We left from Labrador to fly to one of the Norwegian fjords, but it was socked in with weather, so we flew to the Azores instead, and from there to Morocco. My high point as a pilot was flying the Atlantic. When I got to Italy, we were two months from the end. He said, ''I'm going to make sure you go to first pilot school,'' which he did. He was a wonderful guy and I was real lucky. let me take it.'' He thought the gauge was broken. When I did, the needle didn't move at all. The cruising speed was 140 knots and the instructor showed me how. The idea is to keep it at exactly the same speed. You put it into a dive and you pull back throttle. You put it into a climb and give it a little more throttle. My instructor gave me a skill building exercise. Part of the reason you wanted to be a fighter pilot was the glamor, but the secret was that they were also safer. I was sent to a twin-engine school because they needed bomber pilots. You had to go to school for multi-engine planes, bombers, or for single-engine planes, which were fighters. very Freudian, I was aware of that.Īnother moment of truth came when I graduated. I was in love with a girl with that name, so I'd fly over the town and at the end of my flying, I would always do a turn onto my back. I discovered a town about sixty miles away from there called Selma. Most of the time, they assigned me another. I would sign out a plane and after the hour in the air, I'd come down and ask if I could get another plane. After we had our daily hour - we had a lesson two or three times a week - we would have to sign out a plane and practice. I flew around and from then on I wanted to fly every single second. No sooner had I gotten the plane off the ground when it hit me that I loved flying. The instructor got out of the plane and walked away. You were allowed to get about ten hours of training, then you had to fly solo. I had an instructor, one of the best teachers I ever had of any kind. I got Wickenburg, a desert training facility.Īnd I loved it there. Everybody wanted to go to Oxnard because Jimmy Stewart was an instