hours longer than P-47 missions. We were ready
for really long-range escort missions.
I developed my first dislike of labor unions after we received our
Mustangs. Some planes were grounded waiting for replacement engines,

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 The Fabulous Checkertail Clan

which were not received when expected. The reason given by the
Packard factory representatives: union workers in the Packard engine
plant were on strike. But this was war, and we needed those engines!

I FOUND SOME RED PAINT, and I painted stripes from front to rear on each
side of my plane’s fuselage, which bore the number “24”. I can’t say that
John Mooney, my crew chief, was happy about the decorations, which
were garish and got attention. A day after I striped Mayfair 24, orders
came from group headquarters that all 325th planes were to sport iden-
tical paint jobs. Even with paint remover, taking those red stripes off my
plane consumed a full day, requiring far more work and time than putting
them on. But John Mooney never
griped as he worked with me
scrubbing off the stripes.
I learned that the order for
identically-painted planes had
come from 15th Air Force Fighter
Command, which had decided the
325th was to escort B-17s on a spe-
cial mission.
For two days, May 31 and
John Mooney June 1, we stood down. Then, very
Probably the best crew chief in the European Theater
early on June 2, we were routed
from our cots for a 3 a.m. briefing—an ungodly hour for fighter pilots to
be up and around. That’s when we learned we would be part of the first
U.S. “shuttle” mission into the Soviet Union. We were to protect a B-17
group attacking a railroad marshalling yard at Debrecen, Hungary, which
was about 115 miles due east of Budapest, Hungary. From there, we were
to escort the bombers to the Dnieper River where we’d leave them and fly
on to Piryatin, our destination in the Ukraine. When the bombers re-
turned to Italy, we would again be their escort. The 15th Fighter
Command’s commanding general spoke at the briefing, urging us to
behave ourselves while being hosted by the Soviets.

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 A Pilot’s Story

Colonel Chet Sluder, the Checkertail group commander, had

known since April the mission was scheduled. The operation was classi-
fied “Top Secret.” Selected officers and enlisted men had been flown ear-
lier to the Soviet bases to prepare for our arrival. We were honored to be
chosen as the first Air Corps fighter group to fly a mission of this type.
During the briefing, we were given “blue seal” dollars and special
identification. Each of us placed our small musette bag, holding the few
items we were permitted to take with us, inside the rear of the Mustang’s
fuselage. Toward the end of the briefing, we were issued phrase books
containing pronunciation of the 36-character Cyrillic alphabet and
numerous phrases in both Russian and English. We suppressed our
excitement at flying this unique mission, went to our planes, started
engines, and were airborne at 7 a.m.
No opposition, other than antiaircraft fire, was encountered during
the attack on the marshalling yard, which the B-17s bombed about 9:45
a.m. One B-17 blew up over the target, taking with it S/Sgt. Austin J.
Cronin, a ground crewman from our 319th Squadron. No enemy fight-
ers were seen. All other planes reached the Ukraine without incident.
Then came the challenge of finding our airfield, a new base at
Piryatin constructed especially for us with PSP matting for a runway.
There were no accurate maps of the Ukraine available, and Colonel
Sluder led a string of 64 P-51s across the Soviet landscape searching for
the field, finally locating it as one pilot after another complained of low
fuel. The group commander landed with barely 15 gallons of gasoline in
his tanks. Most planes had less.

BUILDING AN AIRFIELD in that flat area of the Ukraine was little more trou-
ble than laying PSP matting. No grading was needed. The Soviets, short
on manpower, used women for the work. Their workday was 12 hours
with no lunch break. Before construction began, the 8th Air Force dis-
patched engineers from England to determine that the airfield was built
satisfactorily for our use. The Americans saw the inefficiency of too
many workers in too small an area. They observed how exhausted the

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 The Fabulous Checkertail Clan

women were at the end of their 12 hours of back-breaking work. An

American engineer suggested that dividing the women into two groups
and working each group for an 8-hour shift would make for a more effi-
cient construction effort. The plan evidently became garbled in trans-
mission. Immediately the women were formed into two groups, and both
groups worked an 8-hour shift ending at 12 noon, followed by a short
break, and then all the women worked a second 8-hour shift. The Soviet
commander marveled at the efficiency of Yankee management methods.

OURS WAS THE FIRST combat mission flown into the Soviet Union by U.S.
military forces. The Poltava Affair, a book written following the war, told
of lengthy negotiations that were necessary before the Soviet Union
agreed to American combat forces entering that country. Josef Stalin and
his cohorts wanted their people to believe that the Soviets alone were
winning the war against Germany and its allies.
But Soviet soldiers gave us a warm welcome. The phrase books were
helpful. Russian words were pronounced exactly as spelled with phonet-
ic Cyrillic letters. Using short sentences, we communicated with our
hosts. The first Russian words we learned were nyet, da, and spaceba—
no, yes, and thank you. Gestures, facial expressions, and patience all
helped us communicate.
Shortly after noon we heard there was food available in a two-
story, battered masonry building close to the field. Bill Murphy, Bob
Bass, and I found the building, wandered inside, and were pointed
toward stairs leading to the second floor. Upstairs, a young Russian
girl—very nice looking—pointed to three chairs around a table. We
searched our phrase books.
“Food,” we said together in Russian, and she smiled, nodded and
left. “I wonder what we’ll get,” Bob mused.
In a moment, the girl returned, set three glasses in front of us, and
poured a clear liquid in each. “Vodka,” she said. “Russky vodka!”
We lifted the glasses, touched them together, and sipped the liquid.
“Good God,” Bob exclaimed. “It’s nothing but water!”

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 A Pilot’s Story

The girl doubled with laughter. We had had our first experience
with Russian humor. Finally she brought food—bread and water—not
much, but good. We felt better as we returned to the flight line to see
what was happening to our planes.

EVERY PLANE was assigned one Soviet soldier to help with maintenance.
Those at our field had endured combat in the front lines against the
Germans. Their valor was rewarded by being permitted to help us visit-

The Soviet government was not happy to have us as guests, but their military forces were pleased to receive all
the help they could get. Colonel Chet Sluder received a warm welcome after we had landed at Piryatin in our
Mustangs. Soviet enlisted men were assigned to help with aircraft maintenance during our stay in the Ukraine.

ing Americans. We wondered about the questions they asked and their
eagerness to examine every item on the P-51 until we learned that each
of the soldiers would be tested following our departure to determine how
much he had learned about the renowned Mustang.
One young Soviet soldier found a loaded flare pistol installed in a
Mustang’s cockpit. He lifted it from its rack and pulled the trigger. The
flare ricocheted around the cockpit and burned a spot on the canopy
before bouncing outside. A Soviet officer strode up, pulled his pistol, and
aimed it directly at the distraught airman’s head. Startled American pilots

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 The Fabulous Checkertail Clan

and crew chiefs saw what was happening and protested vehemently. The
Soviet officer marched the young man away. Only the pleas of Colonel
Sluder and other high ranking Americans saved the man from death.
Instead, he was sentenced to confinement in a Siberian prison.

THE AMERICAN SOLDIERS who had arrived early in the Ukraine to moni-
tor construction of the airfields appreciated the beauty of one lovely,
young, well-endowed Soviet girl who had helped prepare for our arrival.
She knew no English, but she liked the friendly Americans who greeted
her with, “Say, do you want to fuck?” Though she did not understand the
words of the greeting, she returned it verbatum with a smile, much to the
delight of the Americans.
The day prior to our arrival, an American interpreter was assigned
to the field. When he heard the greeting and the girl’s response, he was
shocked. He took the young lady aside and explained what she had been
saying. She was mortified and fled to the nearby war-wrecked building,
where she hid until she was ordered out the following day to help serve
the evening meal to the newly-arrived American fighter pilots. Her
assignment on the chow line was handing out silverware.
One pilot, finding he did not have all his utensils, returned to the
chow line and said to the girl, “I want a fork.”
Her temper exploded, and she unleashed a powerful right fist that
struck the pilot’s chin. He stumbled backward, puzzled and stunned, not
knowing what had prompted such a fiery reaction.
The pretty girl was led away, and someone quietly explained to the
bruised lieutenant that he had been clobbered because to the girl “fork”
and the embarrassing “fuck” sounded the same. The next day, the girl
again was working, but during the remainder of our stay at the Piryatin
airfield, she never looked an American in the eye, and nobody asked
for a fork.

THERE IS NO KEEPING Americans confined wherever they are. Despite

orders to remain in the airfield area, many pilots took advantage of our

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time on the ground to wander around the countryside. Murphy, Greve,

Bass, and I left the airfield. Our stroll took us by one of the few houses
still standing within a mile of the airfield. The area had been decimated
by the Soviet’s “scorched earth” policy as their troops fell back before the
advancing German armies. When the tide turned, and the Soviets
regained the initiative and drove the Germans from much of the
Ukraine, the retreating Germans destroyed nearly all that remained. This
house, with its thatched roof, somehow survived.
The family residing in the house saw us walking along the dirt road
and invited us inside. “Americanskis!” they exclaimed, and, with great
fanfare, they insisted on a party.
Vodka! Clabber! Raw onions—big ones! We engaged in rounds of
toasts, few of which we understood, and our hosts insisted that we drink
or eat without pause. Eventually, we staggered out, happy but certainly
not walking straight. I never ate so many raw onions in my life.
For three days, including a Sunday, we stood down, wondering what
orders would have us do next. Our walks off base became more frequent.
On Sunday morning, we found a white-washed church where worship
was in progress. We quietly entered and stood in the back of the church
listening to the service, not a word of which we understood. Two old
ladies pointed to their heads and then to mine. I could not fathom their
motions. They frowned and pointed again with greater effort. Finally I
understood. I had failed to remove my cap when I entered their house of
worship. Chagrined, I doffed my headgear. Satisfied, the two ladies
smiled, and their attention returned to the words of their priest.

SOVIET SOLDIERS had a great liking for horns. They drove American-built
2½-ton trucks, and the horns were the first thing they checked each
morning. The driver pressed the horn button. If the horn failed to blow,
the truck did not move until the horn worked and sounded satisfactory
to the driver.
During our stay in the U.S.S.R., a dozen Allied correspondents vis-
ited the airfield and interviewed several pilots. The shuttle mission from

124
 The Fabulous Checkertail Clan

Italy to the Soviet Union seemed important to them. I had more ques-
tions than answers, especially regarding Clifton Daniel, a correspondent
who grew up in Zebulon, North Carolina, and was educated at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“Do you know him?” I asked. Several of the correspondents
affirmed that they knew him well, both personally and by his reputation.
They said that Clifton (or E.C., as we called him in Zebulon) was either
in Switzerland or England. Clifton’s distinguished journalistic career
later included a stint as managing editor of The New York Times, his life-
time dream. He married Margaret Truman, daughter of U.S. President
Harry Truman.

THE NIGHT OF JUNE 3, the Soviets threw a party for their American visi-
tors. Vodka and food were in limited supply, but the party was lively.
There was dancing. A few Soviet women were present. Americans,
always friendly, invited some of the women to dance. An embarrassed
silence followed. Then an English-speaking Soviet explained, “The
women are not comfortable dancing with men they do not know, but if
they refuse to dance with our guests, they will be killed.” After that expla-
nation, no other woman was approached by an American.
When we first saw rough, tough Soviet men dancing with each
other, we raised our eyebrows. Then we learned it was normal for
Russian men to dance with other men. Our eyebrows came down quick-
ly. There was no way these boisterous, bearded dancers could be queers!
The energetic dance associated with Russians, in which a man sits on his
heels and kicks his feet out with great speed and energy, proved as pop-
ular with the Soviets as it was with us Americans. Any Soviet who could
manage that dance earned everyone’s cheers.
After they sang two songs, our hosts insisted that we sing for
them. We huddled in confusion. Finally, we sang the only songs all of
us knew: I’ve Been Working on the Railroad, Home on the Range, and
the Army Air Corps Song.
The weather was bad June 4 and 5. We took the opportunity to meet

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several Soviet P-39 Airacobra pilots at the field. One Soviet pilot had
downed 12 German planes and had flown over 300 sorties. We learned
that every P-39 pilot had pledged himself to fly until his death. Was that
much different from the oath taken by us Americans?
We had problems finding the latrine—a straddle trench open toilet.
It was a great distance from our tents. Close by, however, were 8-foot
deep trenches dug for bomb shelters. They were neatly carved through
the hard soil, with steps leading downward and a right-angle turn to a
second long trench that could protect probably 12 to 15 persons. At
night, it was a private place to go when nature called. After our second
day at Piryatin, an order came from Colonel Sluder: “Don’t use the air-
raid shelters for toilets!”
Somebody had a radio playing. As usual, it was tuned to Axis Sal.
She chortled, “You Yanks think you are smart flying into Russia. Well,
you won’t get back to Italy. If the Luftwaffe doesn’t get you, old Joe Stalin
will!” We laughed.

JUNE 6, 1944. It was “D Day”. The invasion of France across the English
Channel had begun that morning, but we knew nothing about it. The
weather finally cleared to the east of the Ukraine and was improving at
Piryatin. We were to fly! The target of the B-17s was an airfield at Falati,
Romania. All aircraft would return to their Ukraine bases. The 317th and
318th Squadrons put up 16 aircraft each. The 319th sent 15. The first
plane was airborne at 7:30 a.m. There were 47 P-51s escorting 104 B-17
bombers flying at altitudes from 23,000 to 27,000 feet.
Bob Bass flew Wayne Lowry’s wing. I was element leader. I do not
remember what caused my wing man to abort, but he was one of five P-
51s that aborted and returned to Piryatin. We sighted a mixture of 16
Me-109s and FW-190s preparing to attack our big friends. A major bat-
tle began as we bounced them. I quickly latched on to a Me-109. After a
few twisting turns, I had the enemy directly in my sights and was set to
blast him from the sky when he chopped throttle, dropped flaps and
landing gear, and quickly came to a near halt. Before I could react, I

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 The Fabulous Checkertail Clan

found myself in front of the Me-109 with it firing at my plane. Only quick
and violent maneuvers saved me. During the whole mélée, which ranged
from 30,000 feet to the deck, five German planes were destroyed, but not
one of the three pilots in our flight scored a victory.
The battle soon was over. The bombers were safe. The enemy fight-
ers had gone home. Wayne rocked his wings, and I joined formation with
him to return to our Piryatin base. Bob Bass was nowhere to be seen.
There were only the two of us. I flew line abreast on Wayne’s right so that
we could cover each other’s tail. A third plane, unseen by me, approached
from low to my right rear. From a distance, a Messerschmidt 109 looks
remarkably like a P-51. Later Wayne said he thought it was Bob Bass
rejoining us until the plane began firing at me. It definitely was not Bob.
The first cannon shell from the approaching plane hit my canopy,
exploded, shattered the plexiglas, and knocked me out. Regaining con-
sciousness, I felt cold—freezing cold! The dew that wet my shoes as I
walked to my plane early that morning was frozen. My Mustang was in
level flight at 20,000 feet. A frigid wind was whistling through the cock-
pit. I looked at my right wing. The end was mangled, and a third of the

A Romanian magazine pub-

lished this accurate illustration
of Ion Dobran’s unseen attack
from low right rear that muti-
lated my P-51 on June 6, 1944.
The Romonian fighter pilot was
an excellent marksman. What
must have been his first cannon
round blasted my cockpit,
knocked me out, and left May-
fair 24 flying without guidance
until I regained consciousness.
This was the last mission for the
plane, which was left in the
Ukraine.

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 A Pilot’s Story

wing was chewed through by bullets. I saw no other airplane in the sky,
and I felt terribly alone. But the Merlin engine was running smoothly and
the Mustang answered to its controls.
I turned my plane to the compass heading for Piryatin. When that
field finally came in sight, I made a wide pattern and lined up with the
runway. The landing was normal, although it seemed difficult to get the
plane’s tail down. As I taxied to the tie-downs, strange looks in my direc-
tion by ground personnel puzzled me. Why the interest? It was not hard
to climb from the cockpit. The canopy was gone. A crew chief blurted,
“What happened?”
“Somebody shot the hell out of me,” I replied. Then I looked over
the plane. Cannon shells had hit all four propeller blades. The right wing
was a mess. Small wonder the tail was hard to get down. Half the rudder
and elevators was gone. A live 20mm cannon shell was found in the fuel
tank behind my seat. The fuel remaining in the tank had stopped it. A
jeep waited until I climbed in, and I was taken to the flight surgeon.
There was not much blood, but the flight surgeon and his aide
devoted a half hour to picking shell and canopy fragments from my head,

Soviet soldiers join American crew chiefs to examine Mayfair 24 when I returned to Piryatin after being blasted
by a plane I never saw. An unexploded cannon shell was found in the fuel tank behind the pilot’s seat. The right
wing was ripped and half the rudder and elevators were shot away by a Romanian fighter pilot in an ME-109.

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 The Fabulous Checkertail Clan

shoulders, arms, and legs before wrapping me in long strips of gauze. I

looked like a mummy as I walked to my tent. It is never a proud moment
when a guy realizes he’s been had by an enemy he never saw.
Wayne Lowry came by to tell me he had gotten the guy who got me.
He related that he’d dived to the ground from 20,000 feet firing at the Me-
109, and he saw it hit the ground. Years later I learned the Romanian
pilot, Ion Dobran, had made a normal landing with his damaged plane
and survived to fight again. Long after the war, in a letter to me, he wrote:
“I am glad I got the plane and not the pilot!”
Mine was one of three P-51s lost that day—mine and two that failed
to return. One of our guys became a POW. The other was never heard
from again. The enemy lost six aircraft. The bombers completed the mis-
sion untouched.
By evening, the gauze had worked loose and sagged around my
ankles. Disgusted, I dropped my pants, took off my shirt, removed the
gauze, and tossed it aside. I never reported back to the flight surgeon.
The weather deteriorated after June 6, and again we were grounded
and bored. My plane, Mayfair 24, probably would never fly again, so how
could I get back to Italy?

BY JUNE 9, the weather improved, and orders came for our return to Italy
the following day. I was ordered to fly as a waist gunner on a B-17, so I
packed my musette bag and, reluctantly, was ready to go, but I was not
excited about riding back to Italy on a four-engined B-17. I had seen too
many bombers hit by flak and clobbered by fighters.
I really was stressed thinking of being a gunner on a bomber,
but orders are orders. I was waiting at the flight line when a Soviet C-
47 landed. The war-weary old bird was my transportation to the
bomber base at Mirgorod. Its passengers were an eclectic group that
included an old lady holding a chicken in her lap. A turret with a sin-
gle .30 caliber machine gun was mounted in the top of the plane. Of
what use would it be against a fighter firing .50 caliber machine guns
or 20mm cannon?

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 A Pilot’s Story

I climbed into the plane and found a vacant seat. Nobody bothered
with seat belts. The Soviet pilot and copilot came aboard. They looked
competent, so I relaxed … a little … as we took to the air.
The left engine began running rough. The pilot circled a small air-
field and landed. Followed by his copilot, who carried a small tool box,
he climbed from the plane. A lineman brought a step ladder, and the
pilot, assisted by his copilot, removed the cowl from the left engine and
began working. Not so good, I thought. If an American pilot laid a
wrench on a plane’s engine, no one would dare fly the plane. The two
pilots completed their repairs, put away their tools, climbed back in the
plane, ran up both engines, and we resumed the flight to Mirgorod with
no further trouble.
The Soviets based several types of aircraft at the bomb group’s field.
The most familiar was the P-39 Airacobra, an American-built fighter we
thought was second class. But the Russians liked the plane for its 37mm
cannon that fired through the prop spinner. They claimed it was excel-
lent for supporting troops on the ground.
Also on the field was another plane the Soviets loved. It was a tiny
biplane powered by a little five-cylinder radial engine. It had two open
cockpits. The rudder pedals were formed of a wooden board pivoted on
a bolt with a rudder cable attached to each end of the board. The rudder
cables ran outside the fabric-covered fuselage from the peddles to the
rudder. The little plane looked like a refuge from the 1920s. Each evening
at dusk, a soldier climbed in the rear cockpit, and the small cockpit was
filled with as many grenades and other explosives as could be jammed
around him. The pilot climbed in the front cockpit, the engine was hand-
propped, and the little plane took off for the front lines. Before reaching
the lines, the pilot killed the engine, and the biplane glided through the
darkness over the Germans while the soldier in the back seat threw the
grenades and other ordnance overboard. Another turn sent the biplane
gliding toward friendly territory. The engine was restarted, and the two
men returned to Mirgorod—provided they survived German small arms
and antiaircraft fire.

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 The Fabulous Checkertail Clan

THE BOMBER SQUADRON welcomed me. They were happy to have as many
gunners as possible aboard their Flying Fortresses. “You can sack out
with us,” advised a Second Lieutenant. I was tired, and soon after dark I
was on a strange cot in a strange tent with strange guys whose names I
didn’t know, waiting to do a job I knew nothing about. I lay on the cot
caressing bits of metal and plastic still beneath my scalp. It was tough
going to sleep.
Three hours later, I felt a hand on my shoulder. “Lt. Davis, we just
had word that you have to go back to the fighter base. One of the fighter
pilots is sick, and you’re to fly his plane back to Italy.”
I was wide awake in an instant. In darkness, I scrambled into my
clothes, grabbed my musette bag, and headed for the door of the tent. An
enlisted man led me through the darkness to the operations tent where
Soviet and American officers were busily preparing a “passport” which
they said would get me past Soviet road guards. A 2½-ton truck waited.
With papers in hand, I climbed in the cab with the driver, and we left the
bomber base on a 75-mile cross country ride to Piryatin. At each rail
crossing and in every town, Soviet guards stopped the truck, examined
my papers carefully, and sent us on through the darkness. Near dawn, we
arrived in Piryatin. I never was more happy to see friendly faces. I took
time to learn which aircraft I was to fly back to Italy before joining other
pilots for morning chow and the mission briefing.
The return to Italy was on June 10. Four groups of B-17s bombed
Focsani Airdrome, Romania. There was plenty of flak, and German
fighters attacked the bombers. One B-17—the plane carrying a film
record of the entire shuttle mission—was shot down by enemy fighters.
Thus we believed there was no photographic record of the first U.S. Air
Force combat mission into the Soviet Union. Decades later, the remains
of a B-17 were found in Romania in which there was some usable film of
the mission.
Three German planes were destroyed by our pilots. We lost no
Mustangs. The 325th ground crewmen who were flown on the bombers
to and from the Soviet Union received Air Medals. I got a Purple Heart.

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 A Pilot’s Story

I DECIDED NOT TO WRITE HOME about being wounded. My mother and

father might worry. But two weeks later I received a letter from my moth-
er asking what had happened. She had been startled from sleep without
reason, but she knew that something bad involving me had occurred. She
would not be satisfied with any fictional explanation offered that denied
the event, and, knowing that a report would be sent to the local newspa-
per telling about it, I wrote describing exactly what had taken place. I
assured her the incident had left me in top shape. My mother and I com-
pared the time I had been wounded with the time that she had the unset-
tling experience. It was precisely the same moment. If I had doubts about
mental telepathy, they were dissolved by that event.
Decades later, Jon Gutman, an editor with Aviation History, was
doing research in Bucharest and found that the pilot who shot me was
Lieutenant Ion Dobran, who was living in Bucharest. A Polish writer sent
me Dobran’s address, and we began a correspondence, which led to a
close friendship between us. We continue to exchange letters and e-
mails, although the former Romanian fighter pilot had to get my letters
translated into Romanian. He is thoughtful to have his translated into
English before dispatching them to me.

AT INTERVALS WE GATHERED in the mess hall at Lesina for an evening

bull-session with our squadron commander and the squadron engi-
neering officer. In Air Force squadrons, the engineering officer was
responsible for aircraft maintenance. During one bull session, Captain
Warren Cook—Cookie, we called him—instructed us on how to get the
best service from our machine guns. “Fire short bursts,” Cookie pled,
“so you won’t burn out your barrels. We have enough tent stakes.”
Cookie said that small electric motors had been installed to force the
ammo to the machine guns. “That will prevent those jams you’ve been
having in tight turns when high G forces make it tough for the gun to
pull the ammo,” he explained.
Cookie said that machine guns had to be lubricated to fire proper-
ly. “If you have nothing else, piss on them,” he advised. We laughed. No

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 The Fabulous Checkertail Clan

matter how over-heated they were, how could we piss on those machine
guns while flying at 25,000 feet?
After Cookie finished his dissertation and listened to our few com-
plaints about maintenance, we did considerable hangar flying. That’s
when we compared notes on enemy tactics. In recent weeks, when high
clouds were on the route from a target, an annoying German trick was
flying in the clouds and diving out only when a single bomber was below.
Radar probably was helping the Germans navigate in the clouds and was
telling them when a hapless bomber was flying underneath.
“If we could get them out of those clouds, we could take them,”
Herky Green told us.
“Why not have a fighter fly beneath the clouds while the rest of us
watch for the Germans to come after him?” I asked.
“Do you mean use one of us for bait?” Herky inquired. “That’s a
great idea, Dave,” he continued. “Are you going to be the bait?”
I did some quick thinking and decided mine was not such a smart
thought. It got some laughs that night, but, thankfully, it was never
mentioned again.
It was during one of those hangar flying sessions that we dis-
cussed the German tactic of cutting power, dropping flaps, and slow-
ing so quickly that a plane pursuing a German ended in front as the
German’s target. I was caught short by a Me-109 on June 6 during the
mission that earned me a Purple Heart. Another of our guys had it
happen during our return from the Soviet Union, but he managed to
escape. What I learned during hangar flying paid dividends for me in
later missions.

CAPTAIN WARREN COOK was a genius at maintenance. He kept our planes

flying, and he solved problems. A P-51 occasionally had a serious mal-
function with its oil cooler. The electric motor that operated an outlet
door that determined the amount of air passing through the oil cooler
sometimes suffered a short circuit that closed the door completely. That
let engine oil overheat and, too often, caused an engine failure.

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Cookie designed a spring-loaded rod to replace the factory installed

arm that opened and closed the air door. In an emergency, a cable run-
ning from the cockpit to the oil cooler could be yanked by the pilot,
pulling a pin that released a spring which forced the rod to open the
door. I volunteered to test it on my Mustang. At cruise speed, it was
impossible to pull the pin because of air pressure on the door, but slow-
ing to less than 120 mph reduced the air pressure and the pin could be
pulled fairly easily. The device was so good that North American factory
representatives took notice, and later P-51s had a switch installed in the
cockpit to open and close the outlet door in emergency situations.
Captain Cook was awarded the Legion of Merit for his innovative solu-
tion to the problem.

AT DUSK MOST EVENINGS, we could look up and see British four-engined

bombers flying north toward Germany. They were scattered in random
fashion across the sky. There was no formation. Each bomber had its tar-
get, and each bomber flew its own route to drop its deadly cargo.
We admired the bomber crews, but we did not envy them their task.
To us, the four-engined Halifax and Lancaster bombers were “sitting
ducks” for the Luftwaffe fighters, if German antiaircraft fire did not get
them first. We seldom were awake when the English flyers returned
home, so we never knew how many survived. Without escort, flying in
random fashion, we could not fathom how any of them completed the
round-trip journey to and from their targets.
The British bombing missions were far different from those of
Americans. We believed in huge daylight attacks with bombers in tight
formation so they could mass their firepower in mutual defense.
Protecting the bombers were hundreds of fighters—P-47 Thunderbolts,
P-38 Lightnings, and P-51 Mustangs—providing cover to, over, and from
the target. The Royal Air Force and the U.S. Army Air Corps each had its
concept of how to fight the air war. Neither could convince the other
which way was most effective.

