Vance AFB was on the south west corner of Enid, Oklahoma. Enid was a really nice town, there was a small college on the East side of town and oil drilling platform factory on the north side of town, agriculture was the bread and butter for the area and grain was the major product. Enid was one of the major grain shipping centers so yes there was good railroad service for the produce. The only flaw of Oklahoma was it was dry at that time so us military types tended to stay on base, but the local population sure came to the officers and cadet clubs on weekends. And yes the mothers and fathers presented their daughters to us potential AF officers all the time. It was kind of a amusing sitting on the sidelines watching the maneuvering that went on. Oh yeah, I had the urges of all young bucks, but I had no desire to become committed to any relationship till after I knew I could afford it and that was several years in the future, but some of my classmates eventually married girls they had met at Enid.

T-28 ground school was interesting, it had the latest generation of systems, crank open canopy and flaps that could make a decent frightening and yes we where tested on that to see if we could handle those steep approaches, I thought they were fun. Also the formation flying was fun, but I still struggled with instrument flying. Yeah, I was good enough but in comparison to my other flying skills I wanted and needed to get better at it, That did not happen until I was at Laon and we had that bad winter of almost total instrument flying, where we flew every day in about 500 ft overcast conditions for several months and I finally settled into an instrument cross check that was comfortable. Ok it took me a bit longer to become a real pilot than some others.

Getting back to Vance, the B-25 was a comfortable and forgiving airplane but a very, very noisy. Some called it a twin engine cub, I can understand why so many of them survived the war. The major thrust of this phase of training was to teach us or let us learn how to safely fly the airplane while powered by only one engine. We never knew when we would be challenged, instructors would pull a throttle almost any time, it did not mater VFR, under the hood on take off. climb, cruise, decent, in the pattern, on a go around, some instructors would turn off a fuel valve while the student was distracted, loosing an engine like that, always came as a surprise. The standard joke was “I don’t know why they call it multi engine training, we never get to use more than one at a time”. After the instructors were satisfied that we could survive loosing an engine the training moved on to mission type flying, formation, low level navigation, instrument approaches, use of the navigation aids even some weekend cross country flights that tied it all together. They worked us pretty hard but they also wanted us to be fully qualified to perform missions when we got to our assignments.

I stopped buying savings bonds and invested the same amount in a mutual fund because the broker owned a Belanca Crusair and he let me fly it after I made the switch. Some week ends I would fly three other cadets within range of a full fuel load, of course I insisted that I bunk with one of them for free and they had to buy the fuel and oil. The cadets didn’t really pay for the flying their parents did, they were rich kids and I did not mind being their pilot. One trip was to New Orleans, for sure I could never afford a hotel room where we stayed in the French Quarter, any how it was fun. Another weekend I took another group to Plano, Texas and we stayed with the sponsors parents and he got to see his girl friend, the rest of us went water skiing and sampled the exquisite bar and his fathers the really good cigars, of course we ate like kings, Texas size porterhouse steaks cooked just right, yeah, at that age I could eat a whole one but now, I have a hard time even eating half a fillet.

My parents came for my graduation along with many others, it was really a gala event, something that Enid looked forward to twice a year. I had elected to train in the B-26 so I would just transfer from being a cadet to being an officer student so after the graduation ceremony I went back to the barracks collected my stuff and moved it to my new quarters in the BOQ after every thing was in place I sat down and I couldn’t keep the tears away, I cried with joy that I had made it. I had supper with my parents but elected to not go home for a short visit but to wait a month or two until I knew where in the world I would be going. Some time during all of this the Korean war had ended but the cold war had only got more heated, so most of us were sent to Europe and Japan to help contain the growth of communism.

John Harris and Manzer Thompson were both instructors in the B-26 training section at Vance, I think John was a stan-eval pilot and Manzer was a test pilot in maintenance I got to fly with them both at least once. You could not hold the nose wheel of the B-26 off the runway after landing so that was a change, with the B-25 you could hold the nose wheel off for quite a while and then gently set it down, in the B-26 it came down by its self and by comparison pretty hard. Since, we were all pretty good pilots by then the training concentrated on honing our skills in the B-26. Formation, navigation, instrument flying and lots of approaches and landings. After our instructors turned us loose we flew with a flight mechanic, all of them had been around long enough that they really knew those airplanes well.

Our orders came in It seemed like most of us were assigned to the 38th Bomb Wg at Laon some went to the 3rd BW in Japan a few went to the Recon out fit at Sembach, Germany and a few went to the tow target out fits in England and Germany. Things were winding down pretty quickly, I sold the Crosley and generally got ready for the trek home to Ohio and then on to Laon. I caught a ride to Cleveland with one of my classmates and then took a bus the rest of the way to Warren. We had a few weeks of just fun, I visited sister and brother in law for a couple of days she was pregnant again, Ralph had recently taken a new job as a chemical engineer for a golf ball company, so they were moving up in the world. Mom, Dad and I went up to Detroit area where we visited all my aunts and uncles that lived in that area, Mom was one of eleven and most lived around there. While there I made arrangements to drive a new car to Jacksonville, FL, I stopped by Lockbourne and saw Col Godwin and Capt Kelly and I even gave Sargent StovalL a silver dollar when he saluted me, he was the one that had said “Maiden you are too dumb to make corporal”.

I went on through Kentucky where My dad’s three sisters lived, they took me to a distillery and bought me a bottle of wiskey that was supposed to be the best, when I finally got to taste it I thought it was rot gut, I really didn’t drink liquer at that time. I went on to Marrianna and visited the flying school, saw George Gill and all my instructors and I had to go see Harry Wikle and his family. We all had a good meal and I spent the night with them. We said our goodbyes and I was off to Jacksonville, I collected the delivery fees and caught the train back to Mom and Dad’s place, I only had a couple of days before I was supposed to meet up with Jerry Laugren, Harry Purcell and Don Shirkey at Maguire, so Mom washed and pressed all my dirty cloths, I packed up and rode the bus to Maguire. I had enjoyed a nice vacation but I was looking forward to the next adventure, flying B-26’s at Laon. Bob