1940
After combat,
from 1944.09 on

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      I also have memories of that notorious watering hole, which I discovered in the early 50s at about the time I was hired by Riddle Airlines.
      On one occasion I took my recent bride, a very sedate, prim English lass there not knowing what her reaction would be to the goings on. Needless to say it was an eye opening experience.
      We were seated at a table near the entrance to the rest rooms. After a few beers my wife excused herself and went to the bathroom. I neglected to mention to her that there was a picture of an Indian brave on the wall just wearing a moveable fig leaf over his private areas. And naturally, as they say curiosity once killed a cat, the same goes for Jan, my wife. She lifted the fig leaf. The response was immediate, bells rang, the band somehow also knew her name, and all in unison shouted, "We know what you were looking for Jan."
      I can't recall how much longer we remained there after that incident, probably left soon thereafter.

     When I got to the base wearing my heavy shortcoat we would cluster around a 55 gallon drum with a fire.
      The beauty of instructing in P-40's was that you didn't have to go up with the students. But the downside was that you had to worry about whether they were going to get it down in one piece!. When a student was going up for the first time, the instructor would go down to the end of the runway where we had a radio in a little trailer. We could talk to them while they were landing. I remember one student whose first approach was too high and way too fast. So I gave him a red flare to go around and told him he was going to have to slow it down, a lot! He came around again and was slower but still too fast so I gave him another red flare. I told him he was going to have to slow it down some more and warned him that I had more flares than he had gas. The third time he got it down to an altitude and speed where I judged that he could make it without running off the end of the runway so I let him land!

c            Barbara's sister, Marge Ann Whitehurst, and Chip!

      I was out with five students on a two part mission. First was an aerial gunnery session and the second was a low altitude cross country. Yes, this is what was called "buzzing" the countryside. It was practice for straffing. We went up to perhaps 5000 feet, offshore from Clearwater, and the students did their pursuit curves on the 4 x 20 screen flag towed behind another P-40.
      Then I got them together and we started a descent toward the coast south of Sarasota. It was an extremely calm day and there were no boats to allow one to judge altitude. In those days the altimeters were set with zero at the field elevation. Our field was very low, probably twenty or thirty feet. All of a sudden, I think bells were going off in my head and I looked at the altimeter. It said minus 20 feet! I jerked the nose up immediately and we crossed the coast and finished the flight. We were extremely close to having all six planes go into the drink, boom,boom, boom, etc. It scared the whey out of me. We had to be just seconds from death!
      A new airline, National Airlines, had started up and used the same field for their runs to New Orleans. We really disliked them because they ignored the fact that this was a training field and would come in and land however it pleased them. We had no accidents but I consider that a matter of luck rather than plan.
      One day I was above the Florida clouds when it was time to go back to the field. So I heeled up and dove through a big hole in the clouds. All of a sudden I noticed the the forward, inboard corner of the ammunition access door on the right wing was bent up a bit. Before I could do anything the whole thing flipped up and tore off! It didn't make any difference till I got ready to land. I knew that wing would stall out at a higher speed than the left wing so I came in a little fast and had no problem. I should mention how the doors were secured. The "permanent" hinge was in the rear. The front was secured by a hinge with two wires going through the hinges from the center out with a little kind of hook on the inside end of the wire. The right half of the hinge was torn apart, but the left half was pristine. And there was the wire, still underneath the hinges.
      One day I started to taxi out to the runway and I noticed the Dzus fasteners on the cowling were jumping up and down. They had not been fastened. So I pulled over, waved at a mechanic and he came over with a screwdriver and fastened them. If I had tried to take off that way I believe the cowling would have come off. It could have damaged the tail and possibly affected the control. We had pretty good maintenance but sometimes things weren't quite right. One of the P-40's had its engine ruined when someone came out and started the engine without oil! The mechanic had drained the oil about lunchtime. He was supposed to tag it that it was undergoing an oil change but apparently didn't. He went to lunch. That's when someone came out to start it!

