War
Off we go into the wild blue yonder ...
By WW II
Mobile Bay Times
On Jan. 13, 1944 our group completed its pre-flight training and we were all assigned to advanced Bombardiering schools.
I was sent to Victorville, Calif., not far from Santa Ana and about 100 miles from Los Angeles. Victorville was a nice, clean little base, just a few miles from the town which gave it its name, an oasis in the Mojave Desert.
Here our training took on more meaning. for the first few weeks we had classroom work but we also had what you might call "lab work." It consisted of operating a "bombing machine," a platform with four wheels that stood about 10 feet off the ground. It was equipped with a bomb sight and moved under the impetus of electric current.
We fledgling bombardiers operated the machine over simulated terrain and, peering through the bomb sight, "dropped" our bombs at what we hoped was the appropriate moment to have them strike the assigned "target." Some sort of electrical impulse recorded the spot where our "bombs" hit and we were graded accordingly.
I was a member of Class 44-7, due to graduate May 13.
It was about the middle of February that I suffered some sort of letdown in my enthusiasm for the military life. I don't know just what brought it on. Perhaps the realization that combat duty wasn't far away and a feeling that I wasn't really too eager to have my life on the line.
I began to lag in my work, particularly on the bombing trainer, a device which I never was able to completely master even when I worked might and main at it. Usually assignments that I had little interest in or ability at, I could, by dint of supreme effort at least manage a passable performance. But now I didn't have the incentive and my bombing grades skidded downward.
And so it was that about the end of February I was suspended from Class 44-7. I was assigned to casual duty, i.e. cleaning up the day room, policing the grounds, etc. pending review of my status by a board of officers.
They could wash me out as they did in many cases. That meant, most probably, an immediate assignment to aerial gunners' school, a crash 30-day training program near Reno and a ticket overseas to an air crew. Not exactly a pleasant prospect for it meant hazardous duty, mean accommodations, lower pay and obviously no officer's privileges.
Some "washouts," however, were winning assignments as pursers and I suppose I would have liked this. The purser was a glorified steward, who flew generally on VIP airplanes -- no combat -- and provided services for his important passengers.
It was a post that many people would like to have and I doubt very seriously if I had "washed out" that I would have been given a chance for this job.
In all events, it turned out that the purpose of the review was principally to test my desire to become a bombardier and take my place in a combat crew. And, even though I didn't know this, I had decided before I entered the room that I was going to approach the review this way and tell the officers that I did want to become a bombardier and wanted another chance.
That's the way it worked out. The review board re-instated me and put me in class 44-9, a group due to graduate July 1.
Having made my decision to stay with it, I worked hard the rest of the way, did fairly well on the bomb trainer and later, surprisingly well in actual practice bombing missions. As I look back over my ratings now, I'm rather proud of myself. I scored 189 on C.E. (circle of error -- average distance of bombs in feet from assigned targets on actual bombing runs), had a 32 percent hit rating on combat bombs and posted an 83.94 ground school grade. I was rated excellent in Leadership, Initiative, Attention to Duty and Ability to Instruct and superior, the highest rating, in Military Bearing.
(End Chapter 6)