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 The Fabulous Checkertail Clan

MID-MORNING, JUNE 28, 1944. The 325th Fighter Group, flying P-51
Mustangs, had a mission to sweep the skies in the Bucharest area, warding
off any enemy fighters that tried to thwart the bombers on their mission. I
was flying as element leader in Wayne Lowry’s flight. Someone spotted for-
mations of 30 to 35 FW-190s and Me-109s flying below us. Drop tanks fell
from our wings as we dove to attack the enemy fighters, whose pilots were
intent on the bombers. They saw us only at the last minute as we dove out
of the sun. At 18,000 feet the battle began, and it was another mélée. So
many U.S. and enemy planes were twisting and turning in a small portion
of the sky that it seemed impossible to sight on a Messerschmidt or Focke
Wulf without a Mustang crossing the line of fire.
Finally, I tagged on to an FW-190, laid my gun sight on its tail, and
began shooting from dead astern. The four .50 calibers in the P-51’s
wings chattered. Pieces flew off the
Focke Wulf. Then, running full bore, I
nearly climbed up the FW’s rear when
the pilot chopped his throttle. I shoved
my stick forward, and my head slammed
against the canopy. My Mustang nose-
dived just below the FW-190. The fight
ended quickly as the enemy fighters scat-
tered in every direction trying to evade
pursuing Checkertails.
I returned to Lesina knowing I had
laid fatal damage on the Folke Wulf, but I
Hank Greve from Upper Manhattan, NY, Bill
could not report first-hand that I had
Murphy from Winston-Salem, NC, and me seen it destroyed. This time, however, I
during a relaxed afternoon at Lesina. Hank
and Bill were my two best friends. Both would claim at least a damaged. During
ended the war as German POWs.
debriefing, I told of the fight. When I fin-
ished my story, I asked if we could review the gun camera film when it
was developed to see if it showed more than I could tell. Wayne Lowry,
my flight leader, overheard my request. “Dave got it,” Wayne volunteered.
“I saw the FW-190 flame, and then it exploded.”

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 A Pilot’s Story

I was no longer a virgin fighter pilot. I had my first victory. My bud-

dies, Hank Greve and Bill Murphy, both shot down Me-109s. Now the
four horsemen—Bill Murphy, Hank Greve, Bob Bass, and me—were
really earning our pay.
The 317th was the only Checkertail squadron to score that day, but
we downed 10 of the enemy—two FW-190s and eight Me-109s. Wayne
Lowry got one of the 190s. Art Fiedler shot down two Me-109s. We cel-
ebrated that night!
It was decades later when Jon Gutman, an editor of Aviation History
magazine, was in Bucharest doing research on the Romanian Air Force
that included the battle fought on June 28. He wrote that my victim prob-
ably was Captain Av. Parsifal Stefanescu, a veteran of the Russian front,
who was credited with nine victories. The Romanian records showed
that he was flying—not a FW-190—a Romanian IAR-80C, which had a
radial engine and looked somewhat
similar to the FW-190. Probably the
other victories claimed as FW-190s
also were Romanian-built IAR-80s.

IT WAS A HOT DAY IN JULY. No mission

was scheduled, and Bill Murphy, Hank
Greve, and I stood between tent rows
watching Arab, a huge dog that had
accompanied the squadron from
Africa, trying to find a way to make
love to Jeanie, a small white Spitz that
one of the pilots had tucked away in
his cockpit and brought to Lesina from Herky Green, leading Ace of the Mediterranean
Foggia. Arab, obviously aching with Theater, and Jeanie, one of our mascots smuggled
from North Africa in the cockpit of one of the 317th
passion, was having no success. Jeanie, fighters during the move to Italy.
in full heat, was getting impatient. We wondered how we could be helpful.
We were startled by the sound of aircraft engines winding up.
Looking southeast, we saw a twin-engined bomber spinning out of the

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sky. None of us said a word until it smashed into the ground, and a huge
ball of fire was followed by a plume of black smoke. Then Bill said soft-
ly, “God damn!”
We jumped into my jeep and bounded cross country to the crash
site, where an English bomber lay smoldering. Surprisingly, the plane
was not totally buried. Its spin had been fairly flat so that it squashed on
its belly rather than striking the ground nose first. The fire had con-
sumed the front half of the fuselage and most of both engines and wings,
but the tail section appeared nearly undamaged. We looked more close-
ly. In the tail we saw a body. The top half wore a flight uniform—helmet
on the head, leather flight jacket, all in fairly good condition. But the bot-
tom half of the torso was dehydrated by the heat of the fire. It had shrunk
until it appeared to be that of a five-year-old.
There was nothing we could do. Hank and I turned to leave. Bill
took one more look at the grotesque corpse and muttered, “God damn it
to hell!” Then he followed us to the jeep, and we drove back to the
squadron area. Later that day, English soldiers came and collected the
remains of the plane’s crew. We never offered to help. There were enough
English workers to do the job, and we had seen more than we wanted to
see. For a week we discussed the cause of the crash and marveled at how
heat could shrink a body. No one could venture a reason that the bomber
spun and crashed. Soon the topic was old, and our conversation turned
to other subjects.

SOME CRASHES HAD HAPPIER ENDINGS. One evening, soon after dark, we
heard a plane circling low over our field. We knew from the unique
sound of its engine that it was a Mustang, because no other engine
sounds like the Merlin. Time and again it passed overhead. Clearly the
pilot wanted to land. Enlisted men rushed to the runway, filled cans with
dirt and gasoline, placed them down each side of the runway, and set
them on fire.
The circling plane flew out over the Adriatic, turned, and began an
approach to the lighted runway. It continued to descend until it obvious-

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 A Pilot’s Story

ly was too low.

“Pull up! Pull up!” we yelled, although we knew the pilot could
never hear us. The P-51 hit the water of Lake Lesina. There was an explo-
sion and a huge ball of fire. Then all was quiet. We rushed through the
darkness to the lake. When we neared the shore, we saw the pilot wading
toward the lake bank, dragging his parachute behind him. He escaped
physical injury in his water landing, but his feelings were bruised.
“How did you get out of that thing in one piece?” someone asked.
“Lordy,” exclaimed the lucky pilot. “I had good contact with the
head operator on ‘J’ channel!” The P-51’s communication radio’s fre-
quencies were accessed with push buttons labeled A, B, C, D, and E for
emergency. We joked that when we faced a real emergency, we pushed
the “J” for Jesus button. The pilot’s experience made believers of us.
“What were you doing up there after dark?” someone asked. The
pilot explained that he was new to the 332nd Fighter Group—the
Tuskegee Airmen—which had received our P-51 Bs and Cs when they
were replaced with the Ds that had bubble canopies. The engine in his P-
51 had been replaced, and he was slow timing the engine—breaking it in
for eight hours, as instructed by his squadron maintenance officer.
He never paid attention to how much time had passed until he real-
ized it was near dark and he was lost. He flew over much of southern Italy
looking desperately for the 332nd’s airfield. As darkness fell, he used
common sense and flew Italy’s Adriatic coast until he saw Lake Lesina
reflecting moon light. Unwilling to leave a place he knew, he circled the
325th airfield until the runway was lighted. We greeted him like a broth-
er, fed him, gave him a place to sleep, and then next morning sent him
on his way to the 332nd to face an icy reception from his commanding
officer.

THE 332ND FIGHTER GROUP was easy to identify when they escorted
bombers. They flew the finest formation of any fighter group in the 15th
Air Force. They should! Until the U.S. Congress forced the reluctant U.S.
Air Corps to get the black Tuskegee airmen into combat, their mission

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had been patrolling up and down the Italian coast. They had flown the
P-40 initially in combat and then P-39 Airocobras—practically worthless
for air combat in Europe—in coast patrol until they received P-47s from
the 325th when we were issued P-51s, and then the 332nd took the P-51
Bs and Cs that we gave up for P-51Ds with bubble canopies.
Shortly after receiving the Thunderbolts and during one of the
332nd Group’s early escort missions, the black fighter pilots found them-
selves fighting a fierce battle with Me-109s over Austria. Crystals had not
been changed in the radios, and they were still on the same frequency we
used.
We heard, “Red Dog, are you in trouble?”
“Am I?!!” was the quick response. “You know I am. I’ve got two Me-
109s cornered up here. Get your ass in gear and come on up here and
help me!”
The Tuskegee Airmen recorded an excellent combat record. They
were fine pilots, determined to prove themselves, and the bomb groups
enjoyed having them flying cover.
Some decades following WWII, a claim was made that the 332nd
had never lost a bomber it escorted to enemy fighters. The claim was pre-
posterous, and we thought it reflected badly on the records of all other
fighter groups in the 15th Air Force. The Tuskegee Airmen established a
record that did not merit embellishing with false claims.
The Tuskegee Airmen taught six principles that could benefit every-
one. They are:
1) Aim high.
2) Believe in yourself.
3) Use your brain.
4) Be ready to go.
5) Never quit.
6) Expect to win.
Those guys did more than battle the Germans. They had to fight
prejudice, ridicule, and expectations of failure that existed in many of our
military and civilian leaders. They did as much to eliminate racism

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among Americans as they did in helping win the war, and this statement
is meant as a great compliment.

AT THE END OF A HOT AUGUST DAY, we were surprised at supper time to

eat ice cream for dessert. It was the first taste of my favorite dessert since
departing the States the previous December. During the time I enjoyed
in Cairo, Egypt, during March, I never found ice cream anywhere.
“Where did we get ice cream?” was everybody’s question. Our
squadron enlisted men had found an old ice cream machine in a nearby
Italian town. They purchased it from the Italians, brought it to 317th
Squadron maintenance, rebuilt it, and learned to make delicious ice
cream using powdered milk. Three days a week, officers feasted. The
other four days, the enlisted men enjoyed the delicacy. Word quickly
spread to other squadrons about the 317th enjoying the frozen delight.
Somebody in group headquarters decreed that it was unfair for only one
squadron to have ice cream. “Share with the others,” was the order.
We enjoyed ice cream only once a week for the next two weeks, and
then the ice cream machine broke down. No one accepted responsibility
for its maintenance, and we never had ice cream again.

FROM SOMEWHERE, I don’t know where, a war-weary P-40 was acquired by

the 325th Group. It was maintained by crew chiefs of the 317th. I was
curious about the plane that had been the weapon of Chenault’s Flying
Tigers in China and was the Air Force fighter that 325th pilots had flown
off a carrier to the African mainland in 1943. I asked permission to fly it.
“Go ahead,” said the accommodating Herky Green, who had scored three
victories in the P-40.
I climbed in the cockpit, amazed that I could sit flat on my butt,
reach outside, and lay my hands flat against the top of the wing. I started
the engine, called the tower, s’d out to the runway, and noted that the P-
40’s long nose got in the way of forward visibility worse than did the nose
of the P-51. After lining up with the runway, I pushed the throttle for-
ward and took off. The P-40 flew nicely, but its Allison engine was not

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 The Fabulous Checkertail Clan

equal to the P-51’s Merlin. It was a good acrobatic airplane with an excel-
lent rate of turn. Coming out of a hammer head stall, the torque of the
engine combined with hard left rudder could result in an extremely tight
reverse of direction. It would not dive or climb or fly at level speed with
a Mustang, but it was a fun airplane.
About this time, we received an influx of new pilots from the States.
They had trained in P-51s. They knew the P-51 was the best airplane in
the sky, and they didn’t fear the Jerries. They were cocky, thinking the
war would be won quickly. Having plenty of pilots to fly missions pro-
vided us an opportunity to lengthen the training we gave new arrivals
prior to their being exposed to air-to-air combat.
Flight leaders spent extra hours in the air improving the proficien-
cy of pilots who would be flying our wings. Some found the venerable P-
40 to be a way to prove a point. Without the P-51’s two-stage, two-speed
supercharger, the P-40’s Allison engine lost power quickly above 10,000
feet, but, by combining the plane’s huge torque and inherent maneuver-
ability, the P-40 could turn nearly on a dime. We staged dog fights with
the new pilots—old-timers in the P-40, the new guys in the P-51.
Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of the two planes and never going
higher than 9,000 feet enabled us to whip the youngsters every time.
Chagrined and humbled after the flight, the new pilots were willing to
listen to the advice we provided.
It was fun to tangle with the P-38 Lightning in a mock dogfight. If
we were in a tight fix, we could do a quick roll in the opposite direction
and escape. We were totally dumbfounded when hydraulic boosts were
installed on the Lightning’s ailerons, and the pilot could whip it in the
opposite direction with only a finger on the wheel.
When the P-40 was not available, we challenged new pilots to meet
us at altitude for a dogfight in P-51s. Fresh from the States, they were
eager to accept the challenge.
“I’ll be at 25,000 feet over the field,” I told Ernie Pleasants. He was
new to my flight, and I was impressed with his ability. I climbed through
15,000 feet, then 20,000, then leveled at 25,000, and looked in the rear

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 A Pilot’s Story

view mirror. The image of a P-51 filled the mirror. Ernie already was on
my tail.
I broke hard left. Ernie stayed with me. I pulled back, kicked right
rudder, and snapped into a hard right turn. Ernie was still tight on my
tail. Once more it was a twisting turn to the left with Ernie behind me.
Around we went, and Ernie could equal my tightest turns. Finally, I tried
a maneuver I had done only once before. While in a tight turn to the left,
I did a half snap roll underneath, losing hardly any altitude, and ended in
a tight turn in the opposite direction. It wasn’t easy. It was not perfect. As
I pulled back on the stick in a tight right turn, I looked for Ernie. I was
stunned to see his P-51 tumbling end over end. I dived after him, follow-
ing his out-of-control Mustang downward for 12,000 feet.
“Oh, God!” I thought. “I’ve killed the guy!”
As he fell through 10,000 feet, Ernie’s Mustang went from a tumble
into a spin. He recovered quickly. Without a word, he tacked on my wing,
and we flew straight and level back to the field.
“What happened?” I asked Ernie after we landed.
“I don’t know,” he said. “All I can tell you is that I tried to follow you
in that turn, but I don’t know what happened until I found my plane in a
spin.” No other pilot had encountered a tumble in the Mustang. Ernie
had himself a “first.”
Ernie had an amazing memory. More than once, I watched him shuf-
fle a deck of cards, flip through the deck one card at a time, and then repeat
from memory all 52 cards in exact order. He tried to teach me his system for
memorizing lists, but raw material is necessary for anything, and my brain
simply did not have the right cells needed for his kind of memory work.
A reason I liked Ernie was his admiration for my flying. One day, a
month after joining our squadron, he stopped me. “Dave,” he said,
“you’re the best formation leader in the squadron. I never have trouble
staying on your wing. How do you fly so smooth?” I was nonplussed for
an instant. The I realized the Ernie had good smarts as well as a good
memory. He knew the value of a compliment. Nevertheless, his words
gave me a warm feeling.

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 The Fabulous Checkertail Clan

My P-51D Mustang named “Bee”—an airplane that looked beautiful and flew even more beautifully. A bubble
canopy replaced the “razor back” of the B and C models, providing full 360 degree visibility. A ventral fin later
was installed in front of the vertical stabilizer on the Mustangs to help prevent “rudder locks”, which could be the
result of uncoordinated flying. Later the checkerboard pattern was extended up the rear portion of the fuselage,
but I liked it best painted only on the rudder, elevators, and stabilizors.

THE 325TH FIGHTER GROUP became owner of a Focke-Wulf 190—one of

Germany’s finest fighters. Every Checkertail pilot wanted to fly it, but
Wayne Lowry, the 317th operations officer and second ranking Ace in
the squadron, was selected to bring the FW-190 to Lesina. Wayne had no
problem starting the engine, taxiing, or taking off. He flew directly to our
field and made several low passes down the runway. He had everyone’s
attention by the time he chandelled up and began the landing pattern.
On downwind, he pushed the button to lower the 190’s electrically-oper-
ated landing gear. The wheels went down. To make certain they were
down, Wayne pushed the button a second time. The button was like a
toggle switch. Push it once, the wheels go down. Push it again, the wheels
come up. So the wheels came up with that second push, but Wayne did
not know it. He began final approach, and tower operators, seeing the
Folke-Wulf ’s wheels retracted, began shooting flares like it was July 4th.
Unfortunately, Wayne could not read the German instruments, and he
misinterpreted the flares as a lively welcome. He was delighted with the
celebration and continued his approach, culminating in a beautiful
wheels-up landing that bent the 190’s propeller but did little other visible
damage to the plane.
The next day, we observed our 317th Squadron operations officer
wearing his parachute and marching around the wind tee, his parachute
bumping against the back of his legs, while he smartly presented arms to

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each corner of the wind tee with a broom stick. It was a sobering sight.
There, except for the fact that Wayne was credited with more victories
than any pilot except Herky Green, could have been any of us.
The most impressive feature of the FW-190 was the ease of mainte-
nance. A replacement engine and propeller were found. Our mechanics,
using American tools on the metric-sized hardware of the German plane,
replaced the engine in just a couple of hours. Changing the Merlin
engine on a Mustang was an all-day task.

IT WAS 10:15 A.M., JULY 2, 1944. I was a flight leader. The 325th Group had
a mission of protecting bombers attacking the Bákos Locomotive Depot
in Budapest, Hungary. The 317th Squadron provided 16 planes in four
flights. One plane of my flight had problems and returned home.
We continued with a three-plane formation. South of Budapest,
three vapor trails were spotted several thousand feet above the
Checkertails. I announced the bogies on the radio and, with my two wing
men following, I made a slight turn toward the sun in the east and began
climbing. When we reached 33,000 feet, the three Me-109s turned into
us. I fired three short bursts at the first two and then closed on the third,
firing two short bursts from about 300 yards at 30 degrees deflection.
Coolant streamed from the Messerschmidt, and it split S in an attempt to
escape. I latched on to him and followed as he dived straight down. At
18,000 feet, pieces broke loose from the Me-109. Its right wing tip and
right stabilizer ripped away. Still we dived, faster and faster. My airspeed
indicator moved past 510 mph, much above the Mustang’s red line. At
15,000 feet, the enemy jettisoned his canopy and bailed out. His chute
deployed immediately, but it ripped loose from its shroud lines as the
hapless pilot passed by my right wing.
Time to pull out! I put back pressure on the stick. Centrifugal force
generated by the high speed pull-out forced blood from my head causing
me to gray out and then, as the centrifugal force continued, I lost con-
sciousness. My vision returned gradually. I looked outside and found I
was in a climbing turn. I looked ahead and was surprised to see shell

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 The Fabulous Checkertail Clan

bursts. The altimeter said I was climbing through 18,000 feet. How come
I was seeing small caliber flak over three miles in the air? Uh, oh! That
wasn’t flak!
I hauled back on the stick, threw it to the right, and jammed the
right rudder with my foot. Looking back, I saw an Me-109 lobbing shells
at me. Its pilot was a poor shot, else he would have nailed me with his
first round. A quick, tight turn put me behind the Me-109, and I fired
three bursts at 300 yards. No hits. At 250 yards, I began firing from dead
astern, and I continued firing until I was about 50 yards behind the
Messerschmidt. Flashes appeared all over its fuselage, mostly around the
cockpit. I kept shooting, and the Me-109 went into a steeper dive. At
13,000 feet, it exploded.
Suddenly it seemed the lights went out! The world went black. A
tar-like substance covered my wind screen and canopy. It was oil from
the enemy fighter. I couldn’t see outside the cockpit, so I knew it was time
to go home. As I set a compass course for Lesina, I began a long climb,
hoping no other enemy planes were in the vicinity. If I could get to 30,000
feet and stay there until over the Adriatic Sea, I might be safe from both
German fighters and flak.
An hour later, cruising at 30,000 feet, the black oil began to thin on the
sides of the canopy. I approached Lesina and called for landing instructions.
By now, much of the oil had blown from my canopy, and I could see a bit
out the sides even though the wind screen in front was opaque.
I dived at the runway, pulled up into a double victory roll, and cir-
cled to land. With my canopy all the way back, I looked out the sides of
the cockpit to make a smooth landing. I taxied to my assigned tie-down,
and John Mooney, my faithful crew chief, climbed carefully up on the oil-
slick wing. He opened the canopy and asked sadly, “Did your prop spring
a leak, sir?”
“That’s German oil,” I replied, much to John’s relief and delight.

JULY 9, 1944. Special Orders Number 191, 15th Air Force, promoted me
from Second Lieutenant to First Lieutenant by order of Major General

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 A Pilot’s Story

Nathan Twining. I had polished my second lieutenant bars until the gold
finally was worn off, and the silver showed. Time required in grade: 10
months 9 days. It seemed a long, long time since I took the oath of a
newly commissioned officer at Napier Field, Dothan, Alabama.

ONE MORNING WHEN NONE OF US—Bill Murphy, Bob Bass, and me—was
scheduled to fly, Bob remarked that he had a brother—a chaplain—who
was stationed 50 miles southeast at a bomber base. I was surprised
because, for some reason, I could not picture a member of Bob’s family
in the ministry.
“Let’s go see him,” Bill suggested.
It seemed a good idea, so about noon we climbed into Margie, my
jeep, and bounced across the Italian countryside to the bomber base.
Locating Bob’s brother was no big deal. The bomb group had only one
chaplain, and everyone knew where his tent was pitched. We enjoyed the
visit. It was the first time Bob and his brother had seen each other since
his brother had volunteered for military service as a chaplain two years
earlier. I listened to them talk about their family back in Tennessee, and
then for another half an hour we discussed the promotion policies of the
15th Air Force that held the brother to the rank of captain when he had
time in grade to make major. My father was a Baptist preacher, and
sometimes, when household bills seemed to outpace his meager salary
from pastoring two rural churches, he wondered how he would have
fared financially had he chosen to be a businessman. Bob’s brother’s
remarks sounded much like the sentiments that my father had expressed.
It was dusk when we shook hands with Bob’s brother, saluted, and
left. It was near dark when a terrible grinding screech emitted from the
jeep’s rear end. Something, like too little wheel bearing grease, was wrong
with the vehicle. We stopped every few miles and rested the jeep for 30
minutes while the axle bearing cooled, then continued slowly toward
Lesina. Long after dark, we came to a military installation—obviously a
maintenance facility judging from the vehicles in various stages of disar-
ray that were scattered among the tents. We asked for help.

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 The Fabulous Checkertail Clan

“Sergeant Pulasti is the only guy who can help you,” we were told.
“Where is he?” we asked.
“Third tent across the way,” was the answer.
After waking unhappy soldiers in four tents, we finally located
Sgt. Pulasti.
“Sergeant,” we pled, “we have rear-end trouble with our jeep. Can
you help us?”
There was an explosion. “Hell no! Don’t you know I’m trying to sleep?”
“Sergeant, I am First Lieutenant Davis, and I need my jeep fixed,”
I barked in my most commanding voice.
“Can’t do it tonight. It’ll have to wait until morning,” came the voice
from inside the tent.
“Sergeant,” I called again. “I am FIRST LIEUTENANT Davis. I want
my jeep fixed. Where is your commanding officer?”
“God damn it to hell, SIR! He’s gone to Foggia, SIR, and when he
left he said if he found what he’s looking for, he won’t be back for three
more days, SIR! I am in charge here, SIR, and if you want your jeep to
get fixed ever, SIR, let me get back to sleep, and don’t bother me again
until morning, SIR!”
I looked at Bob and Bill. They looked back at me. Without another
word, we climbed in the jeep and drove off. The time between cooling
periods for the jeep’s rear end grew shorter and shorter; but at 3 a.m., we
arrived home and hit the sack.

I HAD FEW CONTACTS with 325th Fighter Group headquarters brass, other
than during briefings when the group operations officer, intelligence offi-
cer, and weather officer were describing our scheduled mission and what
to expect in weather, flak, and enemy planes. In early morning, we arrived
at the briefing room to find a big map concealed with a roll-up cover. The
direction of our missions ranged from the coast of France in the north-
west, north to Germany, Austria, Poland, and Hungary, to the east and the
oil refineries at Ploesti, and occasionally southeast to Greece. Our 325th
commander, Chester Sluder, was a wonderful person with years of flying

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experience. Often Colonel Sluder sat at the front with the squadron com-
manders or whoever else might be assigned to lead the group. At the time,
Colonel Sluder knew me only as one of the 317th pilots, and this proved
fortunate as we waited for an early morning briefing.
Zippo lighters were thought to be the Cadillacs of lighters by guys in
the Air Corps. They were rugged, easy to use, and we fueled them with avi-
ation gasoline that worked well but burned with considerable smoke.
Zippos also were in short supply. I owned a lighter of a different brand. It
had a rather complicated spark mechanism that frequently was out of
adjustment. Although no smoker, I carried the lighter for use when firing
up the heater in our tent or for whatever purpose a flame might be needed.
One early morning, while we waited to be briefed for what we knew would
be a long, long mission, I was designated 317th Squadron leader and found
myself seated beside Colonel Sluder! He fumbled through his jacket,
extracted a cigarette, and then asked, “Anyone have a light?”
Wonderful, I thought to myself as I whipped out my lighter. Here
was my chance to make points with the group commander. I flipped the
flint mechanism on the lighter three times and nothing happened.
Colonel Sluder leaned closer, cupping his hands around the lighter to
shield it from the slight breeze that blew through the open door. I flipped
the lighter a fourth time, and fumes from the 100 octane aviation fuel
exploded with a blinding flash.
Colonel Sluder jerked back, his eyebrows singed and his cigarette on
fire. Not waiting for thanks, I murmured, “You’re welcome, sir,” and snuck
away to the back of the briefing room. The next time I remember Colonel
Sluder in conversation with me was in 1992—48 years later—when we met
in Budapest during a reunion sponsored by the Hungarian Veteran Flyers
Association for flyers who had fought in the air over Hungary during
WWII. I asked if he recalled the episode. Colonel Sluder, ever the gentle-
man, smiled and denied any memory of it.

OCCASIONALLY I ACTED LIKE THE CHARACTER, Hot Shot Charlie, in Milt

Caniff ’s popular comic strip, “Terry and the Pirates,” and usually I regretted

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it. It was soon after the shuttle mission to the Soviet Union that I received a
forceful reminder that I was not the hot pilot I sometimes pictured myself.
This mission was to be a long one. I was an element leader. My flight leader,
Wayne Lowry, and his wing man began their take-off roll and were halfway
down the runway. I pushed my throttle forward and began to roll behind
them. Speed increased nicely. I pushed forward on the stick, and the tail
came up. Rather than let the Mustang lift off by itself, I held the wheels on
the runway until my airspeed passed 125, then I retracted the landing gear.
My airspeed continued to build, and I kept the P-51 low and level. Then I
hit prop wash from the plane that had preceded me. The right wing
dropped. I felt a slight bump when the right droppable wing tank scraped
the runway, but nothing seemed awry, and, with my wing man, I joined
Wayne’s formation. We climbed on course across the Adriatic.
“Mayfair 24,” I heard on the radio. It was my wing man. “You’re los-
ing fuel from your right wing tank.”
I looked to the right rear and saw a stream of gasoline trailing the
wing. The tank was emptying fast. A simple calculation revealed that I’d
never complete the mission without the gasoline that was spilling from
the tank.
“I gotta go back,” I radioed Wayne. “I busted a tank.”
With the one wing tank full and the other one empty, I landed faster
than normal to keep the left wing from dropping. I slowed and taxied
back to the tie-down, where John Mooney rushed to meet me.
“Problem with the engine?” he asked.
Red faced, I confessed, “No, Sergeant Mooney. I pulled a damned
stupid stunt and dragged the right wing tank on the runway.”
Crew chiefs took great pride in never having their planes return
early. I had spoiled Sgt. Mooney’s perfect record. He forgave me a
whole lot sooner than I forgave myself. Fortunately, that was my single
early return.