      One of the 27th pilots from Italy was there with me, Lee Noble Ridings. He had crashed on landing in Italy and some 20# fragmentation bombs went off and peppered him with shrapnel. He was given the extreme surgery, like Ernie Weidenhammer's. They slit him up and down and across, peeled him back and took out the shrapnel, then sewed him up. That was about seven months before. He was working at a desk and hadn't flown since. A month or so later they let him check out in a P-40. I understand that he flew it very gingerly, half expecting the surgery to open up on him! We lost him sometime in the 90's.

      One day I was to take five students up to 15,000 feet and let them practice combat. That meant I would sit off to one side and watch them chase each other around like they were trying to shoot each other down. It was mid to late afternoon and I was getting a little worried about the late afternoon low clouds that would move in from the gulf and cover the field. So I watched them and watched the coastal clouds. I was asking myself why they weren't calling us down. Finally they did, so I waggled my wings to get them in trail. Then I rolled over and flew straight down to 5,000 feet. When I pulled out, there wasn't a soul behind me. It took a bit of time to re-assemble them and when we got to the field, we had a 700 feet ceiling. And there I was with five students in echelon to the right trying to get them to the runway. We were doing OK when a Piper Cub appeared directly in front of us. I had no choice but to pull up into the clouds very gently and then back down. Fortunately no one lost their position or they could have been in severe danger. We got down. When we got into the briefing room, I remember being very upset to put it mildly. I told them that I was flying the same plane they were and that there was no excuse for them not being able to follow me down. "What kind of fighter pilots are you if all I have to do is dive to get rid of you?" This will probably offend a lot of peacetime stateside "fighter pilots" that have never been in combat. They think they know how to fly P-40's and P-51's but I don't believe you can become a real fighter pilot till someone starts shooting at you. I might mention that all of my students had twice as much flying time as I did, but I could have shot any one of them down very quickly!

      I was sent to the P-40 Instructor's School at Pinellas Field at Saint Petersburg FL. We did a lot of gunnery. We went out to the coast for aerial gunnery. We shot at a 4 x 20 target on a long towline (ca 300'), towed by another P-40. I remember we took turns as the tow-pilot. The bullets had paint on them so they left a mark on the target. That way a half dozen or so of us could shoot at the same target. It was a little hair-raising at times for the tow-pilot.
      Taking off with the target was a bit of harrowing experience. The tow-line, attached to the bomb rack, was stretched back and forth behind you on the runway. You had to avoid dragging the target on the runway or it might get shredded and be of no use. So when you were ready you gave it full throttle and as you rolled down the runway with the tail up you could feel the tug every time you hit the end of another loop. When you felt the third tug, you jerked back on the stick and leaped a hundred feet in the air on the edge of a stall . If you did it right, the flag would be undamaged and you could continue out to the shoreline. If it was damaged you had to fly back down the runway and cut it loose as you would at the end of the mission.
The gunners would come in on a pursuit curve and fire when they were ready. Sometimes one of them would come in too far and get almost in trail and their tracers would arc over your wing. Good time for some cold shivers and a few epithets.
      For ground gunnery they would give you fifty rounds in each of the outboard guns. You would then go around in a rectangular path and shoot at a six foot by six foot target. Each plane had his own target. One day I had an exceptionally good run. I could tell because when I gave a short burst I couldn't see the bullets kick up dirt. One pass I saw dirt kicked up in front of my target. The people monitoring the targets said no one else shot at my target and I had put 88 holes in it with one hundred rounds!
      When we finished this class, the orders sending us back were cut and I was named as first in the class. I was very proud of that!

      I had a short TDY (temporary duty) assignment in Tallahassee. They had a P-40 up on a couple concrete supports. You could get all suited up, climb in and start the engine. There was a little blockhouse right next to it and they had complete control over the engine and the readings of the instruments. They would then create the various emergency situations and see how you would react to them. I'm still not sure why they sent me up there but it was interesting.

