After a week’s leave and a Greyhound bus ride to the panhandle of Texas about 40 miles northeast of Amarillo, where the Pampa Army Airfield was located, we started Advanced Flight School. It was February 1943 and the weather was often cold and sometimes stormy. The skies were generally clear with big cumulus clouds and fierce air currents. We appreciated the special uniforms, boots and gloves to help keep us warm when we were in the air, where it was many degrees colder than the Panhandle.
Although the airfield was similar to the one at Enid in terms of runways, hangers, control tower and water tower, the living accommodations were nothing like the nice two story barracks we’d had at Enid. We were now living in what might be termed a tar paper shack. Luckily we were there to learn to fly, and as far as accommodations we were all in the same boat, as always.
Now we were learning how to maneuver twin engine planes. They were faster, more complex, less forgiving and definitely more challenging. We had to learn how to handle the new power and speed. All the courses we’d learned in basic were geared for these bigger, more powerful planes. Meteorology and Navigation were delved into deeper here. And, we finally learned how to shoot those guns we’d been marching with. There was a skeet shooting range on the base and some of the guys had to spend a lot more time there than I did because of my pheasant hunting days. We were still doing calisthenics, obstacle courses and weightlifting. I had always been strong from my farming days but I was now feeling like quite the athlete.
We had about 12 hours of flying with the instructor before we did our daytime solo and around 25 for our nighttime solo. We practiced takeoffs and landings over and over, probably doing 80 or 90 during our training, most of them at night. Most flying was now done by instruments. There were six students per instructor in our class. Our instructor got our group checked out in an AT-9. Most of the instructors thought the AT-9s were too hot for students and kept them flying the AT-17s but we loved the 9s and had a ball with them. This is when we learned to love to fly.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
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