THE P-51 MUSTANG, marvelous plane that it was, was not equipped with
a rest room to handle pressing sanitation problems that developed dur-

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ing long missions. It was difficult but possible to piss into the relief
tube—a rubber tube with a funnel in its upper end that channeled urine
from the cockpit out the bottom of the plane. The task was not easy, espe-
cially for someone with my personal dimensions. I had to unbutton my
fly, search through a pair of wool pants and long-handled underwear,
and pull my do-whigit out far enough to reach the funnel, while attempt-
ing to hold formation with other airplanes.
It was a hot day. During a low altitude training flight, a new pilot,
not experienced in relieving himself while flying, tried to wee-wee into
the funnel. Unfortunately, he had opened the bubble canopy a half inch
for ventilation. The wind moving past the canopy pulled air through the
relief tube which caused the funnel to act as an atomizer that sprayed the
stream of piss all over the surprised pilot and his cockpit. He returned to
the field wiser but wet and smelling of urine.
Another pilot, although suffering a case of GIs, decided he was able
to fly a mission. As he climbed through 15,000 feet, gas in his intestines
expanded, resulting in an explosive diarrhea attack. Fortunately, the mis-
sion was flown at high altitude, and he breathed oxygen through a mask.
He completed the four-hour mission while sitting in the stinky stuff. After
he landed and parked his plane, his eager crew chief jumped on the
Mustang’s wing and threw open the canopy. One whiff, and the crew chief
leaped back to the ground. The odor was terrible. Instead of riding in a
jeep to debriefing, the unfortunate pilot hung on to the jeep’s spare tire
until the vehicle came to a nearby creek, where he rushed to the water,
stripping off clothes as he ran. Only after he scrubbed himself and his
clothes was he permitted to return to the jeep for a ride directly to his tent.
Dr. (Major) Marquardt, our squadron surgeon, had standard treat-
ments for the GI shits. If a pilot went on sick call complaining of the GIs
and was scheduled to fly, he was fed a white powder we called “cement”
because it solidified whatever was inside us. If it were a pilot’s day off, the
pilot was given a liberal dose of castor oil.
A case of GIs was not the only physical hazard involved with high
altitude flying. One new pilot thought he could not “feel” the controls

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when he wore gloves, so he flew with naked hands. After his second mis-
sion, he sought Doc Marquardt because the backs of his hands were giv-
ing him intense pain. The good doctor examined him and diagnosed the
problem as frostbite! At 30,000 feet our cockpits were freezing cold. After
hearing the cause of his pain, the pilot wore gloves for every flight,
regardless of whether he was flying at high or low altitude or whether or
not he could feel the controls.
My flight attire for combat missions was not stylish, but it was
warm—long-handled underwear, wool pants, two pairs of socks, high
top shoes, a cotton shirt, a wool shirt, and a leather flight jacket, plus
leather, wool-lined gloves. I talked the supply sergeant out of an English
flight helmet. English gear was far more comfortable than that provided
by the U.S. Army Air Corps. In fact, compared item for item, English
flight gear was superior in every respect.

JULY 24, 1944. Jim Simmons, Bob Bass, Arnie Arnesen, and I grabbed at
the chance to spend three days on the Isle of Capri, which lies at the
entrance to Naples harbor. Capri had been a rest camp for the Germans
and, after the American capture of Naples, for U.S. forces. We knew little
of what to expect, other than what we could imagine from the song that
went, ’Twas on the Isle of Capri that I found her. We were trucked across
Italy to Naples and rode a boat across the harbor to Capri. The small
island was beautiful. From the boat, we climbed stone steps and walked
to an old bus, which took us up a steep, winding road to Anacapri, a vil-
lage situated on the highest elevation of the island. The road was twisted
and narrow, and the bus had to back several times to make some of the
curves. The hotel was fabulous, with wide marble stairs leading from one
level to another.
This, we decided, was the proper way to fight a war, because life was
easy on the Isle of Capri. No formations. No uniform regulations. We
bought Italian sandals fashioned of rope, left rank insignia lying in the
room, and, clad in bathing suits, we sipped wine while lying on the beach
soaking up sunshine. The little island was untouched by the war, except

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The beautiful Isle of Capri, located just outside Naples harbor, was used as a rest camp by the Germans; then by
the Americans. Two rock spires, known to Italians as Fraglioni, are seen at top center. These two caused an argu-
ment that almost resulted in a fight. The argument was settled the next morning when I flew between them.

that the military had taken over its hotels, and soldiers and airmen were
the vacationing tourists.
Two young ladies captured our attention. They were residents of
Anacapri. Patricia and Beatrice Mertig continued to live on the island
after the Americans captured Sicily, invaded Italy, and moved up the
Italian peninsula. Their mother, half Italian and half Spanish, was with
them. Their father, half German and half Austrian, was in Spain. We
marvelled at their ancestry. The two girls spoke the four languages of
their parents plus English.
Beatrice was an accomplished artist. “Walt Disney wanted me to
come to the U.S. and work for him before the war started,” she said. We
looked at her drawings and paintings and believed her.
Pat had been in love with a German pilot whom she met when he
visited Capri. She described the Me-109 he flew. A week later, another
member of the 325th, whom we had told about Pat and her boy friend,

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 The Fabulous Checkertail Clan

was on the island. He located Pat and boasted of a victory, telling how he
had destroyed a Me-109 which he described as marked identical to what
Pat had told us. The pilot laughed as he told us how Pat was devastated.
We cursed him. “Hell, she’s just a damned Italian,” was his response.
After the war, I often wondered what happened to those two girls.
Did Beatrice ever get to Hollywood?
A pilot from another 325th squadron was on the Isle of Capri with
us. He began each day by drinking heavily, and when he was drunk he
was belligerent. Worse, he continued drinking all through the day and
attempted several times to join our group. We tried futilely to ignore him.
He accosted us at the top of one of the marble stairs and snarled, “You
bastards don’t like me.”
“No, we don’t,” said Jim Simmons. “Go some place else.”
“You sonovabitch!” exclaimed the drunken pilot, and swung at Jim.
Jim moved back, then stepped forward and hit the drunk on his chin.
The guy tumbled limply down the marble steps. He did not look dam-
aged too badly, so we left him lying there.
When we returned to Lesina and the 325th Group, we reported the
incident to the flight surgeon, and the errant pilot was grounded perma-
nently. “He would react to a lack of oxygen exactly as he did to alcohol,” said
the surgeon. “If his oxygen fouls up, he is going to attack his own people.”

AT NOON OF OUR SECOND DAY on Capri, Bob Bass and I were talking with
several pilots who had arrived that day from another fighter group. Bob
pointed to rock spires rising from the water a distance from the shore.
The Italians had named them “Faraglioni”.
“Can a P-51 fly between those?” he queried.
“Easily,” I replied.
“No way!” exclaimed the newcomers.
A heated argument ensued. We sighted with our fingers, estimating
the distance between the rock columns, and argued some more. The dis-
cussion ended with me against all the others except Bob, who was non-
commital. I insisted there was space for a Mustang to pass between the

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I won a bet I never collected

by flying between the
Fragliono. My P-51 passed
between the two rocks at
350 mph with just inches
between each wing tip and
the rocks on each side.
Thirty years after the event,
a friend sent me this photo-
graph and questioned
whether I remembered the
scene.

rocks. The others were equally certain there was not. We continued to
argue the next day, until Bob, Arne, Jim, and I climbed aboard a boat to
return to Naples. A truck carried us back across Italy to Lesina.
Bad news was waiting when we arrived at Lesina. Bill Murphy, my
best friend and tent mate, was missing. He failed to return from a mis-
sion the previous day, and no one knew his fate. With heavy heart and
tears in my eyes, I packed his personal belongings to be sent to his home.
Then I sat down and wrote a letter to his wife. It was the most difficult
letter I ever composed. Finally, I took down his mosquito net, folded his
sheets and blankets, and arranged other issue items to be picked up by
the supply sergeant. Then I cried.
No mission was scheduled the following day. I took to the air in
Mayfair 24. Immediately after takeoff, I set course for Naples, flew low
across the harbor, circled little Capri once, and then aimed directly between
those two tall rock spires. At 350 miles an hour, I passed between them with
inches separating my wing tips from the towering rocks. Satisfied, I chan-
delled over Capri, rocked my wings, and returned to Lesina, warmed with
a most satisfying feeling. It helped dull the pain I suffered from Bill’s loss.-
IT IS A MISTAKE to think that every WWII fighter pilot was a brave hero.

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 The Fabulous Checkertail Clan

A man without fear is not brave; he usually is just foolish and probably
very lucky. Fear can paralyze a person’s thinking. It can paralyze his
whole body. The really brave men are those who overcome their fears
and continue to do their duty.
When we returned from Capri, one of our new pilots had been
shipped out. Doc Marquardt told Art Fiedler the reason. The pilot had
three early returns. He aborted missions after he had “barfed” in his oxy-
gen mask while climbing through 20,000 feet. “Altitude makes me do it,”
the young pilot advised the flight surgeon.
Doc Marquardt sent him to Foggia, where the 15th Air Force main-
tained a chamber in which air pressure could be reduced to simulate high
altitude. The pilot sat inside watching the gauge mounted on the wall of the
chamber. As air pressure was reduced, the gauge showed increasingly high-
er altitude. Right on schedule, the pilot barfed when the gauge reached
20,000 feet. Once more the test was made with the same result. The flight
surgeon directed a third test. Unknown to the pilot, the pressure was not
reduced inside the chamber, but the gauge showed the altitude increasing.
When it read 20,000 feet, the pilot barfed. That ended the test and the pilot’s
flying career. It was not altitude that caused his sickness. It was fear.
Fear literally took the life of another pilot. He was scared of combat,
and he also was a poor pilot. Art Fiedler recognized his lack of skill when
the new man joined our squadron, and Art scheduled a maximum
amount of training to improve the pilot’s performance. Finally it was
time for him to fly a mission or be shipped out. His crew chief reported
the new man appeared in a daze when he climbed into the Mustang’s
cockpit. He needed help strapping himself in and needed help checking
his instruments. The crew chief started the engine—a job usually done
by the pilot. All this consumed so much time that the new man was late
getting in the air. The squadron was circling the field tightening its for-
mation when the new man neared his flight, slid under the flight leader’s
plane, then pulled up directly in front of the element leader’s plane. Its
propeller sawed the tail off the errant pilot’s Mustang. I was in my tent
when I heard the Merlin engine whining. I rushed out to watch as the

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doomed pilot tried to recover his P-51 from its fatal spin to the ground.
Unfettered fear had cost us a pilot and a plane.

JULY 26, 1944. The 325th scored 13 victories while fighting more than 80
enemy planes attacking B-24s and B17s whose target was an airdrome at
Zwolfaxing, Hungary. Wayne Lowry led the squadron, which provided
only three flights of four planes each, because we had only 13 pilots avail-
able. Art Fiedler and I led the second and third flights. There were some
vicious fights, but I never got a hit on an enemy plane. Henry Greve—we
called him Hank—the guy from Upper Manhattan who had become one
of my close friends, did not return.
Hank was a very special person. He was about six feet tall, lanky, with
a fair complexion and sandy hair. It took only a second of conversation to
know he was from New York City. His accent was typical of what we expect-
ed from a native of the Bronx. In the spring of 1944, Hank was walking
toward the mess hut with Bill Murphy. “Look at the boid,” Hank exclaimed.
“That’s no boid; it’s a bird,” Bill responded.
“It choips like a boid,” Hank countered.
Hank’s accent incited ribbing, which he accepted with good nature,
whether it was while talking with a friend or speaking in front of all the
pilots. During the debriefing that followed each mission, pilots recount-
ed mechanical problems that occurred during the mission.
“Any troubles today?” Colonel Sluder asked.
“My erl cooler acted up,” Hank called out.
“Your what did what?” asked the colonel.
“My erl cooler acted up,” repeated Hank.
Colonel Sluder shook his head in wonder. “I don’t have one of those
things on my plane,” he said.
Hank’s loss on the July 26 mission brought me real pain. Bill was
gone. Hank was gone. Maybe it was not wise to be my friend. Later we
heard that Hank’s leg had been badly hurt by an exploding cannon shell.
He bailed out and was captured by the Germans. Following the war,
Hank married, but the residual effects of war proved too much. He suf-

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fered severe bouts of depression and took his own life by jumping out a
window of his New York City apartment.

THERE ARE TIMES when our failure to follow instructions are costly.
Wayne Lowery, a “double Ace” with 11 aerial victories, proved that state-
ment. Wayne was an accomplished pilot, a proven leader, an excellent
marksman, and a friend, but he was poor at routine duties. After each
flight, we made entries on the aircraft’s Form 5 showing our flight time
and recording any unusual readings from the instruments and malfunc-
tions noted during the flight. An important entry was whether we had
used “War Emergency Power” and how long we had used it. “WEP”
meant we pushed the throttle past a safety wire and bypassed the mani-
fold pressure regulator, which forced the engine to output maximum
power—more than it was designed to produce for an extended time.
When 15 minutes of “WEP” was accumulated, the engine was to be care-
fully examined to determine that no damage had resulted. Sometimes
damage was identified that required an engine change.
Wayne was generous in his use of War Emergency Power. He
claimed to use it whenever he saw an enemy plane, but he never record-
ed its use. One day, he failed to return from a mission. He had baled out.
Some thought Wayne gave out of fuel. Most of us believed it was engine
failure brought on by too much unrecorded use of “WEP”.
Weeks afterward, Wayne Lowry found himself in the same POW
camp with Hank Greve.
Wayne suffered, too, following the war. He served in both the Air
Force Reserve and the Air National Guard, proudly publicizing himself
as a “double Ace” and “the foremost Ace of my state.” His service earned
him promotions to Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force Reserve, but he
became an alcoholic. His personality changed dramatically, and even
those who formerly were close friends dodged his company. His health
deteriorated, he was almost totally deaf (an occupational hazard for
pilots), and he was furious when anyone questioned the wild stories he
wrote as chapters for a book he hoped to publish titled A Time to Say

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Goodbye. Wayne died in Truth or Consequencies, New Mexico.

Now, from the formerly close-knit group in the 317th Squadron,
only Bob Bass and I were left.

THE TIME WAS 11:50 A.M., August 7, 1944. I was on my 46th mission,
escorting bombers attacking an oil complex at Blechhammer, Germany.
Four more missions and I could return home. A new member of my
flight, Frank Mertely, was on my wing flying his first mission. A wing
man’s responsibility was to look after his leader. Frank was a handsome,
good natured, young man who loved flying and listened intently to more
experienced pilots with hope of profiting from what he learned from
their successes and failures. He proved to be a superb wing man.
It was only a few days earlier that Colonel Sluder led a mission with
a new arrival on his wing. Our group commander was frustrated as a
combat pilot, because, no matter where or when he flew, it seemed that
fights were in some other part of the sky. He ordered that he be told
whenever a bogie was spotted. He wanted action!
The time came when Colonel Sluder found himself in the midst of
a marvelous fight. German planes were everywhere. The colonel
latched on to an Me-109 and, just as he was ready to blast the German
out of the sky, something caused him to check his tail. There, instead of
his wing man, sat a second Me-109. Colonel Sluder broke left, escaping
his attacker but losing his opportunity for a certain victory. At debrief-
ing, Colonel Sluder sought his wing man and questioned him: “What
happened to you?”
“Colonel,” the shaking pilot responded, “I looked around and saw
that we were so outnumbered that I knew we didn’t have a chance against
all those Germans, so I came home.”
Mercifully, Colonel Sluder was speechless. I never learned the wing
man’s fate.
Frank Mertely was cut from a different bolt of cloth. During train-
ing flights, he proved he could follow me through violent maneuvers. I
felt secure with Frank covering me.

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 The Fabulous Checkertail Clan

ART BY NATHAN PUGH, LONDON, ENGLAND

Strafing railroad trains can be fun, but it also can be very dangerous. Frank Mertely learned that when a box car
evidently loaded with high explosives blew up as he passed low over it while strafing a train in Austria. I almost
hated to see Frank become an element leader, because he was the best wing man who ever protected me.

We were flying at 25,000 feet protecting bombers southeast of

Blechammer when I observed eight Me-109s about 5,000 feet below
making a turn toward the bombers. I closed in on the second plane in the
lead flight. When I was a hundred yards behind the Messerschmidt, I
scored direct hits on its fuselage near the base of the wing. Coolant began
pouring from the Me-109, followed by a stream of smoke. I followed the
airplane in a screaming dive, breaking off at 1,000 feet as it went straight
into the ground. It disintegrated in a huge black explosion.
I climbed back through 20,000 feet with Frank still on my wing. The
mission was about over for us. We could see no other planes, enemy or
U.S., so we headed for home. At debriefing, Frank confirmed my kill by
telling that he had seen the Messerschmidt blow up.
“The truth is,” he said, “I didn’t know we were in a fight until I saw
that plane hit the ground. I was too busy staying on Dave’s wing!”

FOR RADIO COMMUNICATIONS, we used microphones installed in our oxy-

gen masks. The masks were fastened to our helmets, making it easy to
don helmet and mask together. Our oxygen masks had to be in front of
our faces for us to communicate. With helmet on, goggles over eyes, and

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 A Pilot’s Story

oxygen mask in position, little could be seen of a pilot’s face. We laughed

when we watched motion pictures showing Air Force planes flying sup-
posedly high altitude missions while the pilots conversed in normal
tones—no oxygen masks, no microphones, no shouting, nothing.
The microphone switch was located on the throttle. To transmit,
you pushed the button on the throttle. When the radio transmitted, it
could not receive. Sometimes the button stuck. Other than making it
impossible for the affected radio to receive, the situation was not terribly
serious, unless a pilot became excited. More than once, other pilots were
exasperated during a long mission when they were forced to listen for
hours to the heavy panting of a stressed-out comrade. Often, maddened
by the hassling sound and totally out of patience, someone would yell
into his microphone, “Stop breathing, dammit!” This did absolutely no
good, because as long as his mike button was stuck, the panting pilot’s
radio could not receive, and he heard nothing.

Here is the story of my victory during the Blechhammer mission in the words of Frank
Mertely: I was a junior birdman compared with Art Fiedler and Barrie Davis when I first arrived at
Lesina. I had signed up as Aviation Cadet on August 7, 1942. After graduating from flight school in
December 1942, I trained in P-51-As at Hillsboro Field near Tampa and eventually got shipped to
Italy in mid-July 1944 on a troop transport along with about 200 other 2nd Lts. Got off the transport
in Naples with a sunken ship serving as a gang plank, then by truck to Caserta and after a few
days to Foggia. There we had a choice of flying P-51s or P-38s. Naturally I went for the Mustang
and wound up in the 317th Squadron at Lesina, when I was assigned to B Flight with Barrie Davis
as Flight Leader.
After a few orientation flights familiarized us with the area and squadron procedures, they threw
us into the flight schedule. On my first mission I flew Barrie’s left wing or the number 2 position.
This was the first time I flew in a squadron formation with 16 aircraft. The first part of the mission
is now rather hazy, and I recall that we were told to maintain radio silence and to keep our head
out of the cockpit and to stay in formation. We were on bomber escort mission to a place called
Blechhammer near the Polish border.
The weather was good in the target area and everything seemed calm until I heard someone
call “Bogies.” I didn’t see anything except that I had tracers crossing in front of me that looked like
red golf balls. I finally realized that it must be from the bomber’s shooting at the German fighters,
and about that time I saw Barrie dropping his wing tanks, and I did the same, and my engine sput-
tered as I had not switched to interior fuel.
Barrie started to pull away, so I went to full throttle to catch up and closed so rapidly I even put
down some flaps to stay even. Then I saw black smoke coming off Barrie’s wings, and I thought
someone was shooting down at Barrie and started to look around and realized he was firing his
guns. I had never seen that before. As I collected my wits, I saw him firing at the German, and I
followed him as we saw the German crash. We then pulled up and headed for home some 600
miles away without further incident. Some of the other guys also shot down 6 other bad guys. So
everybody was happy. Barrie later told me that I was the first guy to stay with him in a fight. I never
admitted that I was lucky. It was a great learning experience.

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 The Fabulous Checkertail Clan

A NEWLY ARRIVED YOUNG PILOT was late taking off on an escort mission to
Hungary. He poured on the coal, crossed the Adriatic, and was near the
rear flights of the group as they flew over Yugoslavian mountains. Early
morning thunderheads were towering overhead. In an attempt to join
formation quickly, the new pilot flew through haze below and just out-
side the base of a thunderhead. The next thing he recalled was when the
huge cloud spit him out into a Yugoslavian valley. His plane flew errati-
cally, so he turned and flew directly back across the Adriatic to Lesina
and landed.
The battered Mustang had reason to fly poorly. We looked in disbe-
lief at the P-51C that had made it back to our field after escaping from a
vicious battle with a thunderbumper. Its wings had popped rivets. Its
rudder was torn. The elevators were missing fabric. The pilot was fortu-
nate to have survived.
Our 317th maintenance men installed a new rudder and elevators
and replaced broken and missing rivets. The plane looked fine, but no
one would agree to fly it on a mission. Finally Captain Warren Cooke
asked me to make a test flight in the damaged Mustang.
“If it’s not qualified for combat,” he said, “we’ll use it for admin-
istrative flights.” It was clear that Cookie preferred using it for
administrative purposes.
I made the test flight, first checking the plane in level flight; then
climbing, turning, diving, and rolling. Nothing seemed awry. I attempted
a loop. When I was upside down at the top of the loop, the Mustang
rolled into an Immelmann. An Immelmann begins like a loop, but at the
top of the loop a half roll is made and the maneuver ends with the plane
flying upright in the direction opposite that which it began. This
Immelmann was unintended and surprising. I tried another loop at
greater air speed. The result: another unintentional Immelmann. After
two more attempts, I was able to walk the rudders enough to get through
the top of the loop and down the backside. Somehow the turbulence over
Yugoslavia had warped the Mustang’s fuselage and wings and changed its
flight characteristics.

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There was one final test. I dived the P-51 at full power and watched
for problems as the airspeed built toward the red line. The handbook
warned not to exceed 480 mph at 10,000 feet. The needle inched toward
500 mph. There was a loud explosion, and wind whipped around me.
Having seen what happened to a German who baled out at high speed, I
delayed leaving the plane. The Mustang slowed, and I realized it was in
one piece and still flying. The canopy had exploded with a huge bang,
leaving me fighting the wind. I eased back on the stick and flew straight
and level directly to the field at Lesina.
It took me an hour to write a report of the test flight. It must have
been adequate. 15th Air Force agreed that this P-51C should never again
be used for combat.
Maintenance people again went to work. They removed the armor
plate and four machine guns and pulled the 85-gallon fuel tank from
behind the seat. In the fuel tank’s place, they installed a second seat. Test
flying what may have been the Air Corps’ first tandem-seated P-51
proved interesting. It was so light that it nearly leaped from the ground
on takeoff and cruised far faster than its ordnance-laden brethren.
Landing was different, however, because its light tail made a three-point
landing impossible. Every landing was on the main gear. Many of the
ground crews realized their ambition to fly in a P-51 when pilots took
turns cheauffering them in the modified, two-seated Mustang.

THE 325TH FIGHTER GROUP was remodeling an old Italian stable to be our
new officers’ club, and electrical wire, switches, light bulbs, and other
items were needed. I volunteered to fly with someone in our “executive”
Mustang to Naples to visit an engineer battalion and con them out of the
needed materials. Warren Cook climbed into the rear seat of the modi-
fied P-51, and then bottles of American and Canadian whiskey were
stacked around him until only his head and shoulders were visible. I
climbed in the pilot’s seat, taxied cautiously to the runway, firewalled the
throttle, and we were off to Naples.
We landed at Cappaduchino Airport where two captains, both

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 The Fabulous Checkertail Clan

wearing Corps of Engineers’ insignia, rushed to the plane and looked

inside. They smiled broadly when they spotted the bottles of booze sur-
rounding Cookie.
The liquor was carefully unloaded from the plane and moved to a
jeep. The four of us climbed among the bottles and bounced along as the
captain behind the wheel rushed us through Naples to their encamp-
ment, a mixture of tents and buildings. Enlisted men were working dili-
gently constructing a new building—a mess hall, one of the captains
explained—and they hardly glanced at us Air Corps types. A big com-
pressor powered by a gasoline engine was mounted on a trailer. It pro-
vided air for the tools.
“All the troops are black,” I observed.
“Yes,” said Cookie. “All us officers are from Texas. We can handle them.”
Cookie gave an officer a list of things we needed to wire our new
club. While the items were gathered, the engineer officers insisted we
look over their area. By the time the tour was completed, it was late after-
noon. “Too late to take off for Lesina,” said a captain. “You better spend
the night with us. We’ll feed you fried chicken!” That did it! We stayed.
Cookie had enjoyed no fried chicken since leaving the States. My most
recent taste of the Southern delicacy was during leave in late fall of 1943.
Meal time came, and we were surprised by the arrival of two nurs-
es from the Army hospital in Naples. “Tell the cooks to fry two more
chickens,” directed the engineer company commander.
“Where did you get the chickens?” I asked, thinking the informa-
tion should be given to our 317th Squadron cook.
“We bought all an Italian farmer had,” responded the captain. “The
cook will make chicken stew for the men. One chicken more or less won’t
make any difference.”
The eight of us ate in the captain’s tent. He broke out a couple of
fifths of whiskey that had come from the 325th. It was a time of feasting
and fellowship. When Cookie and I begged leave of the group to hit the
sack, a lieutenant and a captain volunteered to return the nurses to their
hospital. We never saw them again—that night or the next day or ever.

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Friendships in wartime frequently are neither permanent nor long.

Our visit with the engineers was successful. The next morning there
was room around Cookie in the back seat of the P-51 to place all the
requested switches, sockets, fixtures, light bulbs, and coils of wire. The
Mustang actually flew better with the extra weight in the rear. We land-
ed at Lesina, the cargo was unloaded, and it was used to provide electric
lights in one of the finest officers’ clubs in Italy.
I learned a valuable lesson during that trip. Soldiers who would be
insulted and angry if someone were to attempt bribery with cash will
trade almost anything for a gift of booze. This knowledge later helped me
during difficult situations.

ON A BEAUTIFUL MORNING in early August, we escorted bombers to

Bucharest, Romania. For the 325th, it was an uneventful mission. We
watched for enemy fighters over the target and, when another group took
over escort duties, we set course for home. Below us and to our left,
cumulous clouds were building into towering thunderheads. Showers
were forecast for Yugoslavia in late afternoon. When we approached
Yugoslavia, we dropped down to 12,000 feet. The 16 planes of the 317th
Squadron were flying line abreast. I was fifth from the left end. Oxygen
masks came off, and those who smoked began to light up.
A plane approached from the left. At a distance, we believed it was
a P-51 from another squadron joining us. Then, with a jolt, we realized
it was a Messerschmidt Me-109. Immediately eight Mustangs broke left,
firewalled throttles, and roared after the plane, whose pilot must have
been day-dreaming worse than we were. The 109 turned tail and headed
straight for a towering cumulous cloud.
Four P-51s were between the 109 and me. There was no way I could
get to it first. But I conjectured that if I dived under the cloud he was
entering, maybe I’d be waiting for him when he came out. I circled
underneath the cloud at 5,000 feet watching and waiting. Then I saw a
parachute float out of the cloud. Somebody had scored a victory, and the
enemy pilot had baled out. As the pilot floated downward, I saw his plane

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 The Fabulous Checkertail Clan

come from the cloud in sweeping turns. It looked as though someone

were flying it. Tighter and tighter it turned, losing very little altitude with
each orbit. Then it banked toward the hapless pilot, cut through the
shroud lines connecting him to his parachute, and spiraled down to
crash against the mountain below. The pilot plummeted to the earth
while his parachute canopy floated slowly after him.
“Who is going to believe this?” I thought. “We get the airplane, and
the airplane gets its pilot.”

TWICE OUR MESS SERGEANT found himself in serious trouble. The first
resulted from a search for eggs. GI rations provided powdered eggs that
were a poor substitute for fresh eggs. But the cooks could mix fresh eggs
with powdered eggs, scramble them together, and we enjoyed a pretty
good omelet.
One day the mess sergeant set forth in a command car—one of
those big, cast-iron vehicles that looked like a king-sized jeep with its top
down—and the sergeant enjoyed remarkable success in his search. The
back seat of the command car was filled with eggs purchased from Italian
farmers. He felt his good fortune deserved a celebration with Italian
vino—red wine that could be found nearly everywhere—and he drank
and sang happily as he bounced along the road back to our Lesina base.
An unexpected big bounce coupled with too much vino caused him to
lose control of the command car, and the mess sergeant, the command
car, and hundreds of broken eggs ended in a ditch. The crestfallen mess
sergeant returned to face an irate mess officer, who threatened in the best
Patton manner to rip the stripes off the sergeant’s sleeves.
The second disaster happened after our group’s B-26 Martin
Marauder bomber returned with bushels of cherries flown direct from
Africa. The plane encountered rough weather during its return to Italy,
and baskets of cherries bounced all around. One of the crew was forced
to sit for an hour with an upside down basket of cherries in his lap.
Whenever he moved, some cherries spilled all over the airplane.
Our mess sergeant baked cherry pies. With great fanfare, he brought

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out the first slice of pie and proudly set it before Major Green. Herky
showed a broad smile as the fragrance of fresh cherry pie reached his
nose. Then he put a chunk of pie in his mouth, chomped down, and gri-
maced with pain when his teeth hit a cherry pit. The mess sergeant had
failed to take the pits from the cherries before baking them in the pie.
This cost him his stripes for a week.

