All you could see were the instruments. If you were coming in
perfectly, he would let you go ahead and land by yourself. On the
other hand, he might take over the controls about 20 feet off the
ground and take you up again. It was quite scary as you never know
whether you were going to land or not. After we had the okay on these
daylight landings, we were allowed to fly the planes alone at night.
The AT-6 was designed with places for machine guns in the wings and
we were sent in groups to Elgin Field in Florida for gunnery
practice. This was the field where General Jimmy Doolittle trained
his crew for the bombing of Japan. They practiced for months at
bomber takeoff from a field the same length as the deck of a carrier
which had never been done. That was the only way they would be able
to reach Japan. We were assigned there for about two weeks practicing
by shooting at ground targets on a large restricted area. We didn't
do any shooting at targets in the air, Just dove down shooting at the
ground. I recall it being very hot and muggy there off the Gulf of
Mexico.
After returning to Napier Field we were nearing graduation time. We
had now developed a lot of confidence in our flying and fooled around
when flying without our instructors. We would fly very close together
and tap our wingtips and the wing of the plane flying next to us.
Flying close to the ground was fun also and gave you a better idea of
how fast you were actually going than you had at high altitudes.
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