May 18, 1943

Dear Mom, Pop, Shirley, Avis and Marie,

I got all your letters including the one from Louise with all the pictures. The ones you took inside cale out very good. Lanny "Cisco" is as cute as all hell in his new suit. I also got letters from Fred and Charlie.

I got ten gigs for taking a shower after 9:30 the night before last. They said I was disorderly after lights out. We don't even have time to keep clean. We had a test today and one yesterday. We don't even have time to study for them. It's a good thing I know most of it because it's practically impossible to get it in class. So far my average is 95%. It certainly is worth it just to be flying these sky bugs. It was great fun today. It was sort of cloudy and when I pulled up a few thousand feet above then and looked down. You see nothing be just a mass of rumpled white for miles and miles. It certainly makes a guy feel alone when you can't see that ground. Almost all of the time I'm up there, I usually don't have time to be awe stricken because you really have to be on the ball for precision flying. If they say fly at 4500 feet they mean 4500 feet, they don't mean 4510 feet. What difference 10 feet makes up there is beyond me but if I want to stay here it's going to be 4500 feet. What makes it hard is the terrific up drafts (thermals) we have down here. One of them (you can't see them) will take the plane up several hundred feet before you know it. When you finally realize to you point your nose down and still, at times, believe it or not you'll still be going up. You tell them about it and all they tell you is that you should compensate for it. I soloed a week ago. It's quite a thrill now to go up by yourself and practice all the maneuvers. You should go up and do a tailspin with me. It's really a thrill. Yesterday my instructor was flying along and he went into a bank holding top rudder, this makes the plane go into an accidental spin. As soon as it went over the top and started to spin, he hollers "It's all yours". Some fun, hey what.

If you want to see something funny, come down and watch us boys practicing solo landings. Some times you drop in from ten or twelve feet and you start to bounce the whole length of the field, each bounce getting smaller as it settles to the ground. We call this "The Eliminating Waltz". Too many of them means that you're eliminated. Don't think I haven't waltzed it because I've done the "Tango". First one wing up and then the other, now we bounce again, then the tail comes up. Oh well, it's time to pour on the coal and go around again.

As ever,

"The Waltzer"