      But the most interesting time for me was a girl at Florida Women's College, a friend of Barbara's. Barbara had asked me to call her up which I did. I made a date to go to a movie. She said yes but that she would have to meet me at the theater. I was waiting there when a Florida Highway Patrol car pulled up to the curb and let her out. She was the daughter of the governor. Later I read in the paper that there had been a state dinner that night with England's Lord Halifax as the honored guest. She had left early to come to the movie with me! The movie was good but we had to leave early. She lived in a women's dorm and had to be in by 10:30. So I suggested if she wanted to meet me early the next evening we could see the end of the earlier show. And we did. I have to admit I was flattered that she went to a movie with me rather than chat with Lord Halifax.

      We had a little area of our own with a ready shack. We had a grounded bomber pilot lieutenant as our engineering officer. We had a time gelling into an outfit. The maintenance was not very consistent or "dedicated". It was as if everybody resented being there.
      Things kind of came to a head when one of the pilots brought a P-40 back with a "rough engine". The crew chief checked it out, could find nothing wrong and cleared it for flight. Another pilot took it up and brought it back immediately, writing in the log that the engine was "very rough". They checked it again, found nothing wrong and cleared it for flight. We said, "No." There's something wrong, we won't fly it!" And they wouldn't work on it! So it sat there. Finally Capt. Watson said he would take it up. He got about 500 feet in the air on takeoff and the engine quit. He did not do what he was suppposed to, go straight ahead and belly land it in a field. The worst thing you can do at this point is to turn around and land back at the field. Most people who try never make it. But he got away with it. It was towed back to the line. The cowling was removed and the sparkplugs. Wires were put in the cylinders and the prop turned over. There were twelve cylinders and the wire in #4 left didn't move. No piston was going up and down in the cylinder!
      With this we lost complete confidence in the mechanics. I had gotten to know the assistant Base Maintenance Officer in the club. I saw him that night and described the problem. I asked him if they could transfer this engineeering officer somewhere and give the job to me. He thought he could arrange it and two days later I was Engineering Officer, OJT(On Job Training). I called the mechanics into my office and explained what was going on. I told them that I was a pilot and didn't know very much about maintenance but that I was going to learn as fast as I could. They were to keep things going as they had been and when I saw something I didn't like or understand, I would tell them. They were then to give me their opinions and then I would make up my mind and we would do it my way. I told them that I would test hop all planes in the future and that if I had to fly them I reserved the right to make the decisions. They appeared to respect that and most of our problems seemed to disappear.

      The military runs on rank and they have a long time way of determinng who's who. We had two Captains and four Lieutenants. Capt. Watson's "Date of Rank" was earlier than mine so he was our "commander". But it became a little peculiar when I became Emgineering Officer because I was in charge of the enlisted men. It came to my attention one day that he had chewed out one of the crew chiefs, so I had to tell him that I was in charge of the enlisted men and if he had a problem with any of them he was to go through me and not deal with the crew chief directly.

      High performance aircraft are made of strong but light materials. A lot of aluminum was used and a lot of brass fittings. If one is not really careful about torquing things it is rather easy to strip them out and then we have a problem. So one of my "cute" ideas was to post a board in the ready room with all the mechanics names on it. When someone did this, and it is quite easy to do and will happen occasionally, I would put one of those third grade gold stars on the board. They knew this was a good natured reminder to be careful. One day I stripped one! When I went back into the ready room, there was my name on the board with a gold star! I was really pleased that they felt comfortable doing it. I just laughed of course.

      I tried to learn as much as I could as quickly as I could. The crew chiefs got me a set of coveralls with the legs and arms cut down to my size. I would go out when they were working on an engine and climb up on the rack on the other side. Then I would do whatever they were doing on their side of the engine on my side. One day one of the mechanics from another outfit down the line came over to the plane we were working on. He started griping about the officers in his outfit to my mechanic. I was in coveralls. I had my officer's cap on but it was pushed back so it wasn't very visible. After he had gone on for awhile, my mechanic with a bit of a smile said to him," Oh by the way, this is Captain Dills." The visitor looked a bit struck as though he was going to be in trouble. I laughed and told him not to worry, that he hadn't known who I was.

