August 1, 1943

Dear Emely and Bill,

From the letters I've received, the old cannot is still holding it's own (and seven people). I wish I was one of them for a couple of weeks. A vacation, What's that?

We're doing night flying now. When we fly in the morning we fly at nights. That makes it three nights a week. It's quite a sight at night. Old San Angelo looks like a Christmas tree. The field itself is a sight to behold from 6000 feet. All the colored light bordering the field and the lights of the camp itself stand out. Each ship is assigned a certain zone to fly in but when you come in to land it's like a rat race. They call you by radio and tell you to come in, all you do is call them back and acknowledge, then you peel off and head straight down, level off at 500 ft and come in for your landing. The field is lit up with lights.

We don't fly off the main field now, so when it was time to come back, my buddy the flight commander told me to take one of the ships back to the main field. This was my first night out, of my instructor flew with the formation back to the field. When I got over there, there wasn't any lights on the runways. My instructor calls to me on the radio and told me to get going, so I flipped on my landing lights and came in. I never thought I could do it. They're supposed to give us dual instructions on the use of landing lights. I bounced a few feet. He came in and overshot the field and almost took the fence down. (By the way, a B-26 went through the fence last night, One of his motors cut out on him.) The flight commander came in and bounced 20 feet in the air, so all in all I didn't feel bad about my little bounce.

I'm flying about five hours a day now. Things are different here than in Primary. When you go on the flight line and you want a plane, all you have to do is ask the dispatcher. If you get tired flying all you have to do is turn the damn thing upside down and hang on your safety belt for a while.

Our dual rides are all instrument rides now. They put a hood over the cockpit and you fly by needle, ball airspeed, altimeter rate of climb, artificial horizon, directional gyro, back and turn indicator, magnetic compass and all that sort of stuff. You could swear that you're heading in the opposite direction at times.

It certainly is interesting, but getting to bed at three in the morning, then get getting up at 8 o'clock is hard on a guy. You should see ground school. Everybody goes to sleep. The teachers don't gig the man that goes to sleep, but he gigs the man next to him for letting him go to sleep.

As ever,

The Night Hawk