AUGUST 10, 1944. We escorted B-17s once again attacking the Ploesti oil
refineries. There was little opposition, but Captain Richard Dunkin shot
down an Me-109. On our return home, we approached the Yugoslav
mountains and a call for help was heard: “May day! May day! My engine
quit!” I looked high, level, and then saw, losing altitude at 3 o’clock low, a
P-51 trailing smoke. It was tailed by three other P-51s that must have
been members of his flight. They were not members of the Checkertail
group. I flew to the left of the crippled Mustang. It kept gliding lower and
lower, and the mountains kept looking taller and more fierce. “Bale out!”
someone shouted in his mike.
The Mustang kept gliding. There was nothing that looked like a
landing area in the narrow valleys between those rocky peaks.
“Bale out, dammit!”
The Mustang’s canopy flipped off as the pilot pulled its emergency
release. The pilot stood up.
“Don’t just stand there. Bale out, damn you!”
The mountain tops were so near that it looked as though the
Mustang would scrape them. Finally, still standing, the pilot pulled his
rip cord, and we watched in horror as the chute spilled out and
wrapped itself around the airplane’s rudder. A second later, with the
pilot still standing in its cockpit, the P-51 smashed into the side of a
mountain peak and exploded.
There was one more transmission: “Oh, shit!”

AUGUST 12, 1944. The 325th had a mission to strafe radar stations on the
French coast. It was preparation for the invasion of Southern France that

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 The Fabulous Checkertail Clan

took place later in August.

“Stay low on the water,” was the command during morning briefing.
“Anyone above 50 feet is subject to be shot down.”
That was sufficient motivation to keep us low. It was fascinating see-
ing nearly 50 P-51s skimming across the water, pulling “rooster tails”
with their prop wash. One pilot was overly cautious in his effort to escape
being shot for flying too high. He flew closer and closer to the water, and
finally his prop cut the waves. The Mustang cartwheeled across the water
and disappeared from sight. Score one for the water.
As we approached the coast, I searched for anything that might be
radar. Suddenly I saw what looked like a mess of antennae behind build-
ings. I had a split second to shoot, and I sprayed the antennae as I passed
low across the buildings. It probably was not radar antennae, but I had
done the best I could. We gained altitude, reformed our formations, and
returned to Lesina. To me it seemed a wasted day.
The next morning, we were back over Southern France, this time
escorting B-24s bombing gun positions in the Sete area. Again there was
no enemy opposition. Another dull day for the fighters.

AUGUST 14, 1944. The 325th flew across Italy to Tarquinia Aerodrome
where we were closer to Southern France. We were scheduled to escort
C-47s towing gliders for the invasion of the French coast. The weather
was sunny and dry. The airfield was dusty. As in the Soviet Union, we
lived with what could be packed in little musette bags—shaving kit and a
change of underwear. Meals were eaten in the open, and we shared our
food with swarms of Italian honey bees. One meal featured canned
peaches for dessert. It was dangerous eating. Bees had to be flicked off
each spoonful of peaches before the peaches went into a person’s mouth.
Flying from the same field were C-47s—the famed Douglas-built
twin-engined transports that had done well in the invasion of Sicily and
later did yeoman duty in the cross-channel invasion of Europe. We
watched in awe as C-47s passed across the field towing huge, British-
built Horsa gliders that were larger than the tow planes. Other C-47s

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were each dragging two American-built Waco gliders. They were flying
so slowly they appeared almost stationary in the air. None of us wanted
to trade jobs with either a C-47 pilot, a glider pilot, or a passenger on
either plane or glider.
The next day brought the big event. We took off early and formed
flights, then set course across the water for France. As we approached the
coast s’ing over the C-47s and their gliders, we saw an armada of boats
and ships below. It was nothing like the earlier English Channel crossing,
but it was impressive.
There was no aerial opposition. It seeemed like it was going to be a
“milk run” for us and an easy invasion for the ground troops. Then, for
some unknown reason, many C-47s with their Horsa gliders turned and
headed back to Italy. A recall command had been given. I never learned
why the recall or why the first wave of tow planes and gliders aborted
their mission, but our morning effort, which consumed 4:10 of flying
time, had been for naught.
After landing back at Tarquinia, we refueled and immediately took off
for a second escort mission. This time we guarded C-47s towing smaller
American-built gliders. Once more we were over water. This time the C-47s
crossed the French coastline, flew several miles inland, and released the
gliders. When a glider is released, it is totally on its own. It has no place to
go but down. There were lots of open fields in that part of France, but the
Germans had planted hundreds of poles in every field that could be a land-
ing site. When the gliders landed, they smashed into the poles, which
sheared wings off fuselages and ripped the fragile gliders apart, scattering
men and equipment. It was horrible to see. How could anyone survive?
Shell bursts began appearing among the wrecked gliders. I thought
about taking my flight down to help the invasion troops, but my
untrained eye could not identify German defenders or their gun posi-
tions. When the last of the gliders was released and the C-47s were on
their way back to Italy, I rocked my wings, got my flight back into for-
mation, and we, too, left the French coast.
We arrived back at Tarquinia and saw a huge dust cloud rising over

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 The Fabulous Checkertail Clan

the Tarquinia runway. I brought my flight in slow, and we landed short.

Even then, we were in the heavy dust for a short time before slowing
enough to turn off the runway. I taxied to my tie-down, pulled out the
Form 1, and began filling in my flight time.
Suddenly there was a loud boom, and pieces of airplane began
raining down, narrowly missing several planes and the enlisted men
servicing them. A pilot had panicked when he entered the dust and
braked his plane to a stop. The plane landing behind him entered the
dust cloud and ran up the rear of the stationary Mustang. The entire
tail section of the first plane was hacked into small pieces and scat-
tered. The second plane’s pilot, boiling with anger, unfastened his
seat belt, climbed out, and stormed the few steps to the first plane,
where he offered to do battle with its pilot. Only the arrival of a crash
crew prevented the only fight that might have developed that day for
325th pilots.
Amazingly, the 325th mechanics took the front of the first Mustang
and the rear of the second and built a perfectly good P-51 out of them. I
often wondered which serial number it wore.

COMPUTER ART BY NEIL PUGH OF LONDON, ENGLAND

Typical formation flown by flights during a combat mission. Often, the formation was positioned like the tips of
your fingers: the flight leader in front with his wing man beside him; the element leader next following the leader
on the side opposite the wing man, and the element leader’s wing man flying as “tail end Charlie” in the rear.
Nobody wanted to fly the #4 position, which was most exposed to enemy attack.

169
 A Pilot’s Story

MY FORTÉ WAS FUEL CONSERVATION. I learned early that by reducing engine

rpm, pulling the mixture control back below “automatic lean,” and being
gentle on the throttle, I would burn far less fuel than was calculated for a
mission. Unless preparing for or engaged in a fight, I cut back on my
engine’s rpm more than most others and gauged how far I could lean the
mixture by watching the cylinder head temperature. During 70 missions,
I recorded 350 hours of combat time, which averaged 5 hours per mis-
sion, and I sweated fuel only once. Members of my flight adopted my
technique, and we stayed with bombers much longer than required or
expected. The P-51, flown properly, had great endurance. Some of my
missions lasted over six hours, and one was recorded at 7:20 from take-
off to landing.

BOMBER PILOTS had great courage, else they could never have flown
through flak and swarms of enemy fighters as they did. But we fighter
jocks sometimes wondered about their common sense. We were protect-
ing a lone B-24 returning from Romania when we overheard a cockpit
conversation between pilot and copilot. They did not know they were
transmitting. “There’s a town up ahead,” said one voice.
“Yeah,” replied a second voice, “and it looks like it might have flak.”
The Liberator continued straight, flew directly over the center of the
town, and a cloud of flak exploded around it. An engine began to burn,
and the B-24 lost altitude rapidly as parachutes blossomed around it.
Why, we wondered, did the B-24 pilot choose to fly directly over the
town when a slight turn would have taken him well away from the flak?
In mid-August, returning to Italy after escorting B-24 bombers that
hit the Ploesti oil refineries, we came on a Liberator with an engine out.
It was limping along at 10,000 feet, an easy prey for German fighters. We
had plenty of fuel remaining. I radioed the bomber, saying we’d stay with
it until we crossed Yugoslavia.
There was a happy response. “Thanks … but don’t get your noses
pointed at us. You look a lot like Messerschmidts, and our guys are edgy.”
A week later, we shepherded another crippled B-24 across

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 The Fabulous Checkertail Clan

Yugoslavia. The Liberator’s pilot heard my North Carolina accent and

called, “Where’re you from?”
“Zebulon,” I responded, thinking that no one had heard of Zebulon,
my home town.
“Hell,” exclaimed the B-24 pilot. “I’m from Zebulon. Do you mean
Zebulon, North Carolina?”
I did, and we had a short conversational reunion before we changed
courses to cross the Adriatic and go directly to our bases in Italy. It is
unusual for two pilots from a village of about 500 people to meet in the
air 15,000 feet over Yugoslavia, but Talmadge Harper and I did just that!

WE HAD ESCORTED bombers to the target—Bucharest—and the Luftwaffe

had given us no opposition Another fighter group began covering our
“big friends” over the target, and the 325th headed for home. I was lead-
ing my flight across Albania when I saw a train far below. Never before
had I strafed a locomotive, and this one was too tempting.
We circled the train, and it stopped. A man leaped from the cab and
looked up. I rolled over from 6,000 feet and headed down. At 1,500 feet
I began firing. A huge column of steam erupted from the locomotive’s
stack, shooting a hundred feet in the air. Steam burst from holes in the
boiler as it was punctured by my .50 caliber armor piercing bullets. I con-
tinued firing, spraying the side of the engine. The man who had jumped
from the cab turned and ran toward the front of the locomotive. I
watched with horror as my bullets cut him in half.
“Oh, God!” I exclaimed to myself, “Why in hell did he run that way?”
“Dave,” a member of my flight called, “Did you shoot that train?”
“Yeah,” I called back as I climbed for altitude. “I shot it. Now let’s
go home.”
Two others of my flight had followed me for a firing pass at the
locomotive. We left the train stranded, knowing that another loco-
motive would be needed to pull the train and its cargo to wherever
was its destination. In a small way, we had inconvenienced the
German war effort.

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 A Pilot’s Story

Other guys had photographs of their girl friends in

their cockpits. I was without a girl friend, so I placed
a photo of my mother in an empty slot on the instru-
ment panel. My P-51 was named “Bee”, which was
my father’s nickname for my mother. My conception
was somewhat of an accident. My father was a
Baptist minister and my mother was 43 when I was
born. “Bee” was a contraction of “Bess” which was a
contraction of “Elizabeth.” I often wondered what the
pilot who inherited Mayfair 24 thought about the
plane’s name and my mother’s photo.

That was the first of 12 locomotives I destroyed during my tour of

combat duty.

AUGUST 22, 1944. We completed our mission of providing target cover

for bombers attacking an oil refinery at Odertal, Germany. No enemy
aircraft were observed. As usual, my flight was easy on fuel, and, with
plenty left, we stayed with our “big friends” while others of the squadron
set course for home. A call for help was heard. Looking back, I saw two
Me-109s attacking a straggling B-17. We wheeled around in a tight turn
and pushed throttles forward to close on the bandits. One Me-109
attacked the bomber from the rear. I cheered when I saw the
Messerschmidt explode and go down in flames. A second Me-109 dove
away as we approached. Then, 15 miles west of Lake Balaton in Hungary,
six FW-190s swarmed around a hapless B-17 at 17,000 feet. An engine
flamed and the big bomber began spinning downward. We counted
parachutes … one, two, three, four, five … but there were no more. At
least five of the crew went down with their plane.
I led my flight directly at the enemy fighters, firing short bursts at
two before tacking on to a third. I kept firing as the range shortened from
500 yards to 50 yards, noting hits around the cockpit. The enemy aircraft
went into a spin at 12,000 feet, and I followed it down, breaking off at
1,000 feet when I found another FW-190 following me. As I climbed for

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 The Fabulous Checkertail Clan

When I joined the 317th Fighter Squadron, a paint-

ing of a black leopard was mounted on the wall of
the mess hall. I was told it was a suggested emblem
for the squadron that never had been approved.
Soon we began to design a replacement, and the
reproduction at left is the result. It received approval
of higher headquarters and became our emblem.
Fighter pilots of the 317th Squadron proved the wasp
had a genuine sting, achieving a record as one of the
highest scoring squadrons of the Army Air Corps
during WWII.

altitude, I looked back and saw two planes burning on the ground. My
wing man, John Conant, confirmed my kill. He said he watched as the
FW-190 crashed.
The fight was not over. More straggling bombers were limping
home. We gained altitude and turned north where six Me-109s were
attacking a B-17 and a B-24. The attackers dispersed as we came near. I
followed one Me-109 down to 3,000 feet, then broke the attack to return
to the bombers. Another Me-109 came at me from the rear. I broke left.
After four turns, I was on the German’s tail. Suddenly his plane slowed as
though it had brakes. It was the same trick enemy pilots had used suc-
cessfully in the past. Cut the throttle. Drop flaps. Lower landing gear.
Often attacking Americans would zoom past the German before reduc-
ing speed and then would find themselves being the huntee instead of the
hunter. I had done that myself.
I chopped throttle, dropped flaps, and hid underneath the Mes-
serschmidt as we both slowed … more and more and more. I looked
directly overhead and was so close to the enemy plane that I could count
rivets on the bottom of the Me-109. I saw oil streaks extending from the
engine along the fuselage. My indicated airspeed dropped below 100
mph, and I wondered how much longer the Mustang would hang in the
air. The enemy pilot rocked his wings trying to see where I had gone, but
I was directly underneath him, and he never saw me.

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 A Pilot’s Story

Satisfied that he had escaped, he rolled to the right in a shallow dive.

I banked directly behind him and began shooting. I fired … and fired
again. I pulled on the trigger and held it. All six machine guns were chat-
tering, but no hits were visible. I was puzzled. We strung tracers 50
rounds from the end of the belt so we would know when we were nearly
out of ammunition. I watched red tracers come from my wing guns, and
my eyes followed them as they went around the fuselage of the German
plane, over its wings, and converged in front of the propeller. I was so
close that my guns literally were shooting around both sides of the Me-
109 fuselage. I kicked rudder slightly and saw hits on the fuselage and
around the cockpit. Smoke streamed from the engine. At 2,000 feet, the
pilot baled out. I was so close that I saw the nails in the bottom of his
boots as he left his plane and sailed over my right wing. Lt. W. R. Hinton
confirmed this victory, having seen the pilot abandon the Me-109.
Neither of us saw the plane hit the ground.
It was a good day for my flight. Four members of the 317th Fighter
Squadron had taken part in the day’s only combat by 15th Air Force fight-
ers. We had saved several of the straggling bombers and destroyed four
German planes. Lt. W. R. Hinton and Lt. E. E. Ritter were the other victors
from my flight. Flight Officer Richard Trout was the fourth member.
That night, we celebrated with drinks in our squadron officers’ club
while listening to Axis Sal. She told of vicious battles fought that day by
the gallant Luftwaffe against the 15th Air Force. According to Sal, the
victorious Germans had destroyed numerous American bombers and
successfully defended themselves from hundreds of U.S. fighters. “We
must have done pretty good,” I told the members of my flight, “for the
Germans to report there were hundreds of us.”

DURING MANY MISSIONS, we relaxed on the return trip to our Lesina base
listening to a German radio station on the Detrola low frequency radios
installed in our planes. They received frequencies from 200 to 400 kilo-
cycles and were used in the States to tune in some towers and naviga-
tional stations. We used them to listen to German stations playing pop-

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 The Fabulous Checkertail Clan

ular music. It was while returning from missions that we learned the
words of Lili Marlene, a song that originated in Romania.
Underneath the lamp post by the barracks gate,
Standing all alone, every night you’ll see her wait.
She waits for a boy who’s gone away,
And ’though he’s gone, she hears him say,
“Oh, promise you’ll be true.
Fare thee well, Lili Marlene,
’Til I return to you,
Fare thee well, Lili Marlene.”
When we are marching in the mud and cold,
And when my pack seems more than I can hold,
My love for you renews my might,
I’m warm again, my pack is light.
It’s you, Lili Marlene;
It’s you, Lili Marlene.
Bugler, tonight don’t play the call to arms.
I want another evening with her charms;
Then we must say good bye and part.
I’ll always keep you in my heart
With me, Lili Marlene;
With me, Lili Marlene.
It was translated into every language of the European continent. We
thought it was a German song, but that did not matter. Lili Marlene
became the favorite of troops of every tongue and nation during World
War II. The song tugged at the heart, taking lonesome soldiers closer to
home. Who wrote it, who translated it, who sang it never mattered. It is
a song with a beautiful melody and haunting lyrics.

EARLY SEPTEMBER, 1944. Lt. Col. Herky Green planned a flying “vacation”
to Rome and southern France. He wanted someone to bring a twin-
engined UC-78—nicknamed “Bamboo Bomber”—from a bomb group

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 A Pilot’s Story

near Foggia to Lesina so that he could use it for transportation. Ray

Hinton, a former B-24 pilot, and I volunteered. Neither of us had flown
the UC-78, a plane used as a trainer in the States, but that did not mat-
ter. It was an airplane, and we could fly airplanes. Our check-out was
quick, little more than instructions on starting the two 225 hp engines.
Ray taxied to the runway using engines and brakes, pushed both throt-
tles to the stop, and we began to roll. As we left the ground, torque took
charge, and we went over the tent area sideways, finally gaining enough
altitude and air speed to straighten our line of flight.
After a slow climb to 3,000 feet, we took a look at the instrument
panel. Good airspeed. Manifold pressure was fine. RPM was good. Then
we saw the fuel gauge. It showed “empty!” Both of us forgot about flying
while we made a frantic search for the fuel selector valve. On hands and
knees, I found it located beneath the seats. I switched tanks, and we sat
speechless but relieved that our first flight in a UC-78 wouldn’t end in a
forced landing from fuel starvation.
Later I remarked to Ray, “That flight cost me more sweat than any
of my combat missions.”

SEPTEMBER 5, 1944. Bob Bass, Arne Arnesen, and I headed for a

three-day visit to Rome for “recreational purposes.” The Army had
taken over numerous hotels in the historic city, and Italians were
employed to prepare food and maintain the rooms. Our hotel once
was a deluxe place, but now room furnishings were standard Army—
cots and GI wool blankets. Nevertheless, the sights in Rome kept us
busy. We visited the coliseum, the catacombs, St. Peter’s, St. Paul’s, the
Appian Way, toured the Vatican, saw more ruins than I can remember,
and we marveled that Rome was spared destruction by both German
and American forces. At the hotel, Italian cooks prepared Spam dish-
es so well that we never knew it was Spam we were eating. Except for
thousands of troops enjoying rest and recuperation in the city, there
was little except Army trucks to indicate a war was being fought just
miles to the north.

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 The Fabulous Checkertail Clan

We could spot General George Patton’s troops. They were the ones
who were wearing neckties. The general wanted his men looking their
best wherever they were.
I learned that Lt. Charles Whitley, who was my best buddy and next
door neighbor when we were school age, was with an airborne unit fight-
ing north of Rome. I wondered whether I could hitch a ride and search
for him. I was told that three days were too few to attempt such a ven-
ture. Reluctantly, I abandoned the idea.
The second afternoon of my stay in Rome, while relaxing in the
hotel lobby, I heard someone call my name. I looked around and saw
Talmadge Harper coming toward me. Ho, boy! A reunion! This was the
guy from Zebulon, North Carolina, with whom I had talked while
returning from a mission to Romania. He told everyone who would lis-
ten about my escorting his bomber across Yugoslavia. His story elicited
some smiles but no great interest. Talmadge returned to North Carolina
after the war. Before I saw him again, he had died of cancer.
The statues that lined Rome’s streets were fascinating. Naked mar-
ble men, not too well endowed, were everywhere. We visited one beauti-
ful stone building after another. On our last day in Rome, before return-
ing to our hotel, we admired the design inside and out of the stately post
office. A few days after our visit, we learned that a booby trap hidden
inside the building by retreating German troops had exploded, killing a
great number of Italians and destroying a large part of the building. What
a disappointment it would have been to survive aerial combat only to be
killed by a German booby trap.

SEPTEMBER 15, 1944. Fun! The Germans tried to attack our bombers over
Athens, Greece. We drove them away. When the fight ended, I found
myself on the deck over the city of Athens. Mine was a sudden and very
quick sightseeing trip. I looked up a hill and there stood the Acropolis.
Centuries-old ruins were everywhere. Unfortunately, there were inhos-
pitable Germans trying to end my tour with antiaircraft guns. I left
Athens flying south in a hurry.

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Turning west, I flew over hills and came to the Gulf of Corinth,
which I knew led to the Ionian Sea. After reaching the Sea, I turned right
to fly northwest to Italy. After 15 minutes of flying low across the gulf, I
saw two planes ahead of me flying line abreast on the same heading. I
advanced the throttle and flew closer behind them. Coolant radiators
hung beneath their wings. English Spitfires! But from where? I swung
well to the right, rocked my wings, and kept on course for home. I believe
neither Spitfire pilot saw me. They would have been easy victims for a
Nazi fighter.

IT HAD BEEN A LONG MISSION to Munich. Two members of my flight com-

plained of low fuel. I released them from escort duties and sent them
straight back to Lesina. The fourth member stayed with me to watch over
several “big friends” that were struggling to get home.
As we entered Yugoslavian skies, my wing man called, “Dave, I’m
low on gas!” Uh, oh! A long way from home and sweating fuel.
“Throttle back, reduce your RPM, and get your mixture in auto-
matic lean,” I advised.
Fifteen minutes later, “Dave, I don’t think I can make it across the
water.” His situation was becoming serious.
“Can you get to Vis?” I asked. Vis was a tiny island just off the
Yugoslav coast controlled by U.S. forces. Its sole purpose was to provide
a landing spot for planes that were too short on fuel or too battered by
combat to make it across the Adriatic Sea. Its one runway was a godsend
to planes suffering engine problems, bad damage, or low fuel.
“Keep on course,” I advised my wing man, “and I’ll climb up and get
a heading for Vis.” At 12,000 feet, I called “Big Fence,” a U.S. radio-direc-
tion finding station that had provided help during a previous mission.
“Big Fence,” I transmitted. “This is Mayfair 24. How about a heading to
Vis. I have a buddy low on fuel.”
“Give me a short count,” the Big Fence operator responded.
I gave a short count—“One, two, three, four”—received a heading,
and a slight change of course took us directly to Vis. My wingman circled

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the island, at the same time calling the tower for landing instructions.
“Mayfair 16, continue circling,” the tower responded.
“But my tanks all say empty. I’m almost out of gas,” the pilot argued.
“Then go to the north end of the island and bail out,” the voice from
the tower concluded.
“I’ll try circling a few more times,” Mayfair 16 replied.
The story has a happy ending. A big bulldozer pushed a shot-up B-
24 off the Vis runway, and our boy was cleared to land. When I saw his
plane cross the approach end of the runway, I turned across the Adriatic
for home. Mayfair 16, refueled and happy, followed me two hours later.

IT IS NOT DIFFICULT to lose track of other airplanes in the excitement and

confusion of air combat or a strafing mission. The sky can be full of air-
planes and, in a split second, a pilot can find himself completely alone.
When you are on the deck strafing railroads or airfields 300 miles behind
enemy lines, and during the morning briefing you were told that the
Luftwaffe could send 200 fighters against you, and you can find no
friends, it is easy to rationalize that the proper course of action is to
return home.
After a firing pass across a German airfield, the air around me was
peppered with smoke from exploding antiaircraft shells. The German
defenders, wide awake and angry, made certain we would not attempt a
second attack. I looked back at the field and saw numerous columns of
black smoke. I knew one of them was the result of my hitting a twin-
engine plane, which burst into flames as I passed low overhead. We were
not told what direction to take after strafing the field. I broke hard right,
then left, and began to climb. I searched the sky for bandits and for chick-
ens. None were in sight. With too little fuel remaining to risk a fight, I
dropped to minimum altitude and began the long trip home.
The Yugoslavian mountains came into view, and I gained altitude to
skim the peaks. Flowers blossomed on the rocky hillsides. Small houses
and farm buildings nestled in deep valleys. Ahead I saw two small figures
walking along a trail. As I passed 30 feet above them, the largest, a girl

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Major General Nathan Twining, commander of the 15th

Air Force, came to Lesina to pin medals on several of us
fighter jocks. He pinned a Distinguished Flying Cross on my
left blouse pocket. The general never mentioned the bottle of
booze that I lifted from his table during his previous visit for
the grand opening of our officers’ club. After our handshake,
I realized that I had totally forgotten how to do an “about
face” and my awkward attempt was remembered more than
20 years later by those who saw it. The general and I are
wearing “cunt” caps.

possibly 12 years old, threw the little fellow beside her to the ground and
dropped, covering his body with hers. A sick feeling engulfed me as I
thought about children suffering through so much war that they knew
instinctively how to protect themselves and each other when attacked.
How cruel can humans be in dealing with other humans? Why can’t we
live as good neighbors?

OCTOBER 22, 1944. Special Orders Number 296, 15th Air Force, promoted
me from First Lieutenant to Captain by order of Major General Nathan
Twining. I was now wearing tracks! Time in grade: 3 months 13 days. We
were told that three months was the minimum time in grade for promotion
from First Lieutenant to Captain. I was just thirteen days over the minimum.

LATE OCTOBER 1944. I looked through my footlocker and got out a poplin
shirt, green jacket, and pink pants. I polished my brass and pinned pilot’s
wings on the jacket. I fastened my “bars” at just the right angle on my cap.
General Nathan Twining, commander of the 15th Air Force, was coming
to Lesina to pin medals on 325th Fighter Group pilots. That meant we
had to straighten and clean our tents in case the general wanted to see
how well we lived.

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Leslie Stacett, a little sawed-off, brown-nosing pilot who had a

personality despised by almost everyone, searched through the stack
of clothes he had tossed in the corner of his tent. Near the bottom he
found his green wool pants housing a family of mice, which had
taken a piece out of the seat to line their nest. We delighted in his
pique and temper as he took his holey pants and stormed away to a
nearby Italian seamstress. She patched the pants so that nothing was
visible through the seat, but it was hard to keep from snickering as
we watched Leslie in front of General Twining, standing as tall as he
was able with that big patch on his rear.
I was in the line of pilots receiving medals from the general. My
award was a Distinguished Flying Cross. Our instructions were to step
forward, salute General Twining, and stand motionless as he pinned a
medal on us. Then we were to step back, salute again, do an about face,
and march to our place among the other decorated pilots. I snapped the
general a sharp salute and stood, chest out, while he pinned the medal to
the flap of my left jacket pocket. We shook hands.
Then came deep humiliation! I stepped back, saluted, and sudden-
ly had no recollection of how to execute an about-face. I stood red faced
and realized the last about-face I had attempted was during my Aviation
Cadet days. The general had a puzzled look on his face as he waited for
me to depart. Taking little mincing side-steps, I turned gradually, faced
the opposite direction, and stumbled to where the award recipients
stood. Twenty years later, I continued to hear laughter from some who
had witnessed my embarrassing maneuver.

