June 13, 1944

Luke Field

Arizona

June 13, 1944

Dear Mother:

As long as I have nothing pressing at present I will answer your letter of the 9th.

Since you seem to be full of questions I guess I can answer them, while I still have your letter before me.  School papers etc.  Well I have no idea what I could use them for in the future except show them to my grandchildren.  You can throw away anything that doesn't look too much like a lot of work such as chem papers and mechanical drawing papers etc.  I have forgotten most everything else anyway so they do me very little good.  Shoes I guess you can dispose of them the best way possible. I doubt if I will need any more civilian shoes for the duration plus!  The same goes for the clothes.  I may wish I had them after a while but it will be a lot more fun buying a new outfit.  I'll bet the girls wish they had prospects of starting out with a brand new outfit some day.  It sure would be fun buying all new clothes once.

Yes let Esther take the money and buy a Bond.  That seems to be the best place for it.  After next pay day I may send home another hundred.  Since I don't leave the post on weekends it sure piles up.

So you're not going to get attached to that dog, huh!  Well maybe that's what you thought last week.

No a furlough does not have to good a chance here.  As soon as we graduate we are put on active duty and our only chance for a little time off is a delay in route.  That is usually 10 days and unless I have good connections on planes I would spend too much time traveling. If I flew I could get home in 28 hours.  That would be swell.  Otherwise I will get a better look at this west.

We are scheduled to finish 4 Aug 44.  That is the exact day and the hour is approx 11:00.  How do you like that?  

Now the plane I will fly.  As I have said we may get a chance at the P-40's here but that chance seems slim now.  P40's are training ships for P51's now and we are in the wrong area to get 51's easily.  What we will get is the P39 and later the P61 a brand new fighter.  They have a rumor around that we might get P47's but I haven't seen any yet.  All this training comes after graduation. After graduating I may go to "Gila Bend" a gunnery school before I get my tactical ship.  It makes little difference as long as I get through.  Yes I have a lot of time to put in yet before I am even anywhere near a tactical pilot.  I have gotten as far from bomber planes as is possible.  I am strictly a single engine man now.

I like your illustrations very much.  You should have followed up the art work.  You missed your calling.

A feather merchant.  Well they are civilians in general who should be in the army instead of hiding behind the dodge that they are doing vital work for the army.  We get kind of tired of seeing them getting all the privileges of officers and special people and yet enjoying so many more things we can't.  I may not be too clear but to me they seem to be enjoying this war too much.

I finally got through that letter, what do you know.  Well keep up the questions, you may get more letters.  

Skeet shooting in Tyndall Field, FL

Yesterday I had some real fun.  We went to the skeet range on the other side of the field.  We shoot 12 gauge shotguns at clay birds.  It teaches deflection shooting which is so important in good combat shooting.  We get all the shells and birds we can shoot in 7 hours.  We are supposed to get 500 shots but will get 1000 to 1500.  You can bet there are a lot of men at home who would like to get a hold of that many.  They had one gun mounted on an ariel machine gun stand in all the same set up .  We used the same 70 mil. sight which is used on a plane.  You lead the bird one ring in the sight and let fly and poof!! goes the bird.  It looks like this  The sight is a ring of white light on a transparent green background.  It is a lot like shooting the planes in the penny arcade. I got about 20 hits out of 25 and felt kind of proud.  It sure is good to see that old bird explode when you hit it.  You should see the mess of broken birds after we finished.  I sure do get a chance to do a lot of things I never thought I could do as a civilian.  For the 1st time of shooting a shot gun I think I did as well as any of the fellows who have had experience.

Not much happens here.  Everything goes on pretty much as usual.  A P40 came in the other day with his wheels up and landed on his belly tank and caught fire.  They had a lot of smoke and flame and a lot of damage but no one was hurt.  We wear shoulder harnesses now to protect us from sudden stops.

Keep writing about what is going on.  The Independent doesn't quite cover everything.  Please tell Dad what my right address is.  None of his have been held up yet as far as I know.

With love

Austin.