      There were times when you got into a mild bind because of someone else's bad information. One time I took off late in the afternoon from Waycross GA heading for Tampa FL. (1945) I checked the weather and the teletype said they had a 5000 foot ceiling. I think this was the only time I ever encountered the phenomenon of "siphoning" gas. It was possible to have a situation where gas would be sucked out of the wing tanks. I can't exactly explain how it happens and it is very rare. It turns out there was a mistake on the weather teletype. They meant 500 feet but put in an extra zero! I siphoned a huge amount of my gas while crossing the Okefenokee Swamp and it left me no alternative but to continue to Tampa and the sun had set!. When I got there, there was a 200' ceiling and I was very low on gas. I landed but was mad as hell! I went up to the weather office and took out my frustrations on them. Didn't do much good, but it made me feel better!

      We sent another P-40 down to the hangar for an engine change because metal particles had been found in the oil filter. I had taken a sample of the oil, added gas and filtered out some metal particles. I had had a course in Qualitative Chemical Analysis just before going into the Air Corps in 1942. I went up to the hospital and borrowed a few chemicals, trying to find out what the particles were. I didn't have the right ones to do a proper analysis. But I was able to show that chloride ion produced no precipitate which meant there was no silver. This meant that the silver coated bearings were not failing. When I made a portion of the solution alkaline it threw down a white gelatinous precipitate. Aha, that showed the particles were probably aluminum. The only aluminum system in contact with oil was the oil cooler. The oil cooler was filled with aluminum tubes (inside the cooler) that the air went through in flight. The hot oil would trickle down over the outside of these tubes and get cooled. I looked in the tech orders and found statement that when an engine was changed for metal particles, the oil cooler had to be changed as well. They claimed that the cooler could not be successfully flushed but had to be disassembled, cleaned and reassembled. This was on top of the evidence I had that the metal particles were aluminum. It was very likely that the metal particles were coming from the oil cooler, flaking off inside and not from the engine at all. But we had to change the engine anyway. When there is only one engine, you don't take any chances or cut any corners.
      I had a new cooler with brass tubes. So I sent the plane down to the hangar for engine change. I sent the new brass cooler along. They had to take the old cooler off to change the engine. They could just replace the aluminum cooler with the brand new brass one
      I hung around the hangar occasionally while they changed the engine. I had sent a brand new brass oil cooler down with the plane but they re-installed the old aluminum cooler. The man in charge of engine change at the hangar was a Warrant Officer. I went in and asked him to change the cooler to the brass one. He said the aluminum one was OK, that they had flushed it out. I told him that Wright-Patterson had put in the tech orders that they couldn't be flushed, that particles would remain and they had to be disassembled and rebuilt. I also told him that I had reason to believe the metal particles came from the cooler and they would be getting the plane right back for another engine change if they left that cooler in it. He obviously resented my "interference" and told me that when it was in the hanger it was his plane and that after I got it back I could do what I wanted. In the meantime he was going to do it his way. I told him that if he as much as turned over the propellor, the plane would never fly because I would not test hop it. And if I didn't test hop it no one of the others would fly it. And I left!
      I kept keeping an eye on things. And, sure enough, they rolled it out on the line preparing to start the engine. To give him his due, the Warrant Officer himself climbed into the cockpit. I was boiling mad by this time. I walked out in front of the plane on the left side. The Warrant Officer had his head of the cockpit and I spoke to him. "This is a direct order! Do not turn over the propellor. I will get the Base Engineering Officer, Major Etheridge and let him decide." The idea of a direct order is abused and trivialized in the movies. They are really very rare and have great force. Violating a direct order carries the potential of a heavy penalty. I went and found Major Etheridge and brought him out to the plane. I explained to him my view of the problem and asked that he transfer the plane immediately to me to have my crew chiefs change the cooler and finish the job. He said nothing while I was talking. When I finished, he turned to the Warrant Officer and quietly and firmly said, "Change the cooler." I left. Several days later we got the plane back with the brass cooler.
      But frankly, I didn't trust them so I asked the crew chiefs to give it a shakedown inspection, as they would a new plane! Our name was mud down there after this and we had to shakedown inspect any plane that came back from the hangar. We had two incidents afterward. A P-40 came back from the hangar once and the upper cowling with the airscoop was supposed to be fastened to the top of the carburetor. It wasn't. Another time a plane came back with a wrench lying between the cylinders.