LATE OCTOBER 1944. The 15th Air Force was overwhelming the Luft-
waffe. Fighters were being used more frequently for strafing, often hun-
dreds of miles behind the enemy lines. No enemy airfield nor railroad
was safe. Then came orders to prepare for dive bombing missions.
The P-51D was not built to be a dive bomber. Its cleanly designed
fuselage let it pick up too much speed in a dive. We tried rolling into a
dive at different altitudes. Start down at 3,000 feet, and you were subject

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to be hit by small arms fire from the ground. Roll into a dive at 6,000 feet,
and you gained so much airspeed that pull-outs had to begin too high
above the target. We compromised at 5,000 feet as the best altitude to
begin dives. We chose that altitude despite the warning in the P-51 hand-
book that pullouts should begin above 5,000 feet from any dive more
than 30 degrees.
It was during a practice dive that Don Terry, 19 years old and one of
the finest and most natural pilots I ever knew, bought the farm. Terry was
a new pilot we thought was blessed with good luck. On his first mission,
his flight leader spotted a German Ju-52 transport over Yugoslavia, lined
up directly behind the three-engined plane for a sure kill, and found
himself out of ammunition. He signaled Terry to take over, and Terry got
an easy victory.
Terry had several books about aerobatics. He could read of a man-
euver, take off in a plane, and do the maneuver perfectly on his first
attempt. Besides being lucky, an expert pilot, and handsome, Terry was a
very nice guy.
Two others sat with me in a jeep on a bridge watching Art Fiedler
and his flight make practice dives at the bridge. Art was perfect, rolling
into his dive with his nose pointed at the center of the bridge. His flight
path was exact, and no corrections were needed to keep the bridge cen-
tered in his gun sight.
Terry was second in line. His dive was as good as Art’s, and he
pulled out even lower. Then, as his Mustang came out of the dive and
roared over the bridge at nearly 400 mph, centrifugal force caused the left
landing gear to drop slightly out of the wing, and the drag of the exposed
wheel pulled the P-51 sideways. Pieces of the plane broke loose, and it
went out of control and into the ground, hitting with a terrific explosion.
We sat for a moment, dumbfounded. Then we drove the short distance
to the crash site. We found nothing but tiny pieces of the plane. There
was no evidence of Terry, the guy who we thought might some day equal
Herky Green’s victory total. It took a lengthy search to find enough of
Terry’s body to qualify for a burial.

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Something good resulted from our witnessing the fatal crash. Until
then, the P-51 landing gear was held closed by only hydraulic pressure.
Following the loss of Terry, North American designed mechanical locks
that held the gear inside the wings regardless of G-forces.
But that did not bring back Terry.

OCTOBER 1944. We were at 25,000 feet, on a fighter sweep to protect

bombers attacking targets at Athens, Greece. Art Fiedler and I were lead-
ing the two trailing flights. During the morning briefing, only light
opposition was predicted. Art and I were eager to find whatever bandits
we could. Approaching Athens, I saw Art lead his flight into a shallow
right turn and begin losing altitude. There was no sound on the radio. I
looked far below where Art’s keen eyes had spotted an airfield. Two Ju-
52 tri-motored transports were on final approach for landing.
It became a race. Drop tanks hung in the air as they were released.
Eight Mustangs dove straight for the airfield. Art was first in line. He also
was a crack shot, quickly disposing of one of the transports before it
reached the runway. I thought Art had clobbered both the Junkers, but
Jim Simmons claimed one, and Art split the victories with him.
I was close behind. I saw no other planes flying, so I went directly
across the airfield parallel to the runway firing at parked planes. Three
exploded and burned fiercely.
By then, German defenders were firing furiously. Tracers streamed
by. I banked hard left over a small hill, and noted my airspeed dropping
swiftly as I climbed the hill just inches off the ground with antiaircraft
shells exploding around me. Airspeed 170. 150. Then 130! The prop was
windmilling. Automatically, I went through the procedures we had prac-
ticed. First, switch gas tanks. I looked at the fuel selector and cursed.
When I dropped my wing tanks at 25,000 feet, I had failed to switch to
internal fuel. No wonder Art and Jim beat me down. I was flying with a
dead engine. I switched to a main tank. My engine coughed, sputtered,
and then roared back to life with the sweetest sound I ever heard. I bare-
ly cleared the hill and fled south over water.

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Safe from the antiaircraft, I climbed over the water. I saw a road dug
into the side of a cliff that rose from the water. It was crowded with a con-
voy of military vehicles moving slowly bumper-to-bumper. I had ammu-
nition left. Should I attack them? I wasn’t eager to test my luck, but it was
too tempting. I turned right to get near the head of the column, then
made a tight left turn to get my gun sight on the lead vehicle. If I stopped
that first truck, the entire convoy would be forced to stop. It would be
minced meat for my fifties. No ring and pip appeared on the sight. I
pulled the gun trigger. Nothing happened. My guns were silent. My elec-
trical system was out. Not only was I unable to attack, I couldn’t defend
myself if I were attacked. It was time to go home!
There was another problem. The magnetic compass on the P-51 was
located in the left wing tip. It sent signals by wire to the needle on the
instrument panel that indicated direction of flight. With my electrical
system gone, the magnetic compass was useless. But the day was clear.
The sun was in sight. I remembered something I learned 10 years earlier
as a Boy Scout. Sight the numeral “12” on my watch face at the sun, and
halfway between the hour hand and the numeral “12” was true north.
Lesina was northwest of Athens—a pretty long way, but northwest. It
worked. I came in sight of the Adriatic, crossed the water, then saw the
heel of Italy, and finally the spur and Lesina. Home again!

OCTOBER 1944. Ray Hinton and I were assigned to pick up a plane from
a field south of Foggia. We had no road map, but we did have a driver
who knew the way. We arrived at the airfield in late afternoon and saw a
big flag—white with an orange maple leaf centered on its field—flying
over the entrance.
“Whose flag is that?” I asked.
“That’s a Canadian flag,” said the driver. “This field belongs to them.”
We passed through the gate, identified ourselves, and drove down
the flight line. Parked in a haphazard line were Spitfires and Mosquitoes,
all photo recon planes. Their task was to fly between Italy and England,
photographing key enemy military installations along their flight path.

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The Spitfires were the latest version built by the English, with the new,
more powerful Merlin engine. To absorb the increased power, the Spits
had five-bladed propellers, which looked like daisies on the front of those
trim little planes.
We drove to headquarters, located in one of the few buildings that
had escaped war damage, and learned that our plane was not ready. In
fact, it was not at that airfield. Worse, the Canadians had no idea where
it was. By then, it was near dark. There was nothing for us to do but
spend the night.
It was a spirited evening. A South African group of flyers also were
enjoying Canadian hospitality. Liquor flowed freely, and the South
Africans insisted we join their loud and discordant singing. Soon we
were sitting in a circle, pounding chairs with a jungle beat, and singing:
Eye zicky zoom bah, zoom bah, zoom bah.
Eye zicky zoom bah, zoom bah, zee.
Eye zicky zoom bah, zoom bah, zoom bah.
Eye zicky zoom bah, zoom bah, zee.
Hold ’em down, you Zulu warrior.
Hold ’em down, you Swazi chieftain, chieftain, chieftain.
This single verse was sung over and over, faster and faster.
Anyone who failed to keep pace with the chair beating or the singing
dropped out. The singing and chair-pounding continued until finally
only one person was frantically singing and beating his chair. He was
the winner.
It was 45 years before I heard that song again. A South African
Rotary team comprised of a husband and wife and four young ladies vis-
ited my home in North Carolina. I remarked that I had enjoyed knowing
South Africans in Italy during World War II, and related how they had
taught me a song.
“What song?” the ladies asked.
I started singing, Eye zicky zoom bah … With broad smiles, four
females joined me in beating the table and singing until laughter ended
our song.

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A LONG MISSION and a fight often would leave us with barely enough fuel
for our return to Lesina. Our tanks were near empty when we arrived
home, so we flew tight landing patterns, getting on the ground as quick-
ly as possible after pitching out over the runway. I found I could come in
on the deck at 250 mph, chop my throttle, pitch up until I was nearly on
my back indicating 150 mph, drop flaps and landing gear, and, after a
steep gliding turn, finish the 360 degree pattern with a three-point land-
ing in one minute five seconds. The tower operators enjoyed timing the
interval between pitch-up and three wheels on the runway.
One day, after relaxing by taking my airplane into the wild blue and
wringing it out, I called the tower for landing instructions and headed for
the field. My pitch-up was great. Inverted, I looked through the top of my
canopy down at the headquarters tent area. My flaps and wheels extend-
ed. My landing approach looked good. Then it dawned on me that the
gusty wind had shifted. My approach was wrong. My airspeed was much
too slow. Just as I crossed the threshold, the bottom dropped out, and
Mayfair 24 slammed into the runway.
“Congratulations!” the tower operator shouted into his mike. “Mayfair

Six aerial victories and I am called an “Ace.” John Mooney, my crew chief, was proud to help me paint the six
Maltese crosses on the left side of the fuselage of Mayfair 24. Note my casual dress. It was either muddy or dusty
at Lesina, and there were no laundries to take care of our clothes. We depended on Italian women to get the dirt
and grime out. There was little need for a shoe shine, either.

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 The Fabulous Checkertail Clan

24, you just set a new record: 59 seconds from pitch-up to touchdown!”
I looked at the Mustang’s wings, which were bulging above the
landing gear. I had hit the ground so hard that the landing gear had
rammed nearly through the top of both wings. Mayfair 24 was through
flying for a while. A lump filled my throat. I could hardly speak, but I
responded to the operator’s compliment: “I got a record, I guess, but it
cost me an airplane.”
My tour of duty was over before repairs were attempted on my
beloved Mayfair 24. It hurt whenever I saw it sitting crippled on the
ramp. Later I learned that Major Max McNeil, who succeeded Herky
Green as 317th commander in September, had written it off as damaged
in combat. He never had the accident entered in my flight records.
But Mayfair 24 did get repaired. It returned to combat and record-
ed enough time to require an engine change. Pilots who subsequently
owned the plane left the six Maltese Crosses on its side. They belonged
to the plane and not the pilot.

THE STABLES WERE TOTALLY RENOVATED and our new officers’ club was
ready. A gala celebration was planned for its grand opening. General
Nathan Twining, commander of the 15th Air Force, agreed to attend.
Plenty of liquor was available, and a P-51 was sent to altitude, its drop
tanks loaded with 150 gallons of beer. A short stay above 20,000 feet
chilled the beer to near freezing. Back on the ground, the cold beer was
hauled to the club. We knew this party would be a good one.
“Captain,” Sergeant John Mooney said to me as I was climbing out
of a plane the afternoon the club was to open, “Could you get one of
those bottles of whiskey for us. I know there will be plenty there. We’ll
wait at the door of the club.”
He was right. When I entered the club, bottles of booze were on
every table. I took the first I saw, concealed it as best I could, and
returned to the door. True to his word, Sergeant Mooney and three bud-
dies were waiting. I slipped the bottle to them. With big grins on their
faces, they headed for the enlisted men’s area. That fifth had a short life.

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 A Pilot’s Story

The club officially open and formalities over, our attention turned
to fun and fellowship. We sang loudly but not well, and we polished off
the bottles of liquor on our table. Looking around, we noted that others
had been less studious about their drinking. One bottle had not been
touched. It was on General Twining’s table. He gave no indication that he
intended to drink it. It was a terrible shame for a bottle of booze to end
the night unopened. I walked straight and tall to the general’s table, salut-
ed, and said, “Sir, the General hasn’t touched his bottle, and we don’t
want it to go to waste. Would the General like for us to drink it?”
General Twining looked up in astonishment. Before he could
answer, I had taken his fifth of whiskey and returned to our table. I am
certain he obtained my name, because it was 11 years before I was pro-
moted to major.

AN OCTOBER MISSION was not a good one. It was clear that a new pilot was
poorly trained. We wondered how he qualified for a commission and
wings. Hours of flying with other squadron pilots did not improve his
skills. A shortage of pilots required that he be scheduled to fly. On the
way to the target, the new pilot experienced engine trouble over
Yugoslavia. Little opposition was expected, and a second pilot was told to
provide escort back across the Adriatic for the limping Mustang. The
escorting pilot chose to lead the way with the ailing Mustang, engine
sputtering, on his wing. Clouds billowed high along the Yugoslav coast.
The two planes never deviated from a direct course across the Adriatic
Sea to Lesina. Both entered the clouds, but only one, the leader, came out.
It flew on across the Adriatic, and its pilot reported the second plane
missing. We felt both sad and guilty.
When the flight leader learned that the crippled plane was lost while
flying the wing of its escort, he screamed, “What in hell were you doing
having him fly your wing? Why weren’t you flying on his wing?”
“I didn’t know I was supposed to,” was the reply.
The upset flight leader calmed down, but cold shoulders, anger, and
guilt were evident whenever the errant pilot was around.

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 The Fabulous Checkertail Clan

I HAD COMPLETED 70 MISSIONS! 350 combat hours. A genuine Ace! I had

no choice. It was time to go home. As long as I stayed with the squadron,
some first lieutenant could not be promoted to captain. I was awaiting
orders. Unable to stay in the sack while the group was getting ready for
the mission of the day, I went along with other pilots for the morning
briefing. The route to the target was long. Considerable Luftwaffe oppo-
sition was expected. After the briefing, we returned to squadron opera-
tions. One pilot became sick. The 317th was short a pilot.
“Wanna go, Dave?” asked Major McNeil, the new squadron com-
mander.
I was startled. I had flown the maximum 70 missions. Orders were
being cut to send me back to the States. Mission takeoff was in five min-
utes. I was tempted. But then I looked at my garb. Low quarter shoes.
Khakis. No long underwear. No leather jacket. My helmet was packed,
and I would have to borrow another. Reluctantly, I said, “I’ll pass.”
I turned and walked, head down, to a jeep which carried me back to
my tent. It appeared I had permitted my desire for home to get in the way
of duty. I have never regretted a decision as much.

MY LAST JEEP RIDE in Italy carried me across the peninsula from Lesina to
Naples. Accommodations at Naples were poor, but it didn’t bother me. I
was on my way home. That seemed a miracle, because a year earlier I
thought I would never survive a combat tour.
At Naples, we were forced to give up photographs and anything else
that the censors thought might be useful to the enemy. I argued vehe-
mently about turning in the record of my missions that 317th Operations
had compiled, but the major in charge of processing promised it would
be returned. Instead of continuing the heated argument, I gave up the
records and pictures, and I never saw them again.
We ate from mess kits and drank scalding coffee. Anyone who has
sipped coffee from an aluminum cup knows that the temperature of the
cup is fully 20 degrees hotter than the liquid inside. I never learned the
reason during over 30 years of active and National Guard service.

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 A Pilot’s Story

Our stay in Naples was only two days. Then we were transported to
the Naples harbor and loaded on a troop ship—a converted Matson liner
that had sailed the Pacific prior to the war. There was plenty of room.
The troop ship that took me from Norfolk to Casablanca carried over
12,000 men. The liner returning me to the U.S.A. from Naples had only
3,000 men and a half dozen women. For many, crossing the Atlantic
would be a one-way journey.
Two meals a day were served on board ship. We tried to save some-
thing from our meals to take back to our cabin as late night snacks. Our
cabin probably was rated “very nice” by tourists riding it across the
Pacific, but, as a military transport, the ship’s cabins contained eight
bunks, not beds, but only four of ours were occupied.
A cabin mate, Captain Giovanni Maestrianni, was seasick before we
left Naples harbor. By the time we were in the Mediterranean, Giovanni was
unable to get out of bed. He became dehydrated and weak, having vomited
everything that went down his throat—even cups of water. When we
reached the Straits of Gibraltar and entered the Atlantic Ocean, he could
barely crawl from his bunk to the toilet. If we found any food we thought he
could hold in his stomach, we brought it to him. But Giovanni could hold
down nothing. He remained in his bunk during the entire voyage.
Captain Robert Westry, a mid-westerner, was ecstatic at returning
to the States. He talked constantly about the girls who were waiting for
him in Iowa. “My idea of heaven,” Bob exclaimed, “is 10 acres of tits and
me running around on them barefoot!”
He told us of the beauty and sweetness of his fiancé. According to Bob,
she was ignorant of the ways of the world when he left for overseas. “I’m going
to take her to bed the first night I’m home,” he said, “and I’m going to get on
cross-ways. If she says that’s not right, I’m going to beat hell out of her!”
Three nights out, Jim Tyson brought a Wac to our cabin, introduced
her to everyone, and announced, “Sue is going to help me with my bath.”
Since leaving Naples, the shower had run only cold, salt water. It wasn’t
comfortable, and soap made no suds when mixed with the water. Jim
stripped to his shorts, and he and the Wac—who, even though not a rav-

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 The Fabulous Checkertail Clan

ing beauty, wasn’t all that bad looking—went into the tiny shower, which
also contained the toilet. We heard laughter and thrashing around. Ten
minutes later both exited the shower. Jim had a towel wrapped around
his hips. The Wac still wore clothes, albeit they were dripping wet.
“See you later, guys. Gotta get to the lifeboat.” The next morning,
Jim told us he and Sue had found a lifeboat with a loose canvas covering.
Each night they took blankets from empty bunks, went through darkness
onto deck, climbed in the lifeboat, and stayed there until dawn.
During one meal, we passed the time by guessing ages. Al Thomas
looked young. We guessed his age as 21. He actually was 20 years and 6
months. My age was estimated at 28. I did not know whether to be proud
of my graying hair and mature look or worried that I looked so old. I was
a month shy of my 21st birthday.
The ship had a small newspaper—one 8½x11 sheet printed on both
sides. Having grown up in a weekly newspaper business, I knew it was
printed from lead type. Officers were permitted to wander all through the
ship. I kept searching until I found the ship’s print shop. It was a one-man
operation, but its equipment was first class. A Linotype machine to set
type, cases filled with foundry type, and a hand-fed platen press. I volun-
teered to help the civilian printer, then thought of the disaster that took
place when my parents let me help them with the weekly newspaper while
I was home on leave. The printer was wise to refuse my offer.
Six days out from Naples, we ran into rough weather and terrible
seas. Waves tumbled over the rails and across the deck. We passed the
time singing verses of “The Wreck of the Titanic.”
… and the band struck up with ‘nearer my God to Thee.’
There were husbands and wives,
Little children lost their lives.
It was sad when that great ship went down.
Thirty feet outside our cabin door, a wide stairs led to the deck
below. Opposite the stairs on the lower deck was the sick bay. Here was
where doctors and nurses cared for soldiers who had qualified for a
Purple Heart the hard way. They were minus arms, legs, and other vital

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parts. Several times a day, loudspeakers blared a plea for blood donors.
We forgot about singing and rushed down the stairs to volunteer our
blood for whoever needed it. We always were too late. By the time we
arrived at the foot of the stairs, more than a hundred men were waiting
to give their blood. No matter how quickly we responded, a long line of
prospective donors was ahead of us.
So, with the former ocean liner rocking and rolling, we climbed
back up the stairs and resumed our song:
It was sad, how sad, it was sad, how sad.
It was sad when that great ship went down!
The terrible weather, we learned, was off the coast of North
Carolina. We were in the roughest area—the graveyard of the Atlantic—
near Cape Hatteras. The Matson liner was built for service in the Pacific,
where it never encountered seas like those off North Carolina. We hoped
its battle against the Atlantic storm would not be lost. It wasn’t. Thirty
hours later we arrived at Boston Harbor. It was a dreary day. The sky was
overcast and a cold drizzle chilled us as we walked down the plank from
the ship. We rode buses to Camp Miles Standish, near Boston, where we
were escorted to barracks.
“Chow in an hour,” a captain called. We were ready, having eaten
nothing since the 8 a.m. meal on board ship in the Atlantic. The mess
hall was straight GI except for the food. The menu featured items we
had nearly forgotten since leaving the States the prior year: steaks, ice
cream, fresh milk! A big sign over the chow line advised: “Take all you
want, but eat all you take!” Our eyes were far bigger than our stom-
achs. We piled our trays high with steaks, added glasses of milk, and
then, although stuffed, made three or four return trips to the chow line
for ice cream.
Shortly after midnight, we regretted our gluttonous behavior. I
joined a line at the latrine to throw up what I had eaten. An hour later I
was back at the crowded latrine to sit on a john and empty my bowels of
anything that remained. We were not used to rich food, and our stom-
achs let us know it with a vengeance.

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 The Fabulous Checkertail Clan

CAMP MILES STANDISH was our home for only two days; then we boarded
a train headed for Fort Bragg, North Carolina, down south only 100
miles past my home in Zebulon. There were no sleeping cars, but that
didn’t matter. Most passengers on our car—the last one on the train—
were returning Air Corps pilots. We could sleep anywhere.
The conductor opened the door at the back of the car. We stood on
an observation platform relishing the feel of the cold wind and enjoying
the sight of small towns and large cities as the train rushed toward the
Southland. One pilot found a box of flares on the platform. Each flare
had a metal spike at one end.
“What’s that for?” we asked the conductor.
“You take the flare like this,” he said, “and you throw it down at the
track. If you do it right, it sticks in a crosstie and burns for 30 minutes.”
He demonstrated for us, expertly flipping the flares. We watched it
burn brightly and kept watching until it disappeared behind us. It became a
contest. Who could get the most flares burning? We continued our game
until the last flare was gone. Then we moved back into the railroad car. It
wasn’t long until everyone was sleeping while the train clickety-clacked its
way through the darkness toward Dixieland.

MY STAY AT FORT BRAGG was short. I was there only overnight. I slept fit-
fully on a steel cot on the second floor of a wooden barracks, frequently
wakened by the moaning and sleep-talking of other combat veterans.
They were suffering nightmares, reliving their worst experiences.
The next day, I was at Fort Bragg long enough to pick up orders
granting me a week at home before reporting to Richmond, Virginia, for
reassignment.
Home! Zebulon, North Carolina! Here I come, whether you’re
ready for me or not!

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 Stateside—
Fun, Frustration, Finality

1944. I was home once again. There were gold stars in

D
ECEMBER
windows of many homes indicating that a member of the house-
hold had been killed in the war. My home had one for my old-
est brother, Lieutenant Eric Davis, who had been killed on Bataan in the
Philippines fighting the Japanese in early January 1942. My brother, Ferd,
was flying in the Pacific as a B-24 group navigator with the 5th Bomb
Group, 13th Air Force. My parents had two blue stars on a front win-
dow—one for Ferd and one for me. An older brother, Ted, worked in my
father’s weekly newspaper plant. He escaped the draft because he was a
single parent with two children following the death of his wife from a
heart attack.
The families of two who graduated in 1940 from high school with
me had gold stars in their windows. Albert Wiggs was the first to go, los-
ing his life in North Africa while serving as an aerial gunner on an Air
Corps bomber. Clinton Moss was second. He was a studious son of a
farmer, who had moved to the Zebulon community when we were in
tenth grade. Two of the farmer’s sons, Clinton and David, alternated
attending public school so that one was available to work on the Moss
farm every year. Clinton volunteered for military service and lost his life.
It wasn’t a great homecoming, although the neighbors were happy
to see me. Most of my high school buddies were in service, many in com-

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bat. Charles Whitley, my next door best friend during my early ’teen
years, now was a officer in the paratroopers fighting in France. He lost
his life in early 1945 during the Battle of the Bulge. Wilbur Debnam, my
best friend of all my high school classmates, was a B-24 bomber pilot
who had caught fragments of flak that burst in the cockpit. He had a
Purple Heart, a long recuperation, and a crippled hand to remind him of
his combat tour with the 15th Air Force in Italy. It was not all happiness
among my family or the folks in my home town.

ZEBULON HELD A WAR BOND SALE on Arendell Avenue, its main street.
The street was blocked to traffic, and more than 200 men and women
stood around a flatbed trailer. Standing on the trailer was an auctioneer,
who offered various gifts to persons purchasing the largest number of
War Bonds. I marveled at the number of bonds the poorer citizens were
buying. Somebody grabbed my hand and dragged me up on the trailer.
“Tell us about the war,” a man dressed in overalls shouted.
I stood speechless. All I could think about was the cold, sticky
Italian mud, and the GIs who were fighting in that hostile environment.
“Mine was the sanitary war,” I said quietly. “I fought in the air and
not in the mud and grime.”
“How many Germans did you shoot down?” someone else yelled.
“I have credit for six,” I said quietly. I stood there remembering the
engineer who ran into the line of fire when my 50s were clobbering his
locomotive. I thought about the German pilot who bailed out only to
have his parachute rip from its shroud lines, sending him in free fall to
his death three miles below. I thought of Don Terry, our best pilot, who
was smashed to pieces when his P-51 Mustang disintegrated during a
practice dive at a bridge. Hundreds of expectant faces looked up at me.
“It wasn’t all fun,” I said.
The auctioneer noted the mood changing. He raised my right hand.
“All right,” he chanted. “What’ll you bid to have Captain Barrie Davis—
an Ace fighter pilot—come eat with you? Who’ll give a thousand?”
I stood with a blank look as bids were taken. Finally John Barrow,

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 Stateside — Fun, Frustration, Finality

Zebulon’s richest citizen, pledged to purchase $5,000 in War Bonds, and

the auctioneer banged his gavel and pushed me off the trailer.
I did not eat with the Barrows. Somehow during my time at home
their schedule never coincided with mine. Before we could determine a
satisfactory date, my leave was up, so I never had opportunity to see
inside the Barrow home, a big brick house painted white that was the
largest residence in Zebulon.

DURING MY SECOND DAY at home, my brother Ted received orders from

the draft board to report in three days for service with the Army. Ted was
31 years old. He had two years of Navy service prior to the war. Now,
with a new wife and two young children, he never expected to be draft-
ed. But here was his notice.
We shifted into panic mode, moving all his furniture from Zebulon
to his mother-in-law’s home in Middlesex, about six miles from Zebulon.
There was no room for everything, so some furniture had to be stored.
Just as the move was completed, a second message from the draft board
arrived in the mail. Pay no attention to the first message, it said, because
we no longer are drafting fathers who have two children. The next two
days of my leave were consumed with moving all my brother’s furniture
and other belongings back to Zebulon.

AFTER A WEEK IN ZEBULON, I boarded a bus for Richmnd, Virginia, where

I reported to a Replacement Center. Four pilots who shared the ship’s
cabin with me during the trip across the Atlantic to Boston from Italy
reported at the same time. It made for a nice reunion. A doctor checked
us carefully and noted that my blood pressure was 148 over 90, much
higher than the reading of my buddies. I sighed with relief when, despite
my high blood pressure, he pronounced me fit for flight duty.
Cold, drizzly December rain never dampened our spirits in
Richmond. We learned that fraternity houses at the University of
Richmond were celebrating with Christmas parties. The brothers wel-
comed us, sharing their booze and broads unselfishly. Nearly every night,

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we found a fraternity party. With no duties, we slept late every morning

and were ready to party again the following night.

