The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s Over Germany 1944-1945 (5 page)

“Marian Anderson,” the attendant replied. McGovern knew the name and the fact that the Daughters of the American Revolution had refused to allow her to sing in Constitution Hall in Washington because she was black. “Of course the professors at Dakota Wesleyan made sure we knew about that and properly condemned it and what a great woman she was.” So McGovern said yes, sure.  Anderson had asked that a representative of the Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, and the Coast Guard join her on the stage. She had them stand in a semicircle behind her for the entire two-hour concert. She chatted with them between songs, which was a big thrill, but the biggest was hearing her sing.  “I don’t think I’d ever heard such music and never again would hear anything so beautiful,” McGovern recalled nearly a half century later. When she concluded with “America the Beautiful,” the service- men and everyone in the audience wept. Some were visibly sobbing. To everyone present, that was what America was all about. “That was one of the great moments of my life.”2 The privates continued to march and otherwise learn the rudiments of soldiering.  After thirty days, they shipped out, their destination colleges and universities all over the country - there were 150 schools involved - for five months of testing and ground school training. McGovern went to Southern Illinois Normal University in Carbondale. There it was dorms rather than barracks. McGovern was one of 125 living in Anthony Hall, all from the Great Plains and upper Midwest.  The same number lived in other dorms. Many of those men were college students from New York City and they called the rural boys “shit kickers.”3 The Army Air Forces had by then become what was called the largest single educational organization in existence. It had a total strength of just over 20,000 when the war began in Europe, representing a bit over 10 percent of the Army. By 1944 it was up to 2.4 million personnel in its ranks, almost one third of the total Army strength.4 Nearly all of them had to be taught highly specialized skills, beginning with pilots. This put an enormous strain on the AAF. To respond, it had an apparently unlimited budget. “Everything is expendable in war,” Eisenhower once said. He added, with a grin, “even generals’ lives.” And went on, “so long as you win.”5 The only limitation on the AAF’s purchases was the capacity of American industry to manufacture airplanes of all types, plus supplies and equipment. In manpower, there were no apparent limits.  The AAF built barracks and airfields. It rented college dorms and hotels. It hired civilian instructors. It spent more than $3 billion 1940s dollars in the course of the war. All this and more was done by a prewar cadre that had never seen more than a few aircraft flying in formation at one time. The AAF put the potential air cadets through a multitude of physical and mental tests before embarking on about as rigorous a training program as could be. During the first months of the war it wanted to graduate 30,000 pilots a year, along with even more thousands of bombardiers, navigators, engineers. By October 1942, the goal was up to 100,000 pilots a year, and proportionally more crew. The AAF determined that it needed one million air cadets to reach its goal.  For the men being tested, the most feared word was “washout.” The process began immediately - slightly more than 50 percent of them failed either the initial physical or written tests and were packed off to the infantry. The AAF expected that result, and further that more than 40 percent of those left would fail to complete the courses of Primary, Basic, and Advanced schools.  To reach the required numbers, the AAF’s policies evolved. On December 10, 1941, Chief of Staff Arnold dropped the requirement that all air cadets had to have completed two years of college - he substituted a qualifying test to replace the requirement. In mid-January 1942, he dropped the ban on married applicants for the air cadet program and lowered the minimum age from twenty to eighteen. The new policy greatly stimulated enlistment and for a year or more those inducted as aviation cadets greatly exceeded the AAF’s capacity to train them.6 In November 1942, Charles Watry was eighteen years old. Congress was about to lower the draft age from twenty to eighteen. He and some others his age decided, “There was no way we were going to allow ourselves to be drafted into the infantry,” so they presented themselves to the examining board, where they were given test booklets and answer sheets for the Aviation Cadet Qualifying Examination. The test would reveal how quick they were to understand directions and whether they could follow instructions accurately. There were reading comprehension sections and others testing mathematical and mechanical skills, judgment and problem solving, and leadership potential.  Watry passed and signed a paper signifying his intention to join the AAF as an aviation cadet. A couple of days later, on November 13, Congress, as expected, lowered the draft age. Watry was worried, since he was still not enlisted in the Army. He asked an AAF sergeant when he should report. Don’t worry, he was told, it would be soon. He still worried.

