| Description | 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. |
