The Pink Bomber - Cockpit Memories

[Maskull]

You're literally a prostitute and your gay friends in Movienight only love you cause you spread your goatse on Just A Butt's discord.

Someone should call in a wellness check on you because I think you've just about lost the plot and as a criminal with a violent history you could easily become a danger to yourself or others. I worry for your family.

 

[WolfeTone]

 

[JosephStalin]

Enough of the pig-fighting. What I have read is interesting. Spent a couple of months at Maxwell AFB, in the book called Maxwell Field. Spent five years at Randolph AFB, then called Randolph Field. Was commissioned the same year the author got his Purple Heart. Wasn't a pilot, was signals intelligence.

While I'm at it, I wish you a good D-Day.

 

[WolfeTone]

Chapter I.
Fledgling Flights

1.
Aviation Cadets​

Early in the morning of December 8, 1941, I walked down Church Street in Manhattan, toward #90 to keep an appointment at the New York area's enlistment center for the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps. There were already long lines of male civilians waiting their turn for admittance. The Japanese navy had bombed, and all but destroyed, Pearl Harbor the previous day. This assemblage of angry, mostly young patriots was reacting, ready to don uniforms and reap revenge on the slant-eyed marauders who had dared attack their country.
I was keeping a six week old appointment to take my physical exam for admission to the U.S. Army Air Corps Aviation Cadet program. My first "battle" was at hand. I literally had to fight my way through the lines to the door, and then argue to validate my papers with the Marine guard metering admittance to the sanctum sanctorum. The eager warriors-to-be in line had decided their immediate future on an angry overnight impulse. I was about to take the first step towards fulfilling my two-year plan to fly for Uncle Sam.
My blood pressure was so elevated by anticipation I had to rest 30 minutes before passing a repeat exam. I was so apprehensive I'd not qualify at first, my nerves were taut as a drum head. Happily, I successfully ran a two-hour gauntlet of probes and coughs. Within weeks I received notice to report to the Army in Newark, N.J. That evening about a dozen of us aspiring cadets were on a reserved-seat train bound for Maxwell Field, Montgomery, Alabama. I'd never eaten in a dining car or slumbered in a sleeping car berth before. Our country had declared war the day of my physical exam. That combination of events, the arrival of my orders, and the prospect of finally becoming a uniformed cadet was at once quietly sobering and feverishly exhilarating.
The seeds of my wanting to become a pilot, particularly one in the military, has been sown as a boy. Countless hours of leisure time had been devoted to pulp magazines entirely about the exploits, both real and fictional, of World War air battles, feeding a ravenous appetite for adventure. Walter Mitty-like, I imagined myself in many an open cockpit, wiping the oil from my goggles, as I skillfully maneuvered my Spad or Sopwith Camel in hot pursuit of a Fokker fighter, diving to avoid the deadly fire of my twin Gatling machine guns. (That sentence is a pretty close imitation of the purple prose in such magazines as Flying Aces). As I grew older, it became apparent that it would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to become a pilot; my aspirations slumbered.
Then thanks to the big screen, in 1939, a ray of sunshine emerged. The movie I Wanted Wings opened the year I graduated from St. Mary's High School. It was a story about Aviation Cadets, winning their wings at the "West Point of the Air". Though it was ostensibly for entertainment, a more effective recruiting film was never produced. It sparked ambitions of thousands of youth to don helmets and goggle and soar into the wild blue yonder. For me, the movie awakened a dream I had almost-not completely-put to sleep.
Then in my Junior year at St. Peter's College, the Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPT) became available. I was able to earn my Private's Pilot License and amass 35 hours of flying time (in a float plane) in the Spring of '41. That Summer I was even more fortunate to enroll in the Secondary CPT course at Teterboro Airport. There I learned to fly a 220 horsepower open cockpit bi-plane - the Waco. I learned aerial acrobatics such as slow rolls, snap rolls, loops, Immelmans, Cuban 8's, Falling Leafs. It was pure joy, once I learned to land an airplane with wheels instead of floats, it enabled me to add 35 hours to my log book.
As part of the curriculum, I also attended Casey Jones, a trade school for aviation mechanics in Newark. There, together with fellow CPTers, I dis-and re-assembled a Wright 220 horsepower rotary aircraft engine over a period of 12 bi-weekly sessions. Luckily for me, some of my classmates were gifted with mechanical intuition. I merely loosened and tightened whatever nut and bolt my more talented cohorts suggested. Until then, the zenith of my engineering career had been mounting a chain on my bicycle's sprocket.

 

[WolfeTone]

 

[WolfeTone]

Performing acrobatics in the Waco bi-plane during the summer of 1941 confirmed my resolve to become an Army Air Corps Aviation Cadet even if it meant failing my senior year at St. Peter's College. There was no way to compare the energizing excitement of flying to dismal months of lectures and exams. The college sheepskin was vital and necessary, but also postponable. Besides, I knew there was a way, if I planned it just right.
That Summer I was required to register for Selective Service, the draft. I was about to enter my senior year at college. It depended on decisions by the local Draft Board, but most college students were being deferred from the draft until they graduated, since there was no war in progress. I fervently wished to avoid being drafted in the Army as a buck private when I had a chance to go to flying officer's candidate school. Wearing silver wings, gold bars, and a Sam Brown belt as an Army Air Corps commissioned pilot was infinitely more attractive at the time than a Jesuit college sheepskin.
Because I knew it took a minimum of six months to be accepted as a cadet, I decided to mail my application in August. Perhaps the angels would smile and my acceptance would arrive in January. Time enough to complete mid-year exams, research and write an Economics thesis and accumulate sufficient points to earn my Bachelors of Science degree.
Senior year began, and by October the subject of my Economics thesis was approved and I began my field research. It seemed that my planning was just right. Then, the Air Corps notice of tentative acceptance showed up in mid-November instead of January. My theoretical time-table was squarely in a cocked hat. I was to report to NYC for a physical, December 8, 1941; the degree would have to wait. As I anticipated my final orders, I made an appointment to see Father Thomas I. O'Malley, S.J., Dean of St. Peter's. I expected to leave for pre-flight in days. I explained to him how my plan for both a degree and wings were awry. He was compassionate, asked me to see him before I left New Jersey. Christmas arrived. There was dead silence from the Army. I studied for my mid-year exams, not knowing whether there was a chance I could take them.
Then my orders arrived. January 16th, 1942, I would depart from Newark, N.J. to Montgomery, Alabama by train. I would have time to take the mid-year examinations. The professor of Economics, Thomas Grant, agreed to consider a thesis received before April. During my farewell visit to Dean O'Malley, I asked if there was a chance I could still be awarded my degree. Members of the Society of Jesus are famous for their ability to speak "Jesuitically". Their words escape trippingly from the tongue, and fall on curious ears agreeably. When analyzed by the intellect, the words sometimes prove enigmatic, sphinxian, even evasive. On the street his reply might even be labeled double-talk with a college degree. In essence I received a polite "perhaps".