The train ride from Denver to Las Vegas, Nevada was spectacular in Wyoming and uncomfortable across the Nevada desert. The scenery from Cheyenne to Salt Lake City was beautiful. The railroad rock cuts on the Union Pacific and the mountains made me wish I had someone with which to share the beauty. From Salt Lake City to Las Vegas was another matter. The troop carrying Pullman sleepers we traveled in were not air conditioned. The desert was Hot! Hot! Hot! The civilian cars and the diner were air conditioned so dining was pleasant and we quickly adapted to the cool comfort. Returning to our own car and the desert heat was unbearable for this son of Michigan. At Caliente, the train stopped for a few minutes and we were able to get off for a stretch. There was a group of black soldiers who, for their amusement, demonstrated their high degree of skill in a rhythmic close order marching drill. They were very good. I must mention that at this time in our history, segregation was widely practiced. Nearly all of the black men in the military service at that time were in service organizations, such as supply, truck-driving, etc. Very few were in combat units and then only in special black combat organizations.
Las Vegas Aerial Gunnery School. Here is where we train for combat! Here the training for firing of machine guns begins. Here the flying starts! The barracks were two story and not air conditioned. The heat was oppressive but the humidity so low that I could get out of the shower, run up the stairs and be dried off without using a towel. My step-mother, Ted, (Etta Belle McClure) sent me a box of my favorite soft sour cream cookies. Her cookies were superb! I ate one and saved the rest for later. The next day they were as hard as rocks. What a disappointment! What a waste!
We rolled out of our beds at 4:45AM to complete our physical training before the sun rise. My legs touching hot the metal frame of my cot always startled me. The metal hand rails at the messhall at breakfast were so hot from the heat of the day before that I flinched when I touched them. The first few days we unloaded the wooden ammunition boxes from the railroad box cars. Were they heavy! They must have weighed eighty pounds at least. It was exhausting work.
Our training began with air-powered BB machine guns shooting at targets similar to those in a carnival midway. We were given classroom instruction on how to calculate the lead required to hit an airborne target. We disassembled and reassembled the .30 and .50 caliber machine guns. We learned to change the feed from left to right, blindfolded.
We progressed to shooting 12 gauge shotguns at conventional skeet ranges located in the desert. We took our turns in the high and low houses loading the throwers that were released by the instructors. We found that by carefully tapping the center of the clay pigeon, the center would fall out. When released it would fall to the ground like a rock instead of floating on the air. This caused the shooter to miss by a mile. We saved these tricks for our buddies. At times the target would shatter inside the house at release and pieces of baked clay ricocheted all over. Never was hurt by these shenanigans.
One of the variations that was really fun was the moving-base skeet range, a key hole shaped road about a half-mile long. Four students and an instructor rode in the back of a pickup truck. Each student had a box of 25 12 gauge shells corresponding to the 25 stations on the road. When the right front wheel of the truck passed a stake in the ground, the high or low houses at varying distances from the road launched a clay pigeon. We could never tell which way it would go. Sometimes they came over the truck. It was fun and taught us much about leading a target.
Another variation was a single 12 gauge shotgun mounted on a Martin electric turret on a GMC 6x6 truck. These trucks were lined up facing a line of high towers, about 50 to 75 feet high which held the clay pigeon thrower. I found that by positioning the aiming point of the gun tangent to the arc of the target, I did not have to track it, but instead just wait for the target to hit the tangent point and then fire. I was doing great hitting all of my targets until the instructor got wise to what I was doing and told me to start tracking. We took turns in the high houses loading the targets. Sometimes we could hear the buck shot hitting the house. There was no danger because of the distance.
We progressed to the gunnery ranges at the foot of mountains northwest of the air base. These ranges had self-propelled targets at which we fired .30 and .50 caliber machine guns. A refined addition was a metal shed with four GMC trucks with turrets mounting a single .50 caliber machine gun. As the turret adjacent to me tracked the moving target from left to right, his muzzle blast was about six feet away from my left ear. The blast was painful. This was the beginning of my lifetime hearing loss in my left ear. We used cotton balls stuffed in our ears, but clearly, it was not enough protection.
A very sophisticated device to practice firing at airborne targets was the Waller Trainer. There were, I believe, two of these on the base. They were in large wooden air conditioned buildings to accommodate the large curved screen upon which was projected three film tracks from three cameras that had filmed actual fighter passes. The idea was to give as near the proper perspective in a simulator as was possible. Each gun position was a simulation of an upper or lower turret and waist and tail guns. The simulated weapons were handles that mechanically produced the recoil of a machine gun. The headsets we wore made a beep whenever we scored a hit using the proper lead angle. The hits were tabulated at a control console that recorded the number of rounds fired and the number of hits to compute an average of hits for each crew member.
Valuable training took place in the altitude chamber. I volunteered to take off my mask at 40,000 feet and try to write my serial number, 36578805. I thought I will probably leave out one of the eights. I started to write and repeat the number. I was totally unaware I had become unconscious in a few seconds and my mask was replaced by a fellow student. Instantly I was conscious and the writing showed two or three accurate serial numbers, the next one was written as 365788888888.... And the pencil mark trailed off the page.
A great day! We rode buses to Indian Springs, in the Nevada desert about forty miles northwest of the base. This was a satellite air field with the whole expanse of the Nevada desert for a firing range. We were assigned to our barracks and began our flight training. We started in the back seat of an AT-6 equipped with a .30 caliber machine gun mounted on a ring in the rear cockpit. The AT-6 was a two-place 650 horsepower single engine all-metal low wing retractable gear advanced pilot trainer. We had three cans of ammunition, 100 rounds each, tips painted with an assigned color so that hits on the towed sleeve target could be counted and assigned to a specific gunner to determine the percentage of hits. At take-off, the gunner faced to the rear, canopy open, and secured by a gunner’s belt that fastened around our waist and snapped to each side of the fuselage. We flew about 5,000 feet in altitude. On my first pass the pilot moved into the range of the tow target sleeve and I fired my 100 rounds in the prescribed short bursts. When the ammunition was exhausted I signaled the pilot by moving the gun up and down. He then peeled off, rolled upside down and I was looking at the desert floor overhead. Wow! This is it! What could be more exciting that this! Shortly, and in sequence with the other aircraft, we pulled into position for a second firing pass. This time, a few rounds fired and suddenly, the target floated away to the desert below. I had hit the tow cable. Later lying on my bunk after the first flight, I had the rolling feeling of still flying. I wrote to my Mother of my success. She replied that I should not feel bad about shooting down the target. Sometimes Mothers just do not understand. I believe we had to have 8 percent hits to qualify. One of my friends did not qualify. I wonder if he did it on purpose.
We
flew most of the missions in the AT-6 and a few gunnery flights in
the Lockheed Hudson bomber firing out the windows at towed targets.
We had one or two missions in a B-17. What a thrill to be in the
nose of a B-17. What a view!
We
were allowed one pass for one day into Las Vegas. There were only
one or two small gambling casinos at that time. I went into a men’s
room. There were slot machines even there. A small boy was playing
the slots. He would climb up the stand holding the machine, insert
his nickel, pull the handle and ride the handle down to the floor and
wait for the results.
Our training completed, we boarded a train for Salt Lake City in September 1943. The baggage was loaded into insulated express refrigerator cars, probably the only equipment available in those days of high demands on the railroads. We arrived at Salt Lake City air field about midnight. It was cold. It must have been about 55 degrees. After the heat of desert it felt like 30 below zero. When the baggage cars were opened, the trapped desert heat flooded out of the doors. Did that ever feel good.