September 7, 1944

Thursday.

Sept. 7, 1944

Dear A.P. 

I got a letter from Mother today and she reminded me that I owed you a letter so I am taking this the first chance to write.  We are going to the show tonite so don't expect too much.

Seeing your interests lie in my new schedule down here I will give you a bird's eye view.  We get up at 0600 and have until 0700 to get to the flight line.  We are on the line flying at least 3 hours and quit at 1200. At 1400 we go to ground school which is one big gunnery course.  At 1600 we go to P.T.  At 1800 we go to chow and are done for the day.  We put in a pretty constant 12 hour day but also have a little spare time.

Today we didn't fly because of the excessive wind which ran from 25 to 35 miles an hour and gusty which makes landing the AT6 rather hazardous.  Yesterday we flew 2 missions and had to make two solo landings after 7 weeks of no flying.  We had no accidents so you can see we have the best pilots down here.  The A.T-6 is a hard plane to handle in landing but was doubly so yesterday when we had a cross wind and a very gusty wind at that.  A lot of fellows at Luke Field right now would have piled them up. In fact flying would have been called off up at Luke.  I feel quite happy about the whole thing.

We flew 2 ariel gunnery missions yesterday firing a gun camera instead of ammunition.  It is a good way to save powder and also point out mistakes made during each pass.  In all you make about 15 passes each hour.  All are recorded as soon as you pull the trigger on the guns.  Therefore they can tell if you are leading the target correctly.  I'll sat that we are getting the best flying right now.  Even though I am rather rusty I am having a swell time. 

Gila Bend is no place for a vacation.  We have ants and all kinds of wildlife down here.  It is in the middle of the desert and gets an average of 20 degrees hotter here than at Luke.  However we are beginning to get cool weather so it is not too bad.  If you are willing to work you can have a lot of fun. I certainly will try to make the most of it even though this is a so called "hole in the ground".  It only lasts 10 days.

I have thought a lot about your buying that house in Walden.  Of course if you sold the house in Stoneham and went to live in Walden it would affect all of you a lot more than me and from the point of a good business deal it would be one of the best.  You would be getting a much better house in the exchange. As I say it would mean a lot more to you all at home than it would to me.  However I would hate to think of never living near my old friends again.  We would be in easy motor distance but not walking distance.  I guess it doesn't mean too much to me seeing that in several years my interests will be very much different than they are today or when I left 1 1/2 years ago. Maybe this would be a good chance to get away from a crowd and get into a new bunch.

I will have to close now and go to the show.

With love

Austin