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LINDQUIST, Theodore (b. 1923)

Oral Histories

OH 1473

Aircraft worker. His experiences as an aerial gunner in the Southwest Pacific Theater during World War II. His youth during the Great Depression; enlistment in the Marine Corps, September, 1942; boot camp, Parris Island, South Carolina, 1942; aviation mechanics school, Naval Air Station, Jacksonville, Florida, 1943; gunnery school, Hollywood, Florida, 1943; assignment to VMB-433, Cherry Point, North Carolina, 1943; training as a turret-gunner on the PBJ (B-25) medium bomber, Peterfield Point, North Carolina, 1943-44; combat training at Naval Air Station, El Centro, California, 1944; voyage across the Pacific to Espiritu Santo, 1944; assignment to Green Island, June, 1944; assignment to Emirau, August, 1944; living conditions on Emirau; “night-heckling” missions; low-level strafing missions; rest and relaxation leave in Australia; daylight high-altitude bombing missions to Rabaul and Kavieng; rotation back to the United States after completing twenty-five missions, 1945; his postwar career with Pratt & Whitney.

OH 1491

Copy of his flight log book listing activities as a PBJ (B-25) gunner in the Southwest Pacific Theater during World War II. Gunnery training in the States, 1944; flight from the West Coast to Green Island; bombing missions to New Ireland, Kavieng, and New Britain; night missions, strafing missions, and air-sea rescue missions; comments about weather conditions; reports of damage to his plane.