I was 27 years old at this time and older
than most of the others. I was always happy and cheerful in the
morning and got everyone off to a good start.
Some of the math problems were very difficult. If you took off from
an aircraft carrier at a certain compass heading and flew at another
heading to the target, what compass heading would you take to return
to the carrier if it had also changed to a different heading? You had
to also take into consideration your air speed and the wind
direction. Bomber pilots had a navigator to tell them where to go and
a bombardier to drop the bombs. A fighter pilot had to learn all of
these things as he was up there all alone. We worked like this for
three months and it was tough.
I found out that Red Hayes from Bristol Valley was a sergeant
mechanic there at Maxwell Field. He used to go to all the Saturday
night square dances and was a good friend of mine. He was married to
a southern girl and lived off base in a nice brick house. Sometimes
on Sunday I would go out to their house for a southern fried chicken
dinner with pecan pie. One time another service man and I went to
church there. I don't know what denomination it was but the minister
would rant and rave and wave his arms for about three minutes then
they would take up a collection. After about ten collections we were
out of money so got up and left.
Even though we were being trained to be pilots, we still didn't know
whether we would be fighter, bomber, transports glider or even a
"wash out" (the term for not qualifying).
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