June 21, 1944

Luke Field

Phoenix, Ariz

June 21, 1944

Dear Mother:

Notice the new stationary!  I got it today and found out that is is airmail.  Well I guess I will have to send you the news in a hurry now.  I guess it won't be too bad if I send a few free because the envelopes are plain.

I think I will send a picture of a friend and me sitting on the wing of a BT.  He was my roommate at Basic and sleeps next to me here.  He comes from Tenn.  and is first rate.  I got quite a kick out of the pictures you send so I looked around and found this.  It was one of the few pictures taken of me in basic.  We couldn't keep cameras till near the end so not many pictures were taken.  (I must fall out for a pyrotechnic demonstration now.)

June 23

I have got to finish this letter so I am taking some spare time before dinner.  The fireworks were put on by the Chem Warfare Dept. and consisted of gas decontamination and protection and use and value of types incendiary bombs.  We lost 1 1/2 hours of valuable sleep so we're not as eager to go as if we had left the class room.

Yesterday Maj. Bong came and spoke to us.  He is a quiet sort of a fellow and seems awful bashful and shy.  I guess he is a much better fighter than speaker.  I doubt if he enjoys his present assignment. He has a lot of interest in fighting but tight as a clam.  I guess he is just modest about it all.  He said that the fighting in his theater of operation is safer than the flying.  He said that when flying a P38 against the Japs no American lives should be lost if you make them fight our way.  Only when you try to maneuver with them do we get shot down (noon chow!)

Major Bong, Ace of the Pacific

This is one of those piece meal letters.  I have about time to finish now.  I flew 3 hours this afternoon and had a lot of fun.  We had a "rat race" which you probably know nothing about.  We went up for formation but when the instructor gets tired of flying straight and level we get the signal to "peel off" and into a "rat race" we go.  It is just a race to stay on the instructor's tail and shoot him down if possible.  It is a series of steep turns and screaming dives and climbs.  It is just one black out after another.  You lose all vision in a block out but not sensibility at least in the ones we get into.  I guess we only gray out because we don't lose consciousness.  Even so you lose all vision.  It turns into just one mad race all over the sky.  We lost altitude from 10,000' to 5500' in ours.  Often they go lower but too little altitude is rather dangerous.  All kinds of maneuvers are done just so long as you can stay on the instructors tail and that is hard because they can really fly.  You can bet we ring these planes out if we can.  you can bet it is fun.  You get wonder head aches also.

Well ground school is going as usual.  We get a lot of interesting facts and figures which will some day help us out of jams.  We are learning all we can about planes now so that later we won't be caught short.  I am again taking code both auditory and visual.  We have to pass a 6 word check to get out but I passed that on the first day.  We have to get 5 words visual and passed that also but that is a heck of a lot harder.  About 80% of the class didn't pass.  I may have to go to class nights even so.  We also get navigation, Aircraft and Naval Recognition, two engine courses, First Aid, oxygen and oxygen equipments, gunnery of all kinds figuring leads and deflection shooting as well as gun maintenance.  I guess we have everything but a course of weather.  It is very interesting.

Yesterday we practiced for the upper classmen's graduation.  They sure are lucky.  I guess it will be our turn next.  I have a friend from C.T.D. graduating.  He sure is a swell fellow and deserves to get through.  By the way, you never can tell  I might not become a Lt. but a Flt officer like Terry Lee.  I hope not.

Well I must close now.  I am getting pretty tired.  Tomorrow is Sat.  I am getting an Arizona suntan.

With love

Austin