Barney was married to a "Southern Belle, honey chile" from ~ Louisiana. He had been an instructor there at Barksdale prior to his assignment for combat duty. Gil was still on his honeymoon. He had gotten married just after finishing Navigator-Bombardier School. Walt was married and had one daughter. Chuck, Dick and I were still bachelors. I completed the six man crew. Come to think of it, one Texan vs. five Yankees is about the right ratio by most standards.

In a move to stem the anxiety, and restore confidence in the plane and assure the crews in waiting that the plane did not always crash and burn, two crews were selected to fly a "demonstration" mission. We were one of those crews. The pilot of the other crew had also been an instructor. We were to fly a short landing strip mission or strange field landing. The other crew was to fly a strafing mission over the gulf. Of course, Barney knew every landing strip and field in Louisiana and the surrounding states. This was to be the first time that I had flown on a B-26. We took off. I did all the things that a radio operator was supposed to do and I trusted that the other crew members did the same. It was just a short time and Barney announced that we were to prepare to land. Again I followed S.O.P. (army taIk for Standard Operating Procedure), closed my radio operations and looked out the small window in my radio room and wondered if we were landing or crashing. I had only flown on a C-3 and a B-17. Each of those planes just sort of float in for a landing. Not so the B-26, It dives towards the runway, full speed somewhere between 130 and 230 mph. We took off again and landed back at base without crashing and burning as did the other crew on the strafing mission. With that behind us, we settled down to become a first class team and combat crew.

We did a lot of flying and we accumulated a lot of flight hours. Our schedule went something like---ground school in the A.M. have lunch, return to the flight line fly a training mission for navigation, bombing with "blue bombs", or plotting our location by radio compass. The next day we would fly in the morning, have ground school in the afternoon and return to fly that night from perhaps 8 until near midnight. I shall never forget my first night flight. It was visual magic.

WW-18-20 P.20