August 25, 1943

Wheeee Emily and Bill,

Here's good news, for me anyway. All my flying is compete here at Basic. Yesterday I finished my last instrument cross country and flew the last of my formation flying with the flight commander in the lead.

You should have seen me on my fifty hour check, I had over 85 hours in when I got it. The assistant flight commander get it to me. He's one of these wild individuals that they call a hot pilot.

Well here's a summary of the hole check: I was taxiing out to the take off position at about 25 miles per hour when he says, "I got it". He took over and we went screaming down the taxi strip about 40 mph. Incidentally all taxiing is supposed to be done at approximately 3 MPH. At the take off position we're supposed to come to a full stop, check our magnetos, rev the motor wide make sure she's running OK, then roll down 20 degrees of flaps to increase the list. This enables you to take off in a shorter space and at a lesser speed. Instead of doing this, he swung down the runway and yells, "Take it off".

I got up to 5000 ft. He changed the prop pitch for me and told me to do a chandelle. This is a climbing turn with a 180 degree change in direction. It sounds easy but this thing called torque is a big factor in single engine ships. When you're under normal cruising speed the torque tends to turn you to the left. At cruising, the ship is built so as to make it straight and level; over cruising the ship tends to turn to the right as the result of the built in correction for torque.

Well in that one maneuver in order to keep the plane from slipping or skidding, you have to use the correct amount of rudder pressures at all times. The speed increases over a wide are and if you coordination is good they can sure tell it inside of thirty seconds.

Well anyway I did one chandelle and a half of a lazy eight and he yells. "I got it". He peeled off right into the traffic pattern, landed it, taxied into the line again and tole me to shut it off. The while check didn't take over 12 minutes and out of the twelve I had it for about four minutes. That's what one would call a good deal. This is probably a lot of shit to you but when you start flying you'll understand what I mean.

On my first solo formation, there was at one time, only about a foot and a half between my prop and the instructors ship in front of me. You should have heard him holler.

An instructor got killed not long ago by losing his tail on the takeoff.

As Ever

"Air Minded"

(If I had a mind)