On December 4, he was told to report for enlistment, and did. The next day, Franklin Roosevelt issued a presidential executive order terminating all voluntary enlistments, to be effective after December 13. McGovern was already signed up; Watry got in just under the wire. By then, there was a pool of more than 30,000 potential cadets, with another 20,000 officers and enlisted men awaiting training as well. The AAF was enlisting 13,000 men per month as air cadets, but it had only enough space, equipment, and instructors to train 10,000 a month, so 3,000 of the potential pilots were stuck in the enlisted reserves, doing what McGovern and so many others did at JB.  Watry was placed initially in the College Training Detachment program, really a holding ground, at Nebraska State Teachers College in Wayne, Nebraska. There were 300 men in his CTD. Most were in their late teens or early twenties and together, in Watry’s judgment, “they were as talented a group as I have ever known.” After that, it was on to the classification phase of training. They went through a day and-a-half-long battery of tests, as did McGovern and all the groups at their various campuses. Developed by psychologists, the first part tested a man’s general knowledge, graph and chart reading skills, understanding of the principles of mechanics, ability to read maps and photographs, speed and accuracy of perception, and understanding of technical information. The second part measured motor coordination, steadiness under pressure, finger dexterity, and the ability to react quickly and accurately to constantly changing stimuli.  The third part was a private interview with psychologists, with such questions as “Do you like girls?” and “Do you wet the bed?” Then there was another physical examination, “the most stringent possible.” In Watry’s words, “The physical exam is the single most critical event in a military (and commercial) pilot’s career.” Some of the flight instructors bragged that they could teach almost anyone to fly, but as Watry pointed out, “The number who can pass a flight physical is a far smaller group.” AAF-experienced pilots took the exam every year (today’s airline pilots take one every six months) and they always approached it with fear. To flunk meant you would never become a pilot, or continue to be one. A sign over General Arnold’s door reinforced the point: “The Air Force’s Business Is to Fly and Fight, and Don’t You Forget It!” The men were tested on pulse rate and blood pressure before and after exercise, and much else besides.  The eye testing was critical. The men were tested on color perception, distance vision, near vision, accommodation, and other problems. The most feared of the eye tests was the one that caused the most rejections, depth perception, which was tested in a variety of mechanical ways. That was the one McGovern passed with ease. Some 20 percent failed and became washouts, departing the base that day, as the AAF figured it was not good for the man’s morale to remain with those who passed. They still wanted to fly, so most of those who washed out volunteered for aerial gunnery training, radio operator training, or flight engineer training. By 1944 almost every one of the six enlisted crew members of a B-17 or a B-24 were washouts from the cadet program.7 In Kenneth Higgins’s primary training he had civilian instructors, but an AAF officer, a lieutenant, would go up with him on his check ride. It was on a small, single-engine plane, a Primary Trainer 19 (PT-19) it was called. On the check ride, the magneto quit. The lieutenant told Higgins to make a turn. He couldn’t. “I didn’t have any power. The thing wouldn’t go. We couldn’t climb. I couldn’t get the magneto working and I’m going into the mesquite trees.” The instructor kicked the rudder and got the plane working again “and we came in sailing downwind and landed all right on the field. It came in hot, but we made it. I couldn’t have done that in a million years, but he had flown for a hundred years.”

