Dear Dad,

We had to fly this morning so we didn’t get off this weekend, however, we are suppose to be off Tues. They are having to do alot of work on the planes so there is a shortage of planes. Starting tomorrow we fly in the afternoon which means we can sleep a little later in the mornings. I am beginning to like these planes alittle more each time I go up. This morning I flew one of the new models with the 74 mm cannon in the nose. They are alot heavier and harder to land but handle better in the air. They are taking the cannons out of most of them because they haven’t panned out too well I guess, or else there are no more Jap destroyers to be sunk.

We will be starting either night flying or instruments in a couple of weeks. We have to get 25 hrs. of night flying which is a good deal. We just get a couple hours of formation flying here and they tell us we won’t need much more than that because most of the work is done with single plane elements in combat. They have alot of P61s at McClellan Fld. which is just a short distance from here. Yesterday one pulled up beside us, a race resulted and when I thought we were going along pretty fast (280), I looked over at him and here he had stopped one engine dead and the prop was standing still. We went along like that for awhile until he started up the engine again, then he pointed the thing straight up in the air and disappeared.

I received a letter from Bill today and he said that he had called you and Cleda was there. How long is she staying? I am glad she is coming to stay at Elaines. I sent her a package from out here I hope she received it in good shape. By the way I am going to have some pictures taken Tues. so I’ll get you fixed up.

My clothes are OK but I’ll be glad when the summer wear I ordered from U. Les.^[1]Uncle Leslie DeMoulin, president of DeMoulin Brothers, a family factory that produced military uniforms during the war. get here. Blaiz received the telegram and we met OK.

Well Dad the boys are waiting for me to go to eat dinner so will close.

With love,

Tom