basic flight training | Oral History

basic flight training

OH 1109

Businessman. His experiences as a B-17 pilot in the European Theater during World War II. Pre-flight and flight training, 1943; assignment to 493rd Bomb Group, 860th Bomb Squadron, at Stone, England; characteristics of the B-17G; first mission, Berlin; problems with flak; tactics to counter German radar; engine trouble and crash landing in eastern Germany; rescue by Soviet troops; trip by C-47 back to England via Poltava, Teheran, Cairo, Tripoli, Dijon; assignment to new crew; shot down by German fighter planes on seventeenth mission; brief experience as POW; liberation by British troops.

OH 1339

Mechanical engineer. His experiences as a B-26 pilot in the European Theater during World War II. His pre-service work experiences assembling the B-26 for the Glenn L.

OH 1524

Businessman. His experiences in the China-Burma-India Theater during World War II. Pre-war education and farming activities in Olney, Texas; enlistment in the Army Air Forces, c. 1941; assignment to Chanute Field, Illinois, c. 1941-42; Officer Candidate School, Miami Beach, Florida, c. 1942; assignment to Perrin Field, Sherman, Texas, c. 1942-44; overseas transport to India; assignment to Warazup, Burma, 1944-45; his reaction to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; postwar career in business