LATE ONE AFTERNOON, I made my daily walk through the orderly room to
check for mail. The clerk knew me, because he had been quick to notice
that my cap did not have officer’s braid sewed on it. I had lost my “cunt
cap,” and the PX did not have officers’ caps in stock, so I settled for an
unadorned enlisted man’s cap. Only my rank insignia indicated I was a
commissioned officer.
“Captain,” the clerk called to me. “We’re cutting orders to send most
of you out of here. Any place you’d like to go?”
“What are you talking about?” I asked. “What’s available?”
“Well, look here,” said the clerk. “We’re going to send some of you
to Dover, Delaware, and some to a place up in Massachusetts, and … hey!
How about Las Vegas?”
“Las Vegas where?”
“Las Vegas, Nevada!” the clerk exclaimed.
“What’s special about Las Vegas? I never heard of it.”
“You never heard of Las Vegas? Cap’n, they’ve got all sorts of gam-
bling and shows! And women! It’s lots better than Reno!”
I thought for a minute and started to ask for the full list of destina-
tions to be read. But I didn’t. If the clerk were so excited about Las Vegas,
it must be worth seeing.
“Put me down for Las Vegas,” I told him.
“Done,” he said. “You’ll love it!” He began pounding out orders on
his typewriter.
That night I located a map and found Las Vegas at the south end of
Nevada near Boulder Dam. I estimated the distance from Zebulon to Las
Vegas to be 2,600 miles. The Army required only 200 miles of travel each
day in a private vehicle. If I bought a car, I’d have 13 days after the orders
were cut to get to my new assignment. I did a little arithmetic. By driv-
ing long hours, I ought to be able to make at least 400 miles a day. That
would give me nearly an extra week at home! The next day I waited

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impatiently for my orders to be cut, grabbed my copies, and caught a bus

to Zebulon.
Hours after arriving home, I stopped at J & M Chevrolet Company
on Arendell Avenue to shop for a car. Judd Robertson, the owner, point-
ed to a 1940 Oldsmobile coupe.
“How about that one for $800?” he asked.
“Great,” I replied. “When can I pick it up?”
“It’ll take us three days to get it ready,” Judd said. “It has a bro-
ken rod that went through the crankcase. But Allen can have it as
good as new.”
Allen Cawthorne was Judd’s brother-in-law and the best mechanic
in town. I walked to the shop in the rear of the building where repairs
were made, and I found Allen.
“Can you fix this Olds so I can drive it coast to coast?” I asked.
Allen was appalled that I questioned his skill. He spit a stream of
tobacco juice across the shop. “When I get through with it, you can drive
it around the world and maybe to the moon,” he bragged.
I walked back to Judd’s office and said I’d take the car. He took a
look at me, noted my pink and green uniform and the Flighter cap
parked on the side of my head.
“Say,” he commented, “you ought to be able to drive any speed you
want to. With that uniform and hat, everybody will think you’re a high-
way patrolman.”
Three days later, I wrote a check to J & M Chevrolet for $800, which
pretty well depleted my bank account. I climbed in the Oldsmobile and
drove it home. It ran smoothly, but it had been two years since I drove a
civilian automobile, and any civilian car ran smoothly compare with the
jeeps in Italy.
Three days of my leave were gone. I had to get a move on.

I VISITED THE RATION BOARD in Raleigh—20 miles away—and was issued

gasoline ration stamps to provide fuel for the 2,600-mile drive to Las
Vegas. The Ration Board computed my gasoline allowance based on the

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Oldsmobile getting 15 miles per gallon, counted out several books of

ration stamps, and wished me well. Each stamp was good for three gal-
lons of gasoline. I trusted the Ration Board and never bothered to count
the stamps. They looked like plenty to get me to Las Vegas. Two days
later I threw my B-4 bag, my duffel bag, and my foot locker in the back
seat of the Oldsmobile and headed west.
A nation-wide 35 mph speed limit was the law during World War
II. By early afternoon I had traveled only 200 miles and was climbing the
winding road leading to Asheville, North Carolina, when the engine quit.
I had fuel in the tank. What was the problem? I lifted the hood, gazed at
the engine, shook the spark plug wires, and tried to start the engine
again. It gasped and died.
It wasn’t long before a friendly mountaineer stopped in his pick-
up truck and offered help. He lifted the air filter from the carbureter,
pulled a screwdriver from the hip pocket of his overalls, and
unscrewed something.
“Just what I expected,” he said. “You got fuel pump trouble. The car-
bureter is dry.”
The mountaineer went to his truck, bit off a quid of tobacco from a
plug of Red Man lying on the seat, and returned with a hose and a small
can. He pushed the hose down the fuel spout of my Olds and sucked on
the hose until he tasted gasoline. He stuck the end of the hose in the can
and syphoned gasoline until he had filled the can. He never bothered to
spit out the quid of tobacco.
“OK,” he commanded, “Now try starting it again.”
I turned the key and pressed the starter pedal. As the engine turned
over, the hillbilly poured gasoline from the can into the carburetor. The
engine came to life and purred quietly. He replaced the air filter on the
carburetor, slammed down the hood, and placed the hose and can on the
floor in front of the right seat.
“Take them with you,” he directed. “You’re going to need them again.”
The scenery was beautiful. I passed through Asheville and contin-
ued westward, arriving in Murphy, North Carolina, at dusk. My travel

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plans were blown. I had traveled only a little more than half the distance
I had planned for the first day. I found the Murphy Hotel and stopped for
the night. Early the next morning I was on the road again, apprehensive
about the Olds’ fuel pump, but the engine ran nicely. Fifty miles further,
I topped a mountain pass and braked to slow my descent on the far side.
I didn’t slow. My speed increased! My brakes were gone. I down-shifted
quickly and came to a crawl. Using the gears to slow me, I made it down
the mountain and breathed easier when I reached the Tennessee valley
below. It was a cold December day, but I was sweating. Combat was safer!
If, I thought, I make it to the next town, I’ll find someone who will
take care of my brakes. Suddenly from a side road on my right a pickup
truck pulled onto the highway. Without brakes to slow me, I nearly
rammed it in the rear. I whipped to the shoulder and bounced along until
finally I stopped, my right wheels hanging over the edge of an embank-
ment. The driver of the pickup, oblivious to my predicament, soon was
out of sight.
The right back wheel of the Olds spun futilely in the air. I was stuck.
It took only a few minutes of standing, right thumb extended, to catch a
ride. A friendly driver, noting my pilot’s wing, insisted on taking me to a
garage that had a wrecker and could tow me into town. Two hours later,
my brakes were in working order. I asked how much I owed.
“’Bout five dollars,” said the garage owner.
I had been towed, the brakes were repaired, and I was at the mercy
of the garage owner. And his charge was only five bucks. During World
War II, there were people in America who appreciated guys in uniform.
The brakes worked, but the fuel pump continued to give trouble.
After a hundred miles across Tennessee, the engine quit. I had gasoline
in the can, so I poured it in the carburetor, and the engine ran again.
After another 50 miles, I had to go through that routine again. At dusk,
I had crossed the mighty Mississippi and entered a tiny village in
Arkansas. The engine sputtered and quit once more.
“This thing’s not going to get me through the night,” I muttered. I
primed the carburetor to start the engine one more time, and soon I

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pulled to a stop in front of a little café. It had a big hot dog painted on its
front window. Inside, I explained my troubles and asked if there were a
mechanic in the town who could help me.
“Ask for Luke,” a man in overalls replied after taking a long swallow
of beer.
“Who is Luke?” I asked.
The man drained the bottle and wiped his mouth. “He runs the liv-
ery stable up the street. I’ll show you where.” He climbed in the Olds with
me, and we found Luke’s livery stable two blocks up the main street.
“Luke,” my friend said, “this soldier has trouble with his fuel pump.”
Luke seemed to pay no mind, continuing to pound on a red hot
horseshoe. Finally he turned. “I’ll getcher in a minute,” he said, then spit
a cud of cherwing tobacco onto the hot coals. A puff of steam popped up
as the brown juice sizzled.
He did take care of me. After he had shaped the horse shoe, he
pulled the fuel pump from the Olds’ engine, cut leather from a saddle
bag, and made a diaphragm for the fuel pump. He reinstalled the pump
and said, “That ought to get you to wherever it is that you are going.” He
refused to take any payment for his work.
I decided to push my luck a little further and continued to talk.
“The ration board figured my car at 15 miles a gallon, and I’m not
getting near that,” I said. “I’m sure not going to get to Nevada on the
coupons I got.”
“That’s an 8-cylinder 110 horsepower straight eight you got,” Luke
growled. “The damned ration board ought to know they should of fig-
ured it at 12 miles a gallon.”
My overall-clad friend was still with us, despite frequent remarks
about having to get back to the café for another beer. “Hell,” he said.
“Take these.” He pulled a handful of gasoline ration stamps from his
pocket and handed them to me.
“Can I use those?” I asked, noting that they were issued for farm use.
“Ain’t nobody going to question them,” repled my savior. “Any fill-
ing station with gas is happy to sell it to anybody.”

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Those stamps were enough to get me to Las Vegas, Nevada, which

had a reputation for being “the sin capital of the world.”

TUMCUMCARI, NEW MEXICO. I was nearly out of money even though I

spent only a single night in a motel. I stopped at the air base to request a
partial payment. On the ramp was the largest airplane I had seen.
“That,” said an enlisted man, “is a B-29.”
I walked around it and marveled. Then I climbed up inside and
moved to the cockpit. When I sat in the pilot’s seat, it seemed that
flying the monster would be like flying a hotel from the front porch.
I had never seen so many instruments on a panel. Little did I realize
that later in 1945 two planes like this one would drop nuclear bombs
on Japan and end the war.

NOW ARIZONA. I was trying to make up lost time by driving through the
night when I should have been sleeping. I saw very little of Arizona,
because snow had been pushed in high banks to clear the roads. I paid
little notice to highway signs telling me when I crossed the Continental
Divide. Twenty-six hundred miles was a lot further on the ground than
in the air.

NEVADA! I crossed Boulder Dam spanning the Arizona border, passed

through the little town of Henderson, and finally arrived in Las Vegas. A
short drive past Las Vegas brought me to Las Vegas Army Air Field. Two
sharp, black Military Policemen stopped me at the gate, asked for identi-
fication, and directed me to the billeting office. I drove past the flight line
and saw P-39 Airacobras, P-63 Kingcobras, RP-63 armor-plated
Kingcobras, and B-24 Liberators. After my leave in Zebulon, the party-
ing days in Richmond, and the long, long drive across the U.S., I felt that
I was home again.

LAS VEGAS ARMY AIRFIELD was base for a school where enlisted men
learned aerial gunnery by firing frangible bullets at armor-plated RP-63s.

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The .50 caliber plastic bullets were supposed to disintegrate when they
hit the armor-plated Kingcobras. The fighters were wired with switches
that recorded bullet hits. Each hit caused a light in the propeller spinner
to flash, indicated the hit to the gunner in the B-24, and the hit was
recorded by a counter in the cockpit. The airplane’s nickname was
“Pinball Machine.”
Frangible bullets were a great idea for training gunners for
bomber duty except for a couple of problems. First, the gunnery stu-
dents had difficulty hitting the RP-63s. We wanted to know when final
tests were scheduled so that we could fly formation with our “big
friends” and let the students shoot from near point-blank range to
record acceptable scores.
A second problem occurred when an occasional bullet found its
way into the air intake for the RP-63’s coolant radiator. The resulting hole
in the radiator let coolant escape. The flight usually ended with a belly
landing in the desert. We never had anyone hurt by a forced landing, but
sometimes it made for a late evening meal for pilots who had to wait until
ground transportation could travel 50 or 60 miles to rescue them from a
cold night in the desert.

IT WAS FUN flying P-39s again. I had forgotten how easy it was to land
with a tricycle gear. The P-63s were even more fun. Bell enlarged the P-
39 design, installed a bigger engine, and built a fighter with more poten-
tial. Its major problem, we thought, was lack of power at altitude. The
Kingcobra’s Allison engine was no match at altitude for the Packard-built
Rolls Royce Merlin that powered the P-51 Mustang, but the P-63 King-
cobra was a dream to fly. Visibility was excellent on the ground because
its tricycle landing gear made taxiing as easy as driving an automobile.
No s’ing was required. Just tap the brakes to turn. Its Allison V-12 liquid-
cooled engine had been pumped up to over 1,300 hp, compared with
about 1,100 in the P-39s. The Kingcobra’s top speed was claimed to be
over 400 mph, but I never saw it near that fast in level flight. The
Kingcobra was 2½ feet longer and had a wingspan 4'4" wider than its lit-

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tle brother, the P-39. Entry was through a door, but its cockpit was more
spacious than the Aeracobra’s. Bell evidently had done a fine job of devel-
oping a better airplane using the same basic design with the engine locat-
ed behind the pilot.
We had no oxygen on our P-63s; therefore I don’t know how it per-
formed at altitude. It was reported to climb above 40,000 feet. This claim
was proved true when an attempted intercept failed of an P-63 and one
of the fire bomb-laden balloons the Japanese were sending across the
Pacific in the Spring of 1945. The P-63 climbed above a reported 40,000
feet but gave up with the balloon still several thousand feet above it.
The RP-63—the bright orange armor-plated version of the
Kingcobra—was another story. It flew nicely, but the heavy armor plate pro-
hibited abrupt maneuvers. Because of its weight, it was wise when landing
to maintain extra airspeed on final until the flare for touchdown, otherwise
the RP-63 would drop out for a rough landing, especially on a hot day.
The extra weight once caused me a genuine scare. On a torrid
day, bored with straight and level flying, I nosed over the RP-63,
picked up airspeed, rolled it, first to the left, then to the right. It per-
formed beautifully.
“Now,” I said to myself, “let’s see how this tank loops.”
I dropped the nose, accelerated to 300 mph and pulled the nose
up and added throttle. Things went well. I kept back pressure on the
stick, eased off at the top of the loop, and then cut the throttle as the
horizon came into sight. I headed down on the back side of the loop.
The heavy RP-63 picked up speed rapidly. I eased back on the stick to
pull out of the dive and felt the plane buck as it hit a high speed stall.
I was losing altitude in a hurry, but the Cobra was not changing its
attitude. Each time I tried to pull out of the dive, the Cobra bucked in
another high speed stall. An eternity later, I finally nursed the RP-63
back to level flight after descending below the peaks of the surround-
ing mountains.
Straight and level at last, I was dripping with perspiration. The RP-
63 was a fun airplane to fly, but acrobatics were not its forté. As I climbed

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up over the mountains to return to the airfield, I vowed never to try to

loop an RP-63 again. And I didn’t.

THERE WAS AN ABUNDANCE of captains among the pilots flying at Las

Vegas. I knew no Aces who returned to the States as lieutenants. Most of
us at Las Vegas had few responsibilities other than flying as targets for the
gunnery students. Flying “pursuit curves” grew boring. Head-on passes
against the B-24s were more interesting until the bomber pilots com-
plained bitterly about our contest to see who would wait longest before
pulling up and over the Liberators.
The Officers’ Club was crowded every week night. There was a
score of fighter jocks who closed the bar every evening singing with great
disharmony the vulgar and profane songs learned in Europe, the Pacific,
and around the world.
Around the block she pushed a baby carriage.
She pushed it in December and the merry month of May,
And when you asked her why in the hell she pushed it—
She pushed it for her lover who was far, far away.
Nights and weekends usually were devoted to touring the five major
hotels in Las Vegas. The Last Frontier was the nicest, followed by the El
Rancho Vegas and the Nevada Biltmore. In an evening, we could visit the
bars and enjoy the floor shows at all five hotels.

LAS VEGAS was the closest gaming town to Hollywood. Gasoline was
rationed, but movie stars found enough for frequent trips to Las Vegas to
watch the shows and gamble. Over a period of several weeks, we could
see many of the major stars at the gaming tables.
In January, shortly after I arrived in Las Vegas, Johnny Weismuller,
the Olympic swimming champion who gained motion picture fame as
Tarzan of the Apes, showed up one weekend at the El Rancho Vegas. He
was tipsy and losing handily at the crap table when one of our pilots tried
to join the game. Johnny pushed him aside.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” the pilot exclaimed.

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“I am Johnny Weismuller,” said the movie star, pushing out his chest
and standing tall.
“The hell you say,” retorted the pilot, “and I’m President Franklin
Delano Roosevelt.”
Weismuller recited the Tarzan movies he had made but failed to
convince the doubting pilot, who commented, “If you’re Johnny
Weismuller, let me see you swim.”
The former Olympian set his drink on the crap table and marched
toward the hotel’s swimming pool, taking off his jacket as he walked. A
growing number of spectators followed closely behind, eager to see Weis-
muller plunge into the cold water. The pilot marched in step beside
Weismuller, constantly needling him about his claim to be the famed
Tarzan. It looked like we were in for a show.
But the hotel manager, made aware of what was taking place, rushed
to block the way to the pool. “Mr. Weismuller,” he said with great respect,
“Your studio is calling. We have routed the call to your room.”
Weismuller reluctantly stopped his journey to the pool and followed the
manager back into the hotel. Thus ended my single opportunity to watch an
Olympic swimming champion and movie star, drunk or sober, do his thing.

TWO DOORS DOWN the barracks hall was the room of First Lieutenant Joe
Meagher, an aircraft maintenance officer. He was a nice guy and made
interesting conversation. I pronounced his name “Mee-ger” until I heard
a visiting officer exclaim, “Joe Mayer! When did you get back?”
“Joe,” I said. “Have I been mispronouncing your name?”
“Well, Dave,” he explained, “it is really pronounced Mayer, but lots
of people don’t like Jews, so I let them call me Mee-ger, and they don’t
know I’m a Jew.”
That was one of the few times that I realized that more people than
Negroes faced serious discrimination in the World War II U.S. Army.

LOIS STARLING was her name. She was a platnium blonde with a great
shape. About 5'3" tall, she was nice to look at and nice to talk to. I met her

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at the bar in the Nevada Biltmore. She smiled at me, refused my offer of
a drink, and made light conversation. I learned she worked as a stenog-
rapher and had come to Las Vegas because it promised more excitement
than she found at home in Kansas. It was much too soon that a tall civil-
ian appeared. He was her date. She said goodbye and left, holding the big
guy’s arm. I was smitten.
Three nights later I saw her again seated in the Nevada Biltmore bar.
This time she accepted my drink offer, and I sat on the bar stool beside
her. We traded personal information. “Where is your home?” she asked.
“Zebulon, North Carolina,” I replied.
“Where is that?”
“Zebulon or North Carolina?”
“Both,” she laughed.
Lois seemed interested in my home town. There wasn’t much to tell
about Zebulon. It was a small—very small!—village 21 miles east of the
state capital. But she listened. Nevertheless, she refused to tell me where
she worked or where she lived in Las Vegas. Again, too soon, we were
interrupted, this time by two girls who announced to Lois, “We have to
go.” She smiled, took her hand from mine, and was gone.
Two weeks later, we dated. Then dated again. We saw floor shows at
three of the hotels and went to a movie. There was no heavy petting, just
hand-holding and a light kiss to end the evening. The romance was nice
but was progressing too slowly in the direction I wanted.
One night I told how frustrated I became typing extracts of the orders
whenever my military assignment changed. My two-fingered typing was
fast, but copying orders required me to read only a sentence, then look at
the keyboard as I typed. Lois patiently explained the touch system of typ-
ing; then she borrowed a pencil and drew a keyboard on paper, labeling the
keys to show which fingers were used on what keys. For two weeks, I spent
my free hours in the orderly room practicing. At first, the touch system was
excrutiatingly slow, but each day my speed increased. Finally, during the
second week of practice, I realized that I was no longer looking at the type-
writer keyboard. My eyes remained on the orders I was copying.

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Another fabulously beautiful girl managed the cash register at the

base cafeteria. She had a Polynesian look and always smiled brightly at me
when I paid for my meal. To my disappointment, there was a ring on her
third finger left hand. That placed her off limits for me. On a Monday, as
she was making change, she said softly, “I saw you this weekend.”
“Really?”
“Yes, you were with a blonde,” she continued.
“Was she pretty?”
“She was very pretty, but be careful. She has a disease.”
Before I could reply, she turned to the next person in line and rang
up his bill. It was clear our conversation had ended.
Two days later, Fred Beecher announced a party. Six pilots piled into
Fred’s Ford and four into my Oldsmobile, and we headed for town. We
stopped at a large, beautiful house and, as we bounded out of our cars,
three girls appeared on the porch and yelled at us to “come on in!” We
walked into the living room, where we admired a group of females that
included Lois Starling, all smiling.
The party was great fun. The owners of the house were away for the
week. Their daughter was hostess, and, while the record player blared, she
showed us the way to the liquor closet near the kitchen. The closet had
more booze than I ever saw outside a package store. Somebody put more
records on the player. We danced. We sang. We told raunchy jokes.
Gradually, couples began disappearing from the room. I suggested to Lois
that the bedrooms all were occupied, so we should adjourn to my car.
For the first time our kisses had real passion. Lois responded
better than I had dreamed. She offered no resistance as one of my
hands slipped inside her blouse and the other under her skirt.
Suddenly she began to cry.
“Oh, God!” she said. “I just can’t!”
That ended our love-making, and my efforts turned from trying to
make love to trying to comfort her and stop her crying. We returned
slowly to the house. A shout from the porch warned us about water.
Immediately we were drenched. One of the guys had found the controls

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to the sprinkler system that irrigated the lawn, and water descended on
us from all directions.
Lois pulled away from me and ran inside. I followed, but she had
disappeared. The party ended soon thereafter, and I drove back to the
airfield with my three companions singing drunkenly:
I touched her on the toe. How ashamed I was.
I touched her on the toe. How ashamed I was.
I touched her on the toe; she said you’re mighty low.
Lord, God Almighty, how ashamed I was.
I saw Lois only once after that evening. She was with a civilian in the
Last Frontier bar. She gave no indication that she knew me. It was clear
our romance was over. I was left with nice memories, a mystery as to why
she broke off our relationship so suddenly, and a typing skill that was the
envy of my fellow officers. My only answer to the mystery was that she
thought enough of me not to expose me to her disease.

The citation for the award of a Silver Star for Gallantry finally caught up with me in Las Vegas, and the high-
light of a Saturday morning review was the commanding officer of the Las Vegas Army Air Field making the pres-
entation to me..

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FIRST LIEUTENANT PHILIP DOBRETSBERGER, also 21 years old and with a

build similar to mine but shorter in height, joined me several times in
making the rounds in Las Vegas. He was a B-24 pilot who tested the
Liberators after they had gone through maintenance.
“You’re not scheduled to fly tomorrow,” he told me one day. “Come
down to the flight line and fly with me.”
I jumped at the opportunity. I had escorted B-24s to Ploesti and
over other European targets. I had flown beside them over the Nevada
desert while aerial gunners fired frangible bullets at me. But I never had
flown in one.
Early the next morning, I strapped myself in the copilot’s seat and
looked at the controls. I decided I would have no difficulty with the
wheel and the rudder pedals, but handling four propeller controls and
four throttles seemed more than a handful.
“You want to taxi out?” Dobie asked. I said “yes” quickly and pushed
the four throttles forward. The big bomber never moved.
“What’s the problem?” Dobie queried.
“How the hell do you unlock the brakes?” I shouted.
“Maybe I better get us to the runway,” Dobie responded. Using only
the outboard engines, he drove the B-24 to the active runway.
I followed Dobie through on takeoff, then he turned the controls over
to me. I banked left and right as I climbed out of traffic. The ball seldom was
centered. It skewed from side to side while I tried to center it with the rud-
ders. At 5,000 feet, I leveled off and took a look at the wings. We were bounc-
ing along on thermals rising from the hot desert, and both wing tips were
bouncing along with us, dropping from sight and then rising in view from
behind the outboard engines. The wings appeared too limber to be safe.
“Do they do that often?” I asked Dobie.
“All the time,” he replied. “You’ll get used to it.”
After an hour in the air, I lined up with the runway, and Dobie took
over for the landing. The flight was a brand new experience for me and
was further proof that it was fortunate for the Air Corps that I was
assigned to fighters.

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THE BRAKES ON MY OLDSMOBILE WERE FAILING. I had to pump them sever-

al times to stop. A sergeant told me the only maintenance required was
bleeding the brakes and replacing the brake fluid. It was, he assured me,
a task that even I could do. I sought Dobie in the maintenance hangar
and asked for some hydraulic fluid.
“I never tried this in a car,” he said, “but it might work. Don’t let it
get exposed to air too long.”
On a Friday morning, I drained the brake fluid from my
Oldsmobile, filled the master brake cylinder with the aircraft hydraulic
fluid, and crawled underneath the car to bleed the brake lines to make
certain no air was in the system. As I neared the end of the job, I grabbed
a spring on the right rear brake with pliers and pulled. The pliers slipped
and hit my face, leaving an inch-long slash. I cursed and groaned, but fin-
ished the brake job. The brakes worked perfectly.
Dobie suggested that a weekend on Mount Charleston would be
fun. We could try skiing. The mountain was 35 or 40 miles from Las
Vegas and soared 12,000 feet in the air. It had snow nearly the year round.
“Damn,” I said. “For the first time, I’m scheduled to fly Saturday. I
can’t go.”
“Hell,” said Dobie. “You know you can’t get an oxygen mask on your
face with it cut like that. Get the flight surgeon to ground you.”
So I trotted to the flight surgeon’s office, let him see my face, and he
grounded me.
“See me again on Monday,” he said.
I was home free. Dobie and I were on the road early Saturday morn-
ing headed for the mountain resort.
Mount Charleston was 45 miles from Las Vegas. In the late 1930s,
the Civilian Conservation Corps built a camp 10,000 feet up the moun-
tain. The Army took it over and converted it to a rest camp for the pleas-
ure of the officers and men stationed at Las Vegas Army Air Field. Near
the CCC camp was a ski slope that had a nice jump. A half-mile up the
road was a lodge owned by one of the Las Vegas hotels. It had a bar that
featured hot buttered rum, a delicious beverage to sip while resting from

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battling the snow and warming from the cold outside. We stayed at the
CCC camp, which had skis available for its military guests.
Dobie and I never had skied before. That did not keep us from the
slopes. We signed out skis from the CCC camp, clamped them on our
boots, and headed out. Soon we were able to push forward at a good rate,
and we managed stepping one ski over the other to climb grades. The ski
lift had not worked since pre-war years, so we had a lot of grades to climb
to get to the top of the run. Neither of us were hurt during a half day on
the slopes, although we found the only way we could stop was to sit down
in the snow and drag our rears.
In early afternoon we visited the ski lodge bar, and I enjoyed my first
hot buttered rum. A second glass of hot buttered rum renewed my enthu-
siasm for skiing, and we returned to the slopes for the rest of the afternoon.
Saturday night at the former CCC camp was riotous. The crowd was
feeling good. We sang. We told jokes. We eyed the four Wacs who also
were enjoying a weekend of skiing. Gradually Wacs paired with pilots
until only one was left. She looked pretty good to my drunken eyes. I
propositioned her.
“Son,” she said. “Why don’t you run off to bed. I’m old enough to be
your mother.”
Chagrined, I followed her suggestion and hit the sack. Early Sunday
morning, when we were seated at a long table enjoying ham and eggs, I
took another look at the Wac as the early morning sun illuminated her
face. She had told near the truth. That woman was old enough to be my
grandmother.
We were back on the ski slopes again Sunday morning. Beside the
ski run was a wooden jump. Between runs down the slope, we won-
dered what it would be like to go down the jump and sail into the air.
Movies of ski competition made it appear easy. No one went down the
jump all day, but by late afternoon hot buttered rum had reinforced
our daring, and we decided to try it. Dobie chickened out—or maybe
he simply let common sense take control. I decided I’d never be able to
stay on my feet, so I took off my skis, placed them side by side, lay on

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them as though they were a toboggan, and started down the jump.
Things went well until I reached the end where the jump curved up in
the air. No longer was I in control. The skis went in opposite direc-
tions, and I tumbled end over end through the air, ending a hundred
feet down the slope on my face.
Dobie rushed over and helped me brush snow off my face. “Good
God, Dave, what have you done to yourself?” he asked. I brushed my
hand over my cheek and looked. It was covered with blood.
“I think I’ve had enough skiing for one day,” I replied. “Let’s get back
to the bar.”
The lacerations in my cheek were not deep and stopped bleeding
quickly. After another hot buttered rum, we returned to the CCC camp,
packed our bags, and headed back down the mountain to Las Vegas. We
let the car coast for 22 miles until we reached the level highway at the
base of Mount Charleston. Back at the barracks at the base, I stood in a
shower and let the warm water caress my battered face. I had my fill of
skiing. I was ready for bed.
Early Monday morning, I was back in the flight surgeon’s office with
a request to return to flight status. He took a slow look at my face and
exclaimed, “What happened to you, Captain? You’re in worse shape than
you were when I grounded you Friday.”
I couldn’t deny it, but I wanted to fly. The doctor wrote on a slip that
I could return to flight status. The clerk in Flight Operations accepted the
slip without comment, assigned me a P-63, and went back to reading the
Las Vegas newspaper with never a look at my face.
When I returned to operations about 10 in the morning, three pilots
joined me in the Operations Officer’s office. Our flight records showed
each of us had flown the PT-13 Stearman biplane in Primary Flying
School. The base commander wanted four Stearmans brought from
Ontario to Las Vegas. We were selected for the job.
“Ontario,” I questioned. “How long will it take? What should I
pack?” I knew the short range of the Stearmans. I knew Ontario, Canada,
was a long, long way from Las Vegas. The Operations Officer laughed.

