September 17, 1944

Sept. 17, 1944

Dear Mother:

As you see I am back in Phoenix and at Luke again for awhile.  I am back a little ahead of schedule.

I have some very bad news from the Blaisdells.  Erma has come down with the disease called Polio which if something like Infantile Paralysis.  I was out there today and she had awful pains in her legs and arms as well as a bad head ache.  Betty put her to bed and called the Doctors.  He didn't get there till 4:00 PM and immediately called an ambulance.  He said that they had caught the case in the most early stage and I might say I don't know just what that may mean.  I hope they have it in time.

I was called upon to pilot a plane to Texas and back but could not get cleared from Luke because of weather.  We finished gunnery a day ahead and that is the reason they called upon us, meaning me and 3 others.  So seeing we are signed out of Gila Bend and yet not back to Luke we are anywhere we want to be.  I made a fair score in gunnery.  I called it fair even though the authorities think otherwise.  I am an "expert" which means I got better than 180 points.  In fact I got 250 a little more or less.  I believe that the scoring is at fault when they let a poor shot like me get an expert badge.  It is much too easy and the standards should be upped a little.  However I shall take my medal and be satisfied.  I'm not proud.

Well I guess I haven't written all I should, but for the last 10 days or more time has again been scarce. Tomorrow or the next day we see me reporting at 9AM and 2PM again a full fledged member of the "92 Club".

I had a lot of fun Sat.  We were down in operations waiting for a clearance and when we found we couldn't get one we asked if we could take the planes up.  Of course an officer's wish is a command so up we went.  We had a pretty good time for 50 min rat racing and doing acrobatics and a little formation.  When we got down we stopped a command car and requested the W.A.C. driver to take us to our B.O.Q.  We then requested she wait and we used the car to run a few errands around the post.  It sure is a lot of fun having a chauffeur et all.

Life really treats you pretty good if you know how to work it.  I am slowly but surely learning the ropes so pretty soon I should know all the ins and outs.  So until then I will have to sweat out my next assignment.

With love

Austin 

September 9, 1944

Gila Bend

Sept. 9, 1944

Dear Bill:

Enclosed you will find some cartoons.  I hope you get a kick out of them.  They came out of a paper put out each week at Luke.  I hope you get as much fun out of them as I did doctoring them up.

Today I sprayed 400 rounds of 30 cal ammo around the sky and only got 20 hits on the sleeve.  That darn target is sure hard to hit when you are trying.  I don't feel bad about it because there were a lot of scores worse than mine but a lot were better.  As it was I hit nothing the first mission but got 20 the next mission which shows a 100% better scoring record.  You would think that you couldn't miss the darn thing seeing I almost chewed the tail off it a couple times.  I hope to do better tomorrow.  The instructor is going to ride with me so I guess I had better.

One of my friends just finished dictating a letter to me to one of his old flames in Calif.  We asked her for a picture and everything and from what he says we can expect an answer by airmail.  She must be some doll.  I can't understand it because she knows that he is married.  I guess some guys have the old appeal.  By the way how are you and "Dot" getting along.  As for me I still am looking over the field. I hope Mother doesn't worry too much about me and the ladies.  I am not a lady killer yet.

How are you and the hush-hush coming.  We have heard nothing about it lately so you can see I have nothing to write about in that line.

We have some fellows taking the gunnery course here who graduated back in 1942 and have been flying planes around the country ever since.  They are not J.B.'s well we are but have about 2000 hours apiece.  They have flown every type plane in combat and otherwise.  you should see the formation they fly.  It is really close and looks swell.  They are better than a lot of instructors we have here.  As for their shooting they have not done any actual live shooting yet.

I will have to close to go to hit the sack.

With love

Austin.

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