      Yes, we did have a few problems. I had one goof-off that could lie on the concrete with his hands locked up in the tail wheel well and go to sleep!
      I was 23 at that time and a Captain. I had a 42 year old pfc (private, first class) from the mountains in Tennessee. He had been made a mechanic but he didn't like airplanes or being a mechanic. He did the work but rather grudgingly. We had eight airplanes so each one had its own mechanic. We had a tech sergeant line chief. That left three as floating mechanics to work where they were needed for the harder jobs. We had a somewhat worn gas powered compressor that was hard to start. This 42 year old mountain man was the only one that could start it easily. I noticed that he would sit on a bench and watch as someone fiddled with it and when they were disgusted and ready to quit trying he would get up, amble over, make a few adjustments and start it! I got him in my office one day and told him I knew he didn't like working on the airplanes and that I noticed he could start the compressor when the others couldn't. Then I showed him the inpection reports I had been getting. And we were always getting dinged for dirty carburetor bowls in the auxilliary equipment and having grease too close the oxygen, etc. I put him in charge of the auxilliary equipment and told him to keep the inspectors off my back and that he wouldn't have to work on airplanes unless we really needed him. From then on, he was happy as a clam, even planting flowers around the ready shack.
      The army runs on reports and statistics so when we had one plane down, that meant that 12% of our planes were on the "deadline". That's very high for outfits with many planes. But we were afraid the statisticians wouldn't bother to notice that we only had 8 planes so we got them back in the air as soon as possible. Parts were a real problem though. Since we had fighters on a bomber base in a bomber command they had no parts for us. But military requirements were that I had to request them through the local supply channels. This just couldn't work as they never had them. I needed an alternate method. I finally found Sergeant Beck in supply that understood my problem. So when I needed something, I called him. He would call around, find the part and have it sent to their loading dock in my name. I would then fly over in my P-40 and pick it up! This was a godsend. It solved our problems.
      He found out that a local P-40 base was getting rid of the planes so he arranged for me to go over and take what I wanted from their supply. I should have gone in a truck but I went in my P-40. I got a couple tires a bunch of large flexible tubing and a bunch of other stuff. I piled them in the radio compartment access door. I tied a tail wheel tire to the headrest in back of my head. I held a box with a fuel tank guage against the side of the cockpit with my right knee and flew back home. I made a smooth very gentle landing. I was afraid something might shift and bind up one of the controls. It was dumb but I was invincible as are all people under thirty!

      I was trying to think of a way to make our P-40's special. We were almost embarrassed to be still flying P-40's in 1945. I went to find the guy in charge of the "wash rack". I asked him if he could take the OD camouflage paint off. He said that it was no problem so I sent mine over.

      It came back a couple days later and it was beautiful, bright silver with bright red spinner and wingtips! I think it might have been the only silver P-40 on active duty with the Army Air Force.

