He really
enjoyed the ride and still remembered it the last time I saw him.
We now started to fly a lot of formation with the planes in a V. It
was not until later in the War that a formation of four planes was
used. We flew formation at high altitude, low to the ground and cross
country. Neil Ullo and Lloyd Bruce were now my closest friends and
were in my flight. Neil was sent to a special gunnery school in
Arizona for two weeks and when he came back he had to teach what he
had 1earned to all the rest of us. Later I will tell how much this
extra gunnery training helped him.
By this time we had developed our skill to the point where we got the
fighter pilot attitude which was years later described as the 'Right
Stuff'. We wore the silk scarf, sunglasses and rakish hat with a
leather Jacket. In San Francisco I bought a pair of lumberjack boots
that I was still wearing when I was in prison camp. We began to fly
more aggressively as we knew the airplane better. The gunnery range
was along an uninhabited portion of the California coast and we would
fly down close to the rocks along the shore to scare the seals off
the rocks. Some of the guys flew under the Golden Gate Bridge, but I
never tried that. Out guy flew down into a football stadium during a
game and he was reported and grounded for three days. He forgot to
keep the side of the plane with the identification numbers away from
the spectators.
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