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We were going to a Primary Flying School at Ontario, California, and we

would be back in early afternoon.
We boarded a twin-engine trainer and headed southwest across the
mountains. Sooner than I expected, we were on approach to the Ontario
Primary Flying School. Immediately after lunch, we returned to the
flight line where civilian instructors were waiting to give us a quick check
ride in the biplanes. With the instructor in the front seat, we pushed
throttles forward and roared down the runway, delighted with the feel of
the wind striking our faces and the sound of that round 220 hp engine. It
was our first ride in over two years in an open cockpit airplane. One
landing was all the instructors required of us. Probably they feared a sec-
ond landing would end in disaster.
“Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing!” Chuck
Ross remarked while we were filing flight plans for the return from
Ontario to Las Vegas. Aviation Cadets were staring at us in awe. Chuck’s
was one of the better landings any of us made, all of which included at
least three big bounces. The cadets were eager to see more.
“Now when we get back to Las Vegas,” Chuck announced, “we’ll
close up and fly a tight formation down the runway and peel off to land.
I’ll lead.”
None of us objected. It was more fun flying on someone’s wing than
leading a flight. The feel of the Stearmans came back quickly. But as we
climbed to clear the mountains that stood between us and the Las Vegas
desert, the air became chilly, then down right frigid cold. The wind
whipped down in the empty front seat and up and through the back seat
and our cotton uniforms. We shivered. The flight we had anticipated as
a joy ride became an endurance contest filled with shivery misery. We
smiled when Las Vegas Air Field came in sight, and we could drop to a
lower and warmer altitude.
Chuck rocked his wings, and we formed a tight four-plane forma-
tion. He lined up with the 10,000 foot runway, and our group bounced
along on thermals 500 feet above the field. We failed to take into account
a 20-mile per hour headwind and the 80-mile per hour cruise speed of

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the Stearmans. We crawled halfway down the runway for what seemed
eternity before Chuck became bored with straight and level flight and
pitched up and out, circling to land. One by one we followed. Our for-
mation was not awe-inspiring. At Las Vegas, we looked a bit ridiculous.
We never were told why the PT-13s were brought from Ontario to
Las Vegas. We learned that they had been declared surplus at the Primary
Flying School, and a notice of their availability was posted to all west
coast base commanders. The Las Vegas commander thought it would be
nice to have them on his field, but I never saw them fly again after we
landed and tied them down on the ramp. The situation was normal, we
thought. There were three ways of doing things: the right way, the wrong
way, and the Army way.

CAPTAIN ROBERT SWIFT lived in the barracks with me. He wasn’t a pilot.
His job was in personnel. His home was in New Hampshire. A big guy,
he made interesting conversation, and I enjoyed talking with him over
drinks in the officers’ club or in bull sessions in his room. One evening
he told me he planned to move out of the barracks for a couple of weeks.
His girl friend was coming to visit.
I knew about “one night stands,” but two weeks with the same girl!
Surely Bob was kidding! Yet a week later I had a telephone call from him
inviting me to come in to town and enjoy a meal. I went to the address he
gave me and found a two-room apartment—a combination kitchen, dining
area, and living room, and a bedroom. Bob met me at the door and invited
me in. A few minutes later, the bedroom door opened and a lovely girl
appeared. “Marge, this is Dave,” Bob told her. “He thinks we’re married.”
I stood there with my mouth open, oblivious to the hand she was
holding out to me. Bob was right. I never knew that there were beautiful
girls who would travel all the way across the country to spend time with
a guy. I thought they had to be married or something like that. Bob inter-
rupted my thoughts.
“Dave, wake up,” he said. “If you want to believe we’re married, that’s
OK with us.”

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Ten days later Marge was gone, and Bob was back in the barracks.
“Why aren’t you and Marge married?” I asked him.
“Because she won’t have me for a husband,” Bob said. That ended
the conversation.

THE NEVADA DESERT provided miles and miles of open area ideal for
buzzing—flying very low across the countryside with the exhilerating sen-
sation of speed quickening your pulse. Only a few miles from Las Vegas lay
desolate country where there was no one to report pilots who shattered
rules and regulations while flying the Airacobras and Kingcobras. Lake
Mead, the big pond behind Boulder Dan, was another favorite site for
buzzing. A calm day made the lake hazardous, however, because it was dif-
ficult for a pilot to determine a plane’s height above a smooth water surface.
On a Tuesday, a first lieutenant pilot misjudged his altitude, bit into the
water with the prop of his Aeracobra, and cart-wheeled into the lake, sink-
ing to the bottom, a reported 400 feet beneath the surface. Divers from San
Francisco were employed by the Air Corps to locate and raise the P-39 from
its watery grave. When the pilot’s body was recovered, we toasted his mem-
ory and roasted the poor flying that had caused his death.
His widow, a very nice looking girl, had come to Las Vegas with her
husband. She continued to live in their apartment during the search for his
body. The Army Air Corps was prompt in processing paper work about
the pilot’s death, and his widow quickly received $10,000 from the late lieu-
tenant’s GI insurance policy. Her first purchase was a new wardrobe.
Before the pilot’s body was extracted from Lake Mead, a buddy liv-
ing on the first floor of the barracks was seen with the widow enjoying
bars and floor shows in downtown Las Vegas.
“Isn’t it a bit early for her to be dating?” Bob asked.
“Oh,” explained the pilot who was escorting her around town. “She
is in mourning. She wears black. Even her bra and panties are black!”

SATURDAY’S WEEKLY FEATURE at Las Vegas Army Air Field was a marching
parade. Nobody enjoyed participating in or watching the parade; there-

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fore only the required units were in the line of march, and no more than
a dozen spectators attended. The public address system provided the
music. The base commander stood at attention and received salutes from
the squadrons as they marched past the reviewing stand. We disliked
parades. We believed that the Army Air Corps’ mission was to fly and
fight—not march on Saturday mornings.
Because of the large number of captains assigned to the base, a ros-
ter was prepared listing dates when each captain would lead a unit in the
parade. Finally my name appeared on the roster. When the dreaded
Saturday arrived, I searched the streets of the post until I located the unit
I was ordered to lead.
The last parade in which I marched was during the visit of Major
General Nathan Twining to the 325th Fighter Group at Lesina, Italy.
During that parade, I had only to march onto the field. General
Twining presented me with a Distinguished Flying Cross. That also
was the time of my notoriously ridiculous “about face.” Prior to that,
my only experience with parades and reviews was as an Aviation
Cadet. I was not sure I remembered any of the commands. I had never
commanded troops in a review.
A corporal holding the unit’s guidon noted my discomfort. “Don’t
worry, cap’n,” he reassured me. “We have to do this every Saturday. We
don’t need nobody to tell us what to do.”
We marched through the streets to the parade field and found our
place. Things went fine as the adjutant received reports and read the orders
of the day. Then came the dreaded command: “PASS IN REVIEW!”
I took a deep breath and shouted: “Forward, MARCH!” Behind me,
two hundred men—eight men abreast—marched smartly ahead.
“Right turn, march!” I yelled. The ranks made a right turn beauti-
fully. They had had plenty of practice. My chest was out. I felt proud to
be leading an excellent formation. I stepped out smartly, my guidon bear-
er at my right. Then I heard him speak loudly to be heard above the
music from the loud speakers.
“Cap’n, you better give ‘Forward, march’. We’re leaving ’em.”

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I looked back and saw 200 men half-

stepping exactly as they were supposed to do
after a “turn” movement. There appeared a
mile separating me from them. Desperately I
bellowed: “Forward, MARCH!” With little
help from me, the troops made it through the
remainder of the parade. When we finally
were back at the barracks area, I thanked
them, dismissed them, and turned to leave.
The guidon bearer hustled up and told
me, “Cap’n, we get some pretty awful com-
manders for these Saturday morning parades,
so we don’t expect much. But I want to tell
you, today we got more than we expected.” I
felt pretty good about his comment for a cou-
ple of days; then I began wondering whether
he meant the troops got more ineptness than
they had expected. I think he did.
Only one other parade claimed my
attention. Paperwork awarding a Silver Star
for Gallantry finally caught up with me with
Home all dressed up for admiring relatives instructions that it be awarded in a parade
in my Flighter cap, white silk scarf, gloves,
and German-built twin-lens reflex cam- ceremony, so I was ordered to appear at a
era—plus ribbons nothing the award of Saturday parade for the presentation.
the DFC, Air Medal with 13 clusters, and
ETP Medal with five campaigns noted. I stood in front of assembled troops
with the base commander and heard the citation read. Then, chest out
and gut in, I was at attention as the colonel pinned the medal on me.
Nobody seemed impressed. Most simply wanted the ceremony to be over
so that they could enjoy the remainder of the weekend.

LIFE AT LAS VEGAS ARMY AIR FIELD was too easy. I felt guilty that a war
was being fought in the Pacific, pilots were being killed, while I was
enjoying the good life in “sin city.” My letters to “higher headquarters”

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asking to be reassigned to a combat unit got no response. My entreaties

to Lt. John Phillips to get me back in the 317th Fighter Squadron were in
vain. Finally I marched to the Base Personnel Office and requested an
audience with the S-1. He agreed to see me on Tuesday.
Early Tuesday morning, I asked, in my best military manner:
“Captain Davis, B.S., requests permission to speak to the major.”
The sergeant on duty looked on me as a very peculiar person. It was
evident that he seldom received a request in such a formal manner.
“Just a minute, captain,” he said. ”I’ll check with the major.” He
returned quickly and ushered me into the S-1’s office. Like all other
offices at Las Vegas Army Air Field, it was not fancy. It was equipped
with the bare minimum: a steel desk, three chairs, two file cabinets, and
some photographs—all quite old.
“What can I do for you, captain?” inquired the major.
“Sir, I want a tour of duty in the Pacific,” I responded. “I have a
brother flying with the 13th Air Force, and I’d like to go fight in that war.”
“Ah—uhm!” responded the major. He looked me over from top to
bottom. “Why do you want to go?”
I tried to explain. My perfectly reasonable presentation had no
impact on the major. I tried again, explaining that one brother had been
killed fighting the Japanese in the Philippines and a second brother was
a group navigator on B-24 Liberators in 5th Bomb Group of the 13th Air
Force. He needed help. Nothing I said made an impression on the
solemn-faced officer.
Finally he spoke. “Captain,” he said. “Do you realize we have twice
more captains assigned to Las Vegas Army Air Field than we are
authorized. Do you know that every one of them thinks he should be
promoted to major? Do you know that every captain we send to the
Pacific knocks some deserving first lieutenant out of his chance for a
promotion to captain? They want pilots out there, but they want second
lieutenant pilots.”
Then it sank into my thick skull. I might as well give up any hope of
returning to combat. It wasn’t going to happen.

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I RECEIVED WORD from home that Billy Keith, a boy from my home town,
was stationed at Las Vegas. Billy was a year older than I was, but he grad-
uated from Wakelon High School a year following me. I was not sur-
prised one day to receive a telephone call from Billy inviting me to his
barracks for conversation.
It was easy to locate his barracks. I parked my Oldsmobile outside
and walked in. The sight of a captain sauntering into enlisted men’s bar-
racks caused a bit of commotion, but Billy was waiting. There wasn’t
much we could talk about, because Billy and I never had known each
other well. I stayed about a half hour and left.
Two weeks later I received another telephone call from Billy. He was
being transferred and had a week’s leave at home before reporting to his
new base. Could I give him a ride to the bus station in Las Vegas? I could
and I did, and when I wished him well and said goodbye at the bus sta-
tion, it was the last I saw Billy for several years.

IN EARLY APRIL 1945, the Air Corps decided that the P-39s, the P-63s, and
the RP-63s, plus all assigned fighter pilots, should be moved to Indian
Springs Army Air Field, a satellite base about 55 miles northwest of Las
Vegas. We were unhappy with the change. Barracks at Indian Springs
were clad in tar paper. The officers’ club was less than adequate. There
were no civilians within 50 miles of the base, and it was a long drive to
the night life at Las Vegas. But a week later we found ourselves at Indian
Springs Army Air Field.
It never rained at that desert base, and the air was perfectly clear.
The nights were beautiful. Neither before nor since have I seen more
stars in the sky. Some evenings we sat on the ground looking at the heav-
ens, pretending to count the stars, and passing time by telling lies about
what we planned to do after the war.
The Daily Bulletin published a notice that the base needed a pho-
tography officer. Flying time was cut back, and I was bored. I reported to
Base Headquarters and told the Adjutant that I had great photographic
experience, which was far from true. As a teenager, I bought a kit to

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develop film, and I did develop and print two rolls, but that was the
extent of my experience.
“Great, captain,” said the Adjutant. “You are now the base photo
officer. The lab is in the rec hall.”
I walked to the recreation building. It was big and empty except for
battered tables and chairs that were stored on what once had been a small
basketball court. I looked in one room after another, and finally I found
what appeared to be an office. A young sergeant sat at a desk.
“I’ve been assigned as base photo officer,” I told the sergeant.
“Where is the lab?”
The sergeant looked at me with disdain.
“Captain,” he replied, “I am the only man on this airfield who goes
in that lab. You and I will get along fine if you just tell me when you want
a picture made and let me do the work. I won’t bother you if you don’t
bother me.”
So the sergeant and I got along fine. There never was a request for
photos from headquarters. Occasionally the sergeant made a picture for
PR purposes. The single time I ordered him to make pictures was when
one of the P-39s ran off the runway and wiped out its landing gear. No
matter. I had orders identifying me as a “Base Photo Officer” for my
résumé. Maybe they would come in handy at a later date.

EXCEPT FOR ITS LOCATION out in the desert with no civilization in sight,
duty at Indian Springs was pleasant. There was a small post exchange, a
smaller officers’ club, and tar-papered barracks and administrative build-
ings. There seldom was rain, but a breeze blew nearly every evening
making the nights tolerable.
The base’s pet was a small burro that enlisted men had found in the
desert apparently lost from its mother. They brought it to the base, fed
and pampered it, and it quickly learned to enjoy its new life. It had free
run of wherever it wanted to go—the PX, the theater, barracks, flight line,
everywhere! The burro liked to chew on cigarettes and stood at the door
of the PX each day begging for hand-outs. Every night it walked into the

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theater and stood in the rear watching the movie. The little fellow was
not pretty, but he was cute—and terribly spoiled.
It wasn’t long before we spotted small herds of burros in the val-
leys around Indian Springs. Often, when returning from a mission, we
heard on the radio, “Ya hoo!” We knew that some pilot had found bur-
ros and was trying to herd them toward the base. Playing cowboy in a
P-63 was fun!

FLYING WAS NOT DEMANDING. If we wanted to fly every day, we could

be targets for the B-24 gunner trainees as often as we wished. If we
chose to sack out, someone else always was ready to fly in our stead.
Now and then the Operations Officer decided we needed extra train-
ing. He set up missions that included formation flying and landing on
a dry lake bed 15 miles from the Indian Springs field. It was a change
from our normal flying, and we enjoyed it. When we landed on the
dry lake, we had to wait for the dust to settle before we could take off
again. When a breeze was blowing, the dust cleared quickly. If the day
were calm, we suffered a long, hot wait for visibility to improve
enough for takeoffs. No single takeoff was permitted. Had we tried
that, waiting for dust to settle after each plane left would have con-
sumed half a day. Instead we lined up, eight to ten planes abreast, and
all of us simultaneously poured on the coal. Woe be to the pilot who
was slow, because his takeoff was totally on instruments. Dust imme-
diately obliterated everything.

MID-APRIL 1945. My brother, Major Ferd Davis, group navigator for the
5th Bomb Group, a B-24 outfit flying with the 13th Air Force in the
Pacific, returned briefly to the States for a conference. He received per-
mission to visit his wife and son in North Carolina before returning to
the bomb group.
My presence was not necessary at Indian Springs, and my request was
approved for leave to visit home while my brother was there. I headed for
North Carolina in my trusty 1940 Oldsmobile. The nation-wide 35 mph

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speed limit made travel slow and uneventful. Then trouble hit. A tire went
flat in Oklahoma. I replaced it with the spare, and, after a hundred miles or
so, that tire blew out. That’s when I learned the difficulties that rationing
inflicted on ordinary citizens during wartime. The few service stations with
new tires in stock could sell one only to a purchaser with a permit from a
ration board. I was in a small Tennessee town. Its ration board was not
impressed with Air Force wings, the tracks on my shoulders, or my chest
covered with ribbons. I wasn’t a citizen of Tennessee, and the board was sav-
ing all its tires for home folks. If I couldn’t drive any further, then I could
abandon my car and get to North Carolina however I could.
I stomped out of the ration board office and walked the streets.
Eventually I found two tires—one with a hole worn completed through
and a second worn until it had no tread. They were available without
ration board approval. The service station owner told me, “You can put a
boot in the one with the hole and use it for a spare. The other might get
you home.” It did.

DURING THREE DAYS at home and a reunion with my family, I had no luck
getting ration board approval to purchase replacement tires. Rather than
risk misfortune driving back to Las Vegas on worn-out tires, I decided to
travel commercial air from Raleigh-Durham Airport. It was my first ride
in a civilian passenger plane. The twin-engined DC-3 took me to
Chicago, where I caught a second DC-3 on a night flight to Las Vegas.
Two hours into the flight, we ran into violent thunderstorms. The turbu-
lence never affected me, but from front to back of the plane, puke bags
were filled frequently by other passengers. The plane landed—I know
not where—and the stewardess announced that we would remain on the
ground until the storm passed. The other passengers cheered. The only
lights I saw out the side window were runway and taxiway lights. After
45 minutes, the pilot fired up the engines, and we were again on our way.
It was daylight when we crossed Arizona. The pilot, eager to please,
deviated from course to cruise down the Grand Canyon, describing the
big ditch like a tour guide as we flew above it. Immediately after crossing

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over Boulder Dam, the plane landed at Henderson, Nevada, to let off a
passenger. Waiting in the small terminal were two ladies hoping to ride
the plane to Los Angeles.
Walking down the aisle, the pilot asked if anyone were willing to
give up a seat. When he arrived at my seat, he said, “Captain, you’re going
no further than Las Vegas. Would you be willing to give up your seat and
ride a taxi the rest of the way? There are ladies outside that need to get to
Los Angeles.”
I agreed to the taxi ride, and the copilot retrieved my B-4 bag from
the baggage compartment. The DC-3 was taxiing out as an attendant in
the terminal called for a taxi. Fifteen minutes later one arrived. It already
had a passenger inside.
“He needs to get to Las Vegas,” said the taxi driver, “and our gas is
rationed, so I didn’t think you’d mind company.” The driver looked
happy. He was collecting two fares for the single trip to the city.
Except for the heat, it was not a bad ride. The highway from
Henderson to Las Vegas was in a terrible state of disrepair. Potholes and
wide cracks were everywhere. My backseat companion agreed that work
was needed.
“My job is highway engineer with the State of Nevada,” he told me.
“We can’t get asphalt to fill those holes. And if we could, we don’t have
the manpower to do the job.”
“It’s lucky there is not much traffic,” I commented.
“I wish there were more,” said the man. “Traffic keeps the surface
sealed so that water doesn’t get down under the asphalt. It would be bet-
ter if we had lots of traffic.”
We arrived at Las Vegas. Nothing had changed since I had left. My new
friend departed at his hotel, and the cabbie drove me to the main gate of Las
Vegas Army Air Field. An old Army station wagon carried me across the
desert to Indian Springs. Once more I was back at my military home.

I WAS ASSIGNED AS A FLIGHT LEADER at Indian Springs. My duties were to have

RP-63s in the air at proper times to be targets for the gunners in the B-24

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Liberators. We had plenty of men in our flights. If any pilot asked to be off
on any day, it posed no problem. Usually I chose to fly the mission myself.
A day prior to an assigned mission, Operations told us where and
when to rendezvous with the bombers. Everyone usually was at the prop-
er place at the assigned time. We took pride in the number of hits that
were made on our planes. The only part of a mission considered a chore
was counting the hits at the end of a mission. We circled each hit with a
pencil so that it would not be counted again after the next mission. There
is no doubt we cheated. We did not know them, but we wanted the gun-
ners to graduate from their training program. I sometimes wondered if
the number of hits we reported may have exceeded the number of fran-
gible bullets fired by the student gunners.

DURING A LATE SPRING DAY, Indian Springs Army Airfield experienced its
worst wind storm. Blowing sand brought visability down to less than
zero. Anything not tied down was blown away. That included airplanes.
Several were damaged beyond repair. Evidence of the severity of the
wind storm was the base flag pole, which stood in front of the headquar-
ters building. Before the storm, it stood upright, proudly flying the Flag
of the United States. After the storm, it was bent 90 degrees, and the U.S.
flag hung limply only feet from the ground.
At Indian Springs, we had a small officers’ club and a First Lieutenant
club officer who was determined that the Indian Springs Officers’ Club
should be the best in the Air Corps. He was on duty from the time the club
opened in the morning until it closed at night, because, no matter what the
time, he was present to threaten banishment from the club for any officer
who dared drag a cue stick across the felt on a pool table or to raise his
voice in the club. The First Lieutenant club officer was banished himself
when it was learned that he had ordered green felt for the pool tables and
then had the fabric made into a beautiful dress for his wife.

ONE DAY a very talkative barber at the air field was cutting my hair. He
had a knack for questions and soon learned my home was in North

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Carolina. “Why don’t you get an airplane, and we’ll fly down to El Paso,
Texas, and go across the border to see some cock fights in Mexico?”
“What makes you think I want to see roosters fight?” I asked.
“You’re from North Carolina, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know where Johnston County is?”
“I live about four miles from Johnston County. Why?”
“That’s where Percy Flowers lives, and he’s one of the biggest cock
fighters in the country,” exclaimed the barber. “Everybody knows
Percy Flowers.”
I had heard Percy was a moonshiner, but I never had heard of his
being in the cock fighting business. And here I was in Nevada, a long way
from home, and a GI barber knew all about my neighbor who lived just
across the Johnston County line.
Cock fighting did not interest me, so I never attempted to find an air-
plane for the barber and me to fly to El Paso, much to the barber’s chagrin.

AS WORLD WAR II neared its end, the need for aerial gunners diminished,
and Las Vegas Army Air Field’s gunnery school lost its importance.
There also was no requirement for a large number of pilots at Indian
Springs and Las Vegas. Some would be transferred to other bases. I
stopped by the Personnel Office one day, and a sergeant inquired:
“Captain Davis, we’re cutting orders to ship out some of you pilots.
Where would you like to go?”
“What do you have to offer?”
“Well, we have Wilmington, Delaware; and Maxwell, Alabama; and
Wilmington, North Carolina.”
“What was that last place?”
“Wilmington, North Carolina,” said the sergeant. Wilmington was
on the coast of North Carolina, only 125 miles from home.
“What do they have there?” I asked.
“It’s a P-47 training base,” said the sergeant.
“Put me down for Wilmington, North Carolina,” I said quickly.

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From the speed with which orders were cut transferring me to

Wilmington, it was evident that I was surplus at Indian Springs. In less
than three days I had my bags packed, and I found a fellow pilot who was
being transferred on the same date. Bruce Gardner lived in Lynchburg,
Virginia, only a short distance from the village of Gladys, where my folks
had planned to attend a family reunion on the date I hoped to arrive. We
agreed to share the cost of gasoline, and Bruce would provide transporta-
tion for me in his Plymouth from Las Vegas, Nevada, to Gladys, Virginia.
Bruce was careful with his Plymouth. We stopped at hundred mile
intervals to check the air pressure in the tires. Whenever we refueled,
Bruce carefully computed cost, and I paid my share. He insisted on driv-
ing the entire distance. As the hours turned into days, I felt as tired as
Bruce looked, and I carried on an endless coversation to help Bruce stay
awake and alert. He had grown up on a farm, and I learned more about
cultivating tobacco with a mule than I really wanted to know. At rare
intervals, Bruce agreed to pull to the side of the road for an hour’s nap,
but then it was onward, always onward, eastward toward home.

AT 11 O’CLOCK ON A SATURDAY MORNING, at the time we planned, we

rolled up to the front of my Aunt Annie’s home in Gladys, Virginia, end-
ing for me 2,800 miles of riding shotgun. I shook Bruce’s hand, said
goodbye, grabbed my bag from the rear seat, and walked through the
yard gate into the arms of a tearful mother and a houseful of relatives.
The reunion became a homecoming celebration for me.
Late in the afternoon, I climbed behind the wheel of Dad’s 1937
Chevrolet, and we left Gladys. Next stop: Zebulon, North Carolina,
where I was reunited with my Oldsmobile, which was waiting patiently
in my father’s back yard.

I HAD THREE DAYS AT HOME before reporting to Bluethenthal Army Airfield

at Wilmington. I needed a haircut and decided to refresh memories by
going to Robert Phillips at Corbett’s City Barber Shop. Robert was the best
barber in town and always had good stories to tell as he cut hair.

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“Boy, those were some wild times you had in Las Vegas,” he began.
“What wild times?” I asked.
“You ought to know. You were out every night gambling or with
those show girls.” I don’t gamble. To me, there is no thrill in winning, and
I hate to lose.
“Who told you about it?” I asked.
“Billy Keith,” said Robert. “He told us all about how you two hit the
night spots in Las Vegas, and about the girls, and about how much you
won at craps and black jack.”
The more I protested, the more modest the folks in the barber shop
thought I was about my life in “sin city.” Finally I gave up. Billy’s stories
topped my protests and were a lot easier for the home folks to believe.
Finally I relaxed and enjoyed my new reputation for being the guy who
laid every show girl in Las Vegas and broke the bank in my spare time.

WILMINGTON, NORTH CAROLINA, is a very pretty port city located on the

Cape Fear River about 17 miles from the Atlantic Ocean. In 1945 its ship-
yards were busy constructing Liberty ships. The town was popular with
soldiers from Camp Davis, an Army post located a few miles up the coast,
and with Marines from Camp Lejeune, a Marine base further to the north.
Carolina Beach was more popular than Wilmington, and its board walk
and carnival rides were packed with servicemen and their girls beginning
late every Friday evening and continuing through the weekend.
Bluethenthal Army Air Field was on the edge of town. It was a train-
ing base with P-47N Thunderbolts for fighter pilots. Republic squared
the wingtips of the P-47D, redesigned the fuselage, installed a more pow-
erful Pratt & Whitney R-2800C engine and turbosupercharger, incorpo-
rated more internal fuel tanks, and developed a fighter than could stay
with the huge B-29s on their missions across the Pacific to Japan.
The big radial engine was reported to develop 2,800 horsepower
with water. This was 600 more than we could get from the P-47 engines
in Europe. I was surprised at the comforts provided for pilots. Arm rests
were padded, as were the backs of the rudder pedals, which could be

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folded back like the foot rest on a barber’s chair so that a weary pilot
could stretch and rest his feet and legs. An ash tray was built in the right
arm rest. I wondered when a pilot would have opportunity to light up
while wearing an oxygen mask at 25,000 feet. A small autopilot that occa-
sionally worked was installed below the instrument panel.
The N-models flew very similar to the C and D models I had flown
in combat. It was a pleasure climbing on the big left wheel, up on the
wing, and into the cockpit of a Thunderbolt again.
Life was nice at Bluethenthal Field. There were no parades and few
duties other than flying. A major problem was the humid, torrid weath-
er. No air conditioning was available on the flight line or in our barracks.
When we returned from a mission, our flight suits were drenched with
sweat. They dried quickly, however, and salt left from our perspiration
stained the suits white.
Our students were newly-commissioned second lieutenants who
had just graduated from the Aviation Cadet program. Their first look at
the big Thunderbolt left them awestruck. It was a huge airplane to be
flown by only one person! We followed basically the same program of
instruction that I had completed two years earlier. The students read the
flight handbook, memorized where all the controls and instruments were
placed in the cockpit, received a pat on the shoulder and a “good luck”
from an instructor, and took to the air solo. Either the new pilots came
to us better prepared or the new Thunderbolts were easier to fly. Our
safety record was a nice improvement over what we achieved at Fort
Myers, Florida.

