Don’t know where to start so here goes.

I graduated from Southeastern High School in Detroit, MI in June of 1938.  I started college at the city university the same year and worked for the Western Electric Company, the manufacturing end of AT&T installing automatic telephone equipment in central offices.

I knew I was going to be drafted and be assigned to the signal corps.  I was not interested so I picked and chose the Army Air Corps, aviation Cadet program.  With two years of college under my belt I was sworn in as an Aviation Cadet rather than an Aviation Student.  Main difference was cadet blue uniforms and $75.00 a month rather than olive drab and $12.00 a month.

On February 1942 a group was originally to be sent to Maxwell Field, Alabama.  As it turned out we ended up in a reception center at Santa Ana, CA.  We spent 13 weeks of military training where we were classified according to the needs of the military.

I was classified as a bombardier and sent to Kirtland Army Air Field, Albuquerque, NM.  (Called Colonel Hackett’s Riding Academy)  they actually had a polo field and team there.  We spent the next 13 weeks in found school and flight training.  I believe Kirtland was one of the first bomb schools with the exception of Lowry Army Air Field near Denver.  Lowry was the station where the first bombardiers were trained.  I might add at this point the bombsight was classified as top secret at that time.  The troops that were trained there were not commissioned.  They were made either staff or tech sergeants.

My class, 42-12, was the last to train in B-18-A type aircraft, it looked like a potbelly C-47 (DC-3).  The next class flew in AT-11 type.  42-13 trained in AT-11’s.

As I told you I came down with a case appendicitis and was held back for the next class(42-13).  While in the hospital I met Jimmy Stewart the movie actor.  He was suffering from Death Valley dust fever.  He came to Kirtland to drop some practice bombs.  He (Stewart) joined the cadet program through the service pilot program.  He attended the standard 13-week orientation program and then was commissioned either a second or first LT.  I can’t remember because he was already a licensed civilian pilot.  I think he was in what they called Bomb Approach School and he had to drop some bombs for the experience.  He and I were teamed up and we accomplished his training.  He was assigned to an operational training unit prior to his overseas assignment.

After graduation I was assigned to the Army Air Corps Training Command and was sent to a new bombardier training base at Carlsbad, NM.  As a matter of fact several of class 42-13 were also sent there.  They are identified by the pencil checks on you roster.  (Faour, Forde, Garson, Kahmann, Ogden, Powers, Sickles and Stefanko)  The base was not yet completed and we had to live in an old CCC camp north of the city.

I, because of my experience with the telephone company, was sent to NJ to train with a new bombsight.  (Sperry S-1)

Some of us were in turn were sent to another training base at Deming, NM.  After a short stay their I was sent to Salt Lake City to be assigned to an operational unit overseas.  While at Salt Lake, the brass discovered I had experience with the S-1 and assigned me to a base in the middle of Death Valley, Blythe, CA.  A unit that was on it’s way overseas were given planes that were equipped with S-1 systems and had to be retrained.  The planes were B-24’s.  After cross training I was retained until they sent me again to a replacement unit Walla Walla, WA.  I was retired from there at the end of the war.  I cannot remember the designation of all of these organizations.

I flew in O-5’s, B18’s, B-34’s, B-17’s, B-24’s, B-25’s and B-32’s.  After retirement I went back to school.  The University of New Mexico.