      About this time I got permission to fly to Seattle to visit friends. This was an authorized navigational exercise. The first leg was to a field at Wink TX. It went smoothly. I gassed up and took off for Winslow AZ. And here's where the navigation training kicked in. It's a little difficult figuring out where you are in a trackless desert. It was beautiful in its own forbidding way. We used to kid about calling a railroad an iron compass! There was an east/west railroad and a north/south railroad that crossed at Winslow. One of our navigational tricks at a time like this is to purposely fly off course a little so that when you found the railroad you would know which way to go. I couldn't make a mistake here with two railroads intersecting at my destination. I flew to the left side of the course to find the north/south one, turned right and found Winslow and the field. It was nice to see the meteor crater from the air! (This field might have been Williams. This means the crater would have been on the next leg!)

      A friend in Australia, Peter Metzke, tracked it down for me, for which I thank him. Their P-40 site can be found at: http://hawksnest.1hwy.com/Survivors/AK803.html

      I landed at Boeing and parked. A couple of guys came out of one of the buildings to come over and look at a silver P-40. We talked a bit and then I went on my way. Many years later, in the late 90's I was in a WWII Veterans luncheon group that met about three or four times a year. We had a speaker telling about his experiences in WWII and he mentioned being at Boeing Field. After his talk I went up and asked him if he had been there in the summer of 1945. He said yes. I asked him if he remembered a silver P-40 landing there. His face brightened and he said, "Yes, I went out and talked to the pilot!" He was as shocked as I was when I told him it was me!
      I spent most of that night talking with my friends in Seattle. And the next day I was taken around Seattle and to the hospital where her father was business manager. He had them give me a shot of 25000 units of Vitamin 'something' to help me continue to function. We went out to eat with her and her mother and father. Then Patty and I went to the Showbox Theater where Patty played saxophone in a girl's band! (wartime, you know!) I enjoyed the show. One of the performers was Sally Rand, doing her famous Fan Dance!
      I got up early the next morning and went out to take off on my way back. I took off about 8:00 with a very low ceiling. I was heading south, skirting the bottom of the clouds. All of a sudden, at 700', there was a stone cathedral right in front of me. A hallucination, no doubt! It was so vivid and so real that I pulled up into the clouds. Wow, I had no choice but to climb. I broke out on top, wondering how I was going to get down. I was acutely aware that Mount Ranier and a number of its friends were in the vicinity. So I continued south toward Portland. And, lo and behold, there was a huge hole in the clouds right above the Columbia River. I went down and followed the river to the ocean and then followed the coastline back to Boeing Field. I went back to the house and fell asleep on the sofa. A couple hours later, they woke me saying that the clouds had opened up and that if I didn't go then I would probably be stuck for a week. So I left.
      I don't remember much about the return trip as nothing untoward happened. The only unusual thing was a temperature inversion I encountered over eastern Texas as I was letting down from altitude. There were lots of clouds around but I was able to stay clear of them. Suddenly it got really hot and I briefly wondered if I was on fire! Then I realized it was a drastic temperature inversion.
      Many times when I landed people would come out and ask what kind of plane it was. They had never seen a silver P-40 and wondered what it was.
      We were the fair-haired boys and we could do no wrong. We did a lot of dumb things. One day we took off in four ship formation! We would stage dogfights at 3000 feet over the middle of the field, never a peep from anyone.

      I think every bomber pilot on the base wanted to be a fighter pilot so they would never complain, whatever we did. As a matter of fact they egged us on. While we were making passes on the bombers we couldn't keep track of where we were. The navigator on the target plane would arrange their path so that we would be near the field at the end of the session. One time I was getting short of gas. They brought me to the field. I was a little higher than they were so I called the pilot and asked him if he had ever seen a plane going straight down. He said he hadn't so I told him to watch. I heeled over and went by them going straight down. I got going pretty fast and when I pulled out I apparently strained one of the gas tanks so that it leaked! The P-40 underwent a number of changes from model to model. The heaviest one was the F model and then they started to slim it down. The K was probably the best compromise of all. But they continued to try to reduce weight and the N was the ultimate attempt to make it light. I think they gave up a bit of strength but it was all right. I liked the airplane although I don't think it would have been good in combat.

      Yes, yes, I was young and stupid. Looking back from the vantage point of considerable age, I can admit it.