Tues. night.
Dear Dad,
Well we are finishing up here, I don’t know when we will leave as yet but it will be pretty soon. According to the orders I will be going to Luke Field. I am going to have a regular path between Arizona and California pretty soon. I mentioned in Elaine’s letter a check ride that they sprung on our whole squadron. I made it OK. I went up with a Capt. and he took his dog along. I expected the dog to get sick after a couple of stalls but there he was running up and down in the bottom of the plane. He was about the size of old spot. The only thing the Capt. had to say was that I didn’t use the trim tabs enough. You said in your letter that you Elaine + Karen had driven out to the airport and watched some of the air liners come in. The planes you saw were probably DC-3’s, the army has alot of them known as the C47’s. They are the same plane except the army uses them for cargo. From the sound of things you and Karen must really be hitting it off. Elaine said that she really like to go riding.
We had a talk today from a Capt. who was back here resting up. He was squadron commander of a squadron of B25’s under General Chennault in China. It was really interesting and gave us an idea of what we could expect. He was strictly a medium bombardment man but he still had alot of respect for the pea shooters, especially the P40’s. Most of the class here is going into bombardment, in fact very few of us are going to Luke. I imagine by this time next week we will be there. From the rumors that have been going around everyone things that most fo our class will be made flight officers rather than 2nd Lts., that remains to be seen. From all reports our training in advance will be alot of crosscountries, (day + night), formation, and then we go to Gila Bend for a course in gunnery. I think they use the AT6’s with a few 30 cal. and then we get around 10 hrs. in a P40 or some other combat plane.
We had sort of thought we might get a couple of days off, but it looks hopeless now. I was planning on going to L.A. and see Aunt Molly.
Well enough for now, you can continue to write me here because they will forward the mail on pretty fast.
Goodnight –
With love,
Tom