I MADE A VISIT to see the personnel officer. His report was the same I had
heard at Las Vegas. The U.S. Army Air Corps was not sending captains
to the Pacific, unless the captain knew strings to pull. I didn’t know
where the strings were, so I gave up any hope of returning to combat and
decided to enjoy the remainder of the war however I could.
I was just 120 miles from Zebulon. That would be only a 20 minute
flight in a Thunderbolt. The first morning I had no assignment, I took

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off in a P-47 and headed north for my first flight over eastern North
Carolina. This was new territory for me. I was not familiar with seeing
the area from the air. After 15 minutes flying, I began to look for
Zebulon, but it was nowhere to be seen.
I rolled from side to side, checking the countryside below. Then, in
a vertical bank, I spotted the little town of Zebulon directly beneath me.
It was so small that it had been hidden beneath the bulbous nose of the
Thunderbolt. I did a wing-over, straightened out just above the roof tops,
and made one pass across the town. The next time I was home, residents
took delight in telling how they had to duck to keep from being hit as I
passed over. Their stories were far better than any I could have told.

WE BEGAN GUNNERY TRAINING with our new students, and I found some-
thing new installed in the Thunderbolts. A “computing” gunsight had re-
placed the reflecting bead and rectical. Diamonds formed a circle around
the spot in the center. We entered the wing span of our target into the com-
puter. By twisting the throttle, the diameter of the circle of diamonds could
be changed. The idea was to twist the throttle until the diamonds touched
the wingtips of the target airplane. Based on the span of the target’s wings,
that was supposed to determine the target range. A gyroscope in the gun-
sight gauged the rate of the pursuit curve flown by the attacker. Using all
this information, along with the wingspan of the target, the gunsight com-
puted the lead needed to hit the target and moved the blip in the center of
the sight so that, by centering the blip on the target, hits were assured.
That’s the way the gunsight was supposed to work. In actuality, a
one-and-a-half-G pursuit curve would overpower the gyroscope, caus-
ing it to tumble, and the blip on the gunsight would sink out of sight.
Except for straight and level gunnery, the computing sight was worthless.
When firing for score, we recommended that students lock out the com-
puter and employ the gunsight as a fixed sight, deciding for themselves
how much to lead the target.
Aerial gunnery was conducted a couple of miles off shore over the
Atlantic Ocean. Fishing boats must have been warned, because they

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stayed clear of the area. A .50 caliber shell casing falling from the sky
would make a deep dent in a fisherman’s head, and thousands of casings
were ejected from our guns to fall into the ocean waters.
Students always were eager to check their hits, and they waited
impatiently for tow planes to fly low over the field and drop their sleeve
targets. A jeep picked up the target and brought it to operations, where
students and instructors circled with colored paint the holes that had
been left by .50 caliber bullets piercing the target.
Rocketry was another skill taught at Bluethenthal. We took to the
air with three rockets mounted under each wing. A short flight up the
coast brought us to the rocket range, where targets were set up on the
beach. We learned quickly that the steeper the dive and the later the
launch, the more likely we were to score a hit with a rocket. The result
was 60 degree dives, last second launches, and pull-outs that scared
the hell out of the officer-in-charge who was on the ground observing
what was going on. Had someone on the ground been returning fire,
the trainees probably would have launched their rockets from more
than 5,000 feet in the air. The pull-outs from dives had to be quick,
and they could cause a pilot to gray-out. They were not all that easy.
The P-47N was a 10-ton monster that required two hands to perform
all it was capable of doing.
We dodged duty on the rocket range whenever we could, although
the work was not bad. The 10-mile trip from Wrightsville Beach north to
the rocket range aboard an airboat was nice. But enduring a full day in a
hot dug-out on the beach while Thunderbolts piloted by students shot
rockets at our ground targets was a boring job.
The days were hot. We sweated an enormous amount of water. The
Army, in its usual wisdom, ordered that we eat a salt tablet every time we
took a drink of water. To make it easier to follow the order, salt tablet dis-
pensers were placed beside every water fountain. Little did the Army
know that, 40 years later, my doctor would discourage me from eating
any salt, and he blamed the military and its demands for salt consump-
tion for much of my high blood pressure.

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EVERY DAY I looked enviously at a helicopter parked on the ramp beside

the tower. It was a fascinating machine looking as though it were con-
structed from a tangle of rods and wires around an engine with a big pro-
peller pointing toward the sky. There were two pilots on the base who
could fly it.
Although the helicopter was intended to assist in rescuing air crews
who ended in the Atlantic Ocean, its actual use was to spot schools of fish
out in the ocean and direct the crash boat carrying the base commander
to the best fishing areas. For this purpose, it was ideal.
A notice appeared on the operations bulletin board advising that
openings were available for any pilot wanting to become rotary wing qual-
ified. It was enticing, but a small note at the bottom of the sheet told that
a combat tour in helicopters was required of those who completed the
training. Thoughts of engaging in combat in such a weird machine was
enough to discourage those of us who were attracted by the invitation.

LATE ON A SATURDAY in August, I used a portion of my gasoline allotment

to drive 120 miles for a visit home. It was not a pleasant visit. I felt terri-
ble and lay drowsing on a cot nearly the entire time I was home. It took
special effort to drive back to Wilmington late Sunday afternoon. The
next day I felt like hell while flying. That was a unique experience for me.
No matter what was awry in my personal life, put me in an airplane, and
let me fly, and all was right with the world! This day was different. When
I landed, I barely was able to climb from the cockpit. Something defi-
nitely was wrong! I advised the operations officer that I was going on sick
call, and I drove from the flight line to the base hospital.
Orderlies took their time with me. I filled out form after form.
Finally a doctor took a look at me and directed that I be committed to a
bed. I didn’t care what I was committed to. I felt like the devil had hold
of me, and, for the first time in my life, an airplane was the last thing I
wanted to see. A bed sounded absolutely beautiful. So I was led by a
Specialist Third Class to a bed in the base hospital of Bluethenthal Army
Airfield. Following his instructions (I was too weak to object), I stripped

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my clothes, wrapped a hospital gown around me, and climbed onto the
hospital cot. The Spec/3 drew blood from my arm and left the room.
An hour later, a nurse appeared. I had been to the officers’ club
infrequently and never to the base hospital, and I never before had seen
a military female nurse. The lady was brief and to the point. She placed
a large pitcher of ice water on the stand beside the bed.
“Drink this water,” she said, “and urinate in this jar. Write down on
this pad how much you drink and how much you urinate. And drink at
least a quart of water every hour!”
For four hours, I was in a stupor, burning up despite the huge
amount of ice water I forced down my throat. At intervals, one nurse or
another came to the room to tell that they were checking me for venere-
al disease but had found nothing yet. Then at 8 p.m. a male orderly
appeared at the door of the room.
“Captain,” he announced, “you’ve got malaria!”
I don’t know what it was about my appearance or my conduct that
caused the misdirection, but the medics spent all afternoon checking my
blood for one form or another of venereal disease. Finally the Spec/3, having
little else to do, placed some of my blood under a microscope and spotted the
evidence of malaria. Praise the Lord for GIs who have time of their hands!
Questions from a nurse revealed that I abandoned my daily dose of
atabrine when I returned from Italy. Between December and July, the lit-
tle thing-a-ma-jigs that bring on the chills and fevers of malaria had
grown in my blood stream until finally they laid me low. The good news
was that it would be only a matter of time before I would be well again
and could return to flight duty.
When finally I recovered sufficiently from my bout with malaria to
feel like walking the halls of the hospital, I found other pilots who also
were recovering from malaria. Days were not bad. We made friends with
the nurses and actually found several who would spend extra time with us
during the day. Nights were long and lonesome, however, and we searched
for things to do. In a small kitchen two halls down from our ward, we
found eggs and a stove. As ranking officer, I decided to serve as chef.

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“We will feast,” I boasted, “on poached eggs.”

Only one buddy had enjoyed poached eggs, so this would be a new
and novel experience for the others. I poured water in a frying pan,
brought it to a boil, salted the water, and broke two eggs into the water.
To tell the truth, this was my first attempt at poached eggs, and I was not
certain how it was to be done. I was stunned to see the two eggs absolute-
ly disappear. I broke two more eggs into the water with the same result.
They disappeared! We tried to skim what little of the eggs could be seen
with no success. Finally, amid laughter and ridicule, I gave up my attempt
at poached eggs and went back to bed. It was during my next trip home
that my mother explained that cold storage eggs will disintegrate when
placed in hot water. It was a mystery solved.
True to our plans, two friends I made during my stay in the hospi-
tal joined me for a reunion with our nurses in the officers’ club. We pur-
chased two fifths of Southern Comfort, a 110 proof liqueur that was all
the beverage store had available. Southern Comfort should be enjoyed in
a mixed drink, but one of my friends insisted on taking it straight. We
enjoyed the evening, sipping Southern Comfort and talking about where
we grew up. Then, when nature called, one of the guys stood and turned
toward the men’s john. With great military precision, he fell rigidly to the
floor, hitting it face-first with a splatter. Blood flowed from his nose and
from his gashed mouth, but he didn’t mind. He relished the attention he
received from two nurses, who used napkins to bind his wounds.
Unfortunately, that ended the evening. Our nurses insisted they had to
return to their barracks, and we had to help our injured and drunken
buddy undress and get safely in bed.

WE DID NOT LIKE night flying. We did not like flying in the same sky with
pilots new to both the P-47 Thunderbolt planes and flying in darkness.
The only times we flew at night were when we were required to show our
students the rudiments of formation flying after dark. Any flight after
sunset was logged as night, so when night training was scheduled, we
waited patiently on the end of the runway until the tower announced

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sunset. Then we taxied to the runway and took to the air quickly, because
we were eager to accomplish as much as possible of the formation work
before total darkness set in. None of us trusted the night vision or the
flight skills of our students.
At night, the ship yards of Wilmington were bright with lights. The
arcs from welding rods were blinding, even when seen from 5,000 feet
altitude. The Atlantic Ocean was a vast sea of darkness. Eastern North
Carolina had few lights which would identify the small towns. We had
instructed our students on positioning their planes by lining up the nav-
igation lights on the lead plane in a formation. We hoped they remem-
bered the lessons. We never lost a plane during night flights. Our instruc-
tions must have been adequate and our luck good.
One of the highlights of our training was a triangular low level cross
country flight southwest from Wilmington to Myrtle Beach, South
Carolina, then north to Lake Waccamaw, North Carolina, and then east
to Wilmington. A minimum altitude of 300 feet was specified. Nobody
paid any attention to the minimum. Students would skim the waves of
the Atlantic from Wilmington to Myrtle Beach, then skim the rooftops
of beach homes from Myrtle Beach northward. When they reached the
swamplands bordering Lake Waccamaw, most dropped below tree top
level and zoomed up the Waccamaw River. Unfortunately for several,
there were telephone and power lines that traversed the Waccamaw, and
several of the P-47s returned to Bluethenthal Field with wires trailing
from their vertical stabilizers. The rugged Thunderbolts could rip up
several power line poles and never lose airspeed. Our operations officer
usually chewed ass in a professional manner, but he never admitted to a
commanding officer a transgression by any of our pilots. The resulting
paperwork would have been too much trouble.

AUGUST 2, 1945. The day’s flight had been enjoyable. I sent others of my
training flight home and prepared to enjoy myself just tooling around the
blue sky. But something seemed wrong. I could get no power from my
engine and the prop rpm was falling. Then I understood what had hap-

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pened. My propeller had suffered a type of prop failure caused by a mal-

functioning electric motor that had placed the propeller in full high
pitch, almost feathered. It was not engine failure. The engine was run-
ning great. It was prop failure.
It put an end to my joy ride. I had plenty of altitude to make it to the
airfield. I called the tower: “Bluethenthal, I have an emergency. My prop
has gone out and is in full high pitch. I’d like to land immediately.”
The tower was on the ball. The operator cleared all traffic from the
field and gave me landing priority. I lined up nicely with the runway
and prepared to set the P-47 down on the first half. There could be no
go-around. I slowed and began to settle for a three-point landing.
Then, disbelieving, I saw a Thunderbolt pull on the runway directly in
front of me. Some damned fool never paid attention to the tower. I was
about to smash directly into the unsuspecting plane. I knew I could
never stop in time. It would be a fantastic sight! I firewalled the throt-
tle, which had little effect because of the high pitch position of the pro-
peller. I hauled back on the stick. My plane staggered over the plane on
the runway, and I saw quickly there was too little runway left for a land-
ing. I said a prayer, retracted my landing gear, and continued at full
power with my plane battling to stay in the air. Past the end of the run-
way I struggled, then over a thick pine forest; and finally the P-47 set-
tled into the trees. In an instant the Thunderbolt rested on the ground,
and all was silent.
I was stunned to find myself unhurt. Things were extraordinarily
quiet following the sudden end to the roar of the big Pratt & Whitney. I
cut all switches and sat for a moment without moving.
We had been warned never to let our parachutes get out of sight, so
I climbed from the cockpit, pulled my parachute from the seat, slung it
over my shoulder, and began to trudge back toward the airfield. My way
was blocked by a wide creek. I retraced my steps to the airplane, won-
dering about the best way to return to the field.
I didn’t have to wonder long. About 50 yards to the right front, I
heard an ambulance, its siren screaming, circling the forest and search-

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ing for me. In a moment the medics saw the plane, and they rushed from
the ambulance to help me. We returned in the ambulance to the airfield.
The medics marvelled at how close to the plane they had to drive before
they saw it, and they expressed some disappointment that they had
found me with only a bruised forehead when they thought they would be
picking up pieces.
The flight surgeon made light of the bruise on my forehead where it
had smacked against the gunsight. We both praised the battleship tough-
ness of the Thunderbolt, and I was cleared for flight again.
Two days later, the P-47 was parked on the ramp, standing tall on its
landing gear. Jammed in the leading edge of both wings were pieces of
tree trunk the size of my thigh. It was then that I realized how much of
my allotment of luck had been consumed by that episode.
A week later, all pilots were assembled in the post theater for a safe-
ty meeting. It was customary to review all accidents that had occurred
since the previous safety meeting and discuss what may have prevented
them. My face turned red when my accident was discussed.
“This accident cost the United States government $88,000,” said the
safety officer. “That’s the cost of a P-47 Thunderbolt.” Ho, boy! Why don’t
we fly only P-51s? They cost just $55,000 each!
The safety officer went on to give several ways my accident could
have been avoided. He said I might have tried forcing the plane on the
runway after clearing the errant P-47 and then ground looped. He men-
tioned other alternatives. Finally he concluded, “But this pilot did the
best thing he could have done under the circumstances.” I was cleared,
and the accident never went on my record.

WORLD WAR II ENDED with Japan’s unconditional surrender shortly after my

crash into the trees. Atomic bombs that devastated Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, two of Japan’s major cities, crushed any hope the Japanese had for
victory. There was no spectacular celebration at Bluethenthal Field. There
was more a feeling of relief and wonderment. Now what could we expect?
The military was eager to discharge troops as rapidly as possible,

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 Stateside — Fun, Frustration, Finality

but the reduction in force was planned in an orderly manner. Points were
awarded for decorations, time overseas, and time in service. Servicemen
with the most points were given priority for discharge. I debated with
myself. I loved the military. I loved flying. If there were no war, the fun
things in my life could be enjoyed without stress. But my father had near-
ly completed a new building for his printing and newspaper business,
and he had no one to help move the equipment other than the brother
who stayed at home. Was my allegiance to myself or to my father, a 71-
year-old retired Baptist preacher who was a newspaper editor and print-
ing plant owner? I chose love for family.
I totalled my points. A Silver Star for 5 points. A Distinguished
Flying Cross for 5 points. An Air Medal with 13 clusters for 70 points. A
Purple Heart for 5 points. The European Theater Medal with five battle
stars for 30 points. Almost a year overseas for 11 points. It was clear that
I could be among the first to leave the Army. I made my second visit to
the personnel officer, received the proper forms, filled in the blanks, and
turned them in.
Two weeks later I was summoned to headquarters. “Captain,” the per-
sonnel officer said. “We have a problem, Your authorization for discharge
came this morning, but in the same mail we received this appointment for
you to be a first lieutenant in the Regular Army. Which do you want?”
It was the first news I had of my request for a Regular Army com-
mission since I submitted it while flying the previous year with the 325th
Fighter Group in Italy. I knew buddies who were thrilled to be offered a
regular commission as Second Lieutenant. I knew majors who were esta-
tic to receive regular commissions as first lieutenants. This was far better
than I ever hoped.
But I said, “Give me a discharge.” Three days later I was at Fort
Bragg, North Carolina, but only for a night. Processing for discharges
was done quickly. Decisions had to be made on the fly. I stood before a
field desk, ready to sign my discharge papers, and an infantry captain
named Leatherwood asked me if I wanted to continue my military serv-
ice in the Army Reserve. I looked surprised.

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 A Pilot’s Story

“Didn’t you go to Wake Forest College,” he asked.

“Oh, yeah,” I responded. I took a closer look at him. “You were in Pi
Kappa Alpha, the fraternity next to Sig Ep.”
He talked about my continuing as a captain in the Reserve of the
Army Air Corps and made it sound attractive. He assured me that I
could leave the Army Reserve whenever I desired. I signed my name,
held up my right hand, and took an oath. Then, as a Reserve Captain, I
quickly departed Ft. Bragg, driving my Oldsmobile to my family’s home
in little Zebulon.
Thus, almost anti-climatic, came the end of my service during
World War II. I didn’t feel like a hero. I was no hero. I felt like a very lucky
guy who had received far more good things than I deserved.

240
241
242
 Epilogue

FTER THREE YEARS of living on government pay as a member of the

A military, it was the latter part of 1945, and I was back in Zebulon,
21 years old, and facing the decision of what to do with the rest
of my life. My father, nearly 70 years of age, was eager to give up respon-
sibilities for the weekly newspaper, The Zebulon Record, and the little
print shop. I chose entering a partnership with two brothers, Ted and
Ferd, to purchase the business from my father rather than returning to
college. It was a decision that alternately caused me a bit of regret and
some satisfaction.
My association with the U.S. Army Air Corps Reserve was nothing
but correspondence courses. No drills. No training. No airplanes. Def-
initely no flying. In 1947, the Army Air Corps became the U.S. Air Force,
but that did nothing to increase in my participation in training. I kept my
status active by completing Air Force correspondence courses, learning
how to run a Port of Embarkation—knowledge I hoped I never would be
required to use.
In 1947, brother Ted left the business because its income was too little
to support two families and me, a bachelor. Brother Ferd had enrolled in law
school with support of the G.I. Bill but continued to work in the print shop.
Although we were working six days a week at printing and journal-
ism, there seemed an opportunity for profits in the flying business, so we

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negotiated a Piper Aircraft dealership with Piedmont Aviation, and

Davis Aviation was born. Now the seventh day of the week was busy, as
I juggled printing and flying responsibilities. In two years we sold three
airplanes—two Piper J3 Cubs and one Piper Super Cruiser. To keep the
books in the black, I hopped passengers on weekends—$3 cash for a trip
in the back seat of a Piper J3 Cub that included flying a circle over
Zebulon. With someone helping fasten passengers in the rear seat, I
could make six circuits over town in an hour, which provided $6 an hour
profit after paying cost of fuel and putting aside a little for payments on
the bank loan required to purchase the plane.
In two years, it was clear that Davis Aviation would never be more
than a time-consuming, expensive hobby. We sold our airplanes and
concentrated our attention on printing and publishing.
I was busy with civic work, joining the Rotary Club, the Masonic
Order, the American Legion, and the Woodmen of the World. I became
a Sunday School teacher at Zebulon Baptist Church. When Boy Scout
Troop 40 lost its Scoutmaster, I was volunteered for the position. And I
was enjoying life as editor of the weekly Zebulon Record.
1949 came, and I had not touched a military aircraft since my
release from active duty nearly four years previously. To satisfy my grow-
ing hunger for more flying, I decided to join the North Carolina Air
National Guard headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, 190 miles
from Zebulon; but that wasn’t possible, because Brigadier General
William Payne, commander of the Air Guard, refused to accept anyone
in the Air Guard who lived more than 100 miles from Charlotte.
The Adjutant General’s Department, located in Raleigh, learned of
my futile attempt to join the Air Guard. It put an Army Guard captain in
touch with me.
The Rotary Club, serving as the town’s Chamber of Commerce, was
eager to attract payrolls to Zebulon. “An Army Guard unit will not make
your town rich, but it will be equal to a nice little factory,” said Captain
Darrell Perry, staff assistant for Headquarters, 113th Field Artillery
Battalion, an Army Guard unit headquartered in Louisburg, 21 miles

244
 Epilogue

from Zebulon. He explained that efforts to organize a field artillery bat-

tery in a neighboring town had failed twice, and Zebulon could have that
unit if the community desired it. That sounded great to the Rotarians. All
we had to do was find a place for the unit to meet, recruit the men need-
ed to organize a field artillery battery, and the payroll would follow.
But who would organize the artillery battery? Other Rotarians
looked at me, a captain in the Air Force Reserve. I agreed to accept for a
year the challenge of forming the National Guard unit, even though I
never had seen an artillery piece fired. Thus began more than 25 years of
sharing my life with printing, journalism, and the military.
The Town of Zebulon agreed that we could use an old water plant
as our armory. In June 1949, a group of mostly WWII veterans stood tall
in the drafty, old building, was inspected by a Regular Army colonel, and
Battery A, 113th Field Artillery Battalion, received Federal recognition.
There was one near foul-up during the inspection. We were sup-
posed to have 22 men in ranks, but only 21 were present for inspection.
“Don’t worry, cap’n,” a couple of WWII vets assured me. “We’ll take care
of this.” They quickly disappeared. When time came for the formal
inspection in ranks, the Regular Army colonel began questioning indi-
viduals in the formation. I counted 22 lined up at rigid attention.
Fortunately, the inspecting colonel never saw what caught my eye. The
twenty-second man in ranks had only one leg.

MY MILITARY CAREER developed in ways I never anticipated. After four

years of commanding the unit and seeing it occupy a beautiful new
armory—the fifth built in North Carolina following WWII—I was
transferred from Battery A to 30th Division Headquarters where I
served as Public Information Officer. This brought a promotion to
major. My nephew and business partner, Jack Potter, took command of
the battery.
In 1955, I gained flight status as an Army Aviator, which required
me to maintain the same proficiency demanded of pilots on active duty
with the Army, except that almost all my training would be done on my

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own time. I was flying L-19 (later titled “O-1”) Birddogs and L-20 (later
“U-6”) Beavers.
Then I was given the challenge of making an aviation company out
of an infantry company. Soon, the aviation company was increased in
size and capability and became a battalion. Lt. Col. Charles Manooch, a
former Air Corps pilot, commanded the 30th Aviation Battalion; and I
was his executive officer—the guy responsible for maintaining discipline
and doing the dirty work. Col. Manooch soon took another assignment,
and I became battalion commander with subsequent promotion to lieu-
tenant colonel.
While battalion commander, I knew we soon would lose most of
our fixed wing aircraft. We probably would be left with only helicopters,
and I was not qualified as a rotary wing pilot. The Army National Guard
developed a program for giving initial rotary wing training at home sta-
tion, with only two and a half weeks at the Army Aviation School at Fort
Rucker, Alabama, required to complete the course and be qualified to fly
helicopters. I volunteered, along with Major Rick Johnson, my battalion
operations officer. We were the first National Guardsmen in the nation
to gain rotary wing qualification in this manner. Now I was flying the
OH-58 Iroquois and the famed UH-1 Huey helicopters.
Colonel Collin McKinne was given command of 30th Division
Artillery, and he chose me as Division Artillery executive officer. It was a
choice assignment. Collin was an experienced artilleryman and a nice boss.
Then Colonel McKinne was transferred to the staff of the Adjutant
General, and I succeeded him as Division Artillery commander. A pro-
motion to colonel came with concurrent responsibility. Now I had under
my command five Army National Guard artillery battalions, one of
which was in South Carolina and one in Georgia. I was still on flight sta-
tus, which enabled me to fly south to visit my battalions in those states.
It was interesting to see the men’s reaction when they were engaged in
weekend firing at Ft. Stewart, Georgia, or Ft. Jackson, South Carolina,
and I startled the gunners manning howitzers by landing a helicopter in
the midst of their gun positions.

246
 Epilogue

Another reorganization of the Guard in North Carolina did away

with the infantry division and gave me command of the 30th Support
Command, which was assigned a conglomeration of units such as mili-
tary police, quartermaster, and maintenance battalions.
Major General Clarence Shimer, the Adjutant General, called me to
his office and asked if I would object to being commandant of the North
Carolina Military Academy. For various reasons, the Officer Candidate
School at the Academy needed the immediate benefit of strong leader-
ship. I said a quick “no”! This gave me an opportunity to install new ideas
for preparing officer candidates for service as commissioned officers.
In 1975, with more than 30 years of active and National Guard
military service, I had completed five years as a colonel and was
mandatorily retired under the provisions of ROPA—the Reserve
Officers Personnel Act—which provides that after five years in grade,
a colonel must gain general rank or be retired. I was on flight status
until my day of retirement.
Looking back, returning to college would have been nice; but the
Army did well in educating me. I completed both the Basic and
Advanced Courses plus the Nuclear Weapons Course at the Army
Artillery School at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma; the Army Command & General
Staff College at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas; the Armed Forces Staff
School at Norfolk, Virginia; the Air Force Air-Ground School at
Southern Pines, North Carolina; and the Army War College at
Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
The distasteful part of my National Guard service was being called
to state duty for riot control. At times, especially after the assassination
of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., riots developed in various areas of my
state, and Army Guard units were ordered into state service to maintain
order. In nearly every instance, I was called into service to work with the
news media. The job called for long hours, a careful choice of words
when speaking with the media, and dividing my time between military
headquarters, National Guard armories, police and fire stations, highway
patrol headquarters, and city halls.

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 A Pilot’s Story

It was a good life, even though it often was tough on my family and
business. I was training too many weekends, on active duty too much,
and often not available at home or work when I was needed. All in all,
however, I do not regret the service I have given my home, state, and
country. Given my opportunities, who would do less?
And now, my children, you know what I
did in the big war.
* * * * *
This collection of memories would never
be completed were it not for the encouragement
of my beloved Ramona, without whom life
would have no meaning for me. She is my inspi-
ration, my motivator, my lover, and the angel
who brings the joy I look forward to each day.
Our seven children and their spouses
joined on Father’s Day 2013 to urge me to wrap Why not smile?
The world is a wonderful place!
up these memories. They promised to pay the
cost for publishing a book containing them while the memories still
existed—good and bad experiences alike. Showing their love are:
Michael and Terry Davis
Denise and Mike Bowling
Sherrie and Ron Kinkead
June and Duke Sanders
Diane Pentz
Ricky and Ann Davis
Cindy and Chris Sheaffer
Thank you all! May you enjoy the same good fortune that has been
mine throughout a long and happy life!

Barrie S. Davis

248
249
250
 A Pilot’s Story
Take an 18-year-old Southern boy, throw him in with a whole bunch
of Hispanics and Yankees, give him a bit of flight training, and hope
for the best. This is the story of the son of a Baptist preacher in North
Carolina whose college education was interrupted by the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent entry of the United States
into World War II. As you read the narrative, imagine the initial awe
with which he met his new experiences and the concern as to whether
he could meet the varied challenges presented by the “big war”.

A PUBLICATION OF
Nonpareil Books
307 Nostalgia Lane
Zebulon, North Carolina 27597