The consequence was another check ride for Higgins, with another officer.  “Lieutenant Gates, I’ll never forget, he hollered at me all the time, beat my legs with a stick. So finally he said, ‘Land this SOB and let me out.’” Higgins did, and Gates told him to take it up himself. “I can do that,” he said, “and I hoot and hollered and was singing to myself as I soloed.” So he graduated and went on to basic training, with a bigger plane. There he had an instructor who was teaching his first class “and he wasn’t very good.” After more testing, Higgins washed out. Still wanting to fly, he went to radio school.8 After the mental and physical exams, the men who passed were asked to list their preferences - pilot, navigator, or bombardier. Those who put down pilot - a vast majority - figured you needed a top score to qualify, but in fact the AAF took its navigators from those who scored the best. When a man finished his ground school, the AAF placed him in a training program, with top priority given to his aptitude for a type of training as revealed in his classification battery of tests. Second priority went to his personal preference. Third went to quota available (in 1944 the order of priority reflected the AAF’s ability to attract young men - many quotas were already filled, so the priority became quotas first, then aptitude, and finally, if at all, individual preference).  The parents or wives of those who had passed received a form letter - stamped on the outside “GOOD NEWS” to allay fears that something bad or terrible had happened - that notified them that their loved one had been selected for pilot (or bombardier or navigator) training. It outlined the program he would be going through before receiving his wings. The last paragraph read, “A pilot occupies a position that requires sound judgment, a keen and alert mind, a sound body, and the ability to perfectly coordinate mind and body in the flying of the airplane.  It is imperative that the men who fly our military aircraft possess these qualifications, for upon their skill will depend in large measure the success of our war effort.”9 McGovern spent five months at Carbondale for his ground school training. The physical training program, and the academic studies, were “the toughest I’ve ever experienced.” In the mornings, he studied meteorology, navigation, mechanical arts, all taught by college instructors. There were frequent quizzes and examinations, and thus more washouts. After a noon meal, the physical part began. Norm Campanella, a coach at Southern Illinois whose tumbling team had placed first in the nation, was the instructor. He quickly had them doing push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, knee bends, exercises of the waist, running in place, pushing forward with hands on a wall while pulling the head back. At the end of a few hours of such exercising, the men had to run five miles. There was no getting out of it - Campanella followed behind the slowest man in his aging Chevy. If a man said he had a stitch in his side, Campanella would say, “Try to run that out if you can.”

The following day, more of the same. McGovern said that at first he could not see the point of pushing would-be pilots like that, but after it was over, he decided that Campanella “had us hard and in shape - every muscle in our bodies.” Decades later he declared that Campanella had “made a bigger contribution to saving our lives than any other single person.” Almost every Sunday, McGovern went to the Methodist church. There were Catholics and Jews attending as well, partly for the sermons from a big, jolly, fat minister, partly because the minister formed them into a separate choir - some seventy-five men strong - and had them sing such songs as the Air Force hymn, or “The Little Church in the Wildwood,” or “America the Beautiful.” For a third reason, the minister had the families in his congregation take one of the men home, every one of them, for Sunday dinner - fried chicken, vegetables, bread, gravy, pies, and ice cream.10 In the fall of 1943, on completing the course at Carbondale, McGovern went to the San Antonio air base. There was more physical conditioning, but not much more - the AAF was simply holding him and the others until it was prepared to train them in flight school. McGovern’s group included two or three All-American football players. There were lots of touch football games, done in military style - the instructors would divide the students into groups. McGovern would find himself opposite a guy who was a starter at Notre Dame or some fleet-footed halfback from Southern Cal. “And you really had to hustle just to keep from looking like a fool. When those guys touched you they’d hit you a belt that would knock you off your feet.” He was at San Antonio for two months.11 Then it was off to Muskogee, Oklahoma, to begin to learn flying the Army way.  There was a dirt runway there, at the edge of town, Hatbox Field. The instructors were civilians - the AAF didn’t have enough pilots yet to use its own. McGovern had an old bush pilot, Herb Clarkson, who always had a cigar in his mouth and wore a leather jacket. “The instructor had dictatorial powers,” he said. “Our fate was in his hands.” In Clarkson’s view, “McGovern was unusual in that I never saw him angry. A lot of them would show it, especially after I chewed them out, but McGovern never did.”12 The airplane was a primary trainer - PT 19 - not much different from the Aeronca McGovern had flown in the Civilian Pilot Training program at Mitchell. It had two open cockpits with the student in front, Clarkson in the rear. The PT-19 had no canopy, so the trainee and instructor wore goggles and helmets. As he was one of the few who had soloed a plane, McGovern found the twelve weeks of training to be relatively easy and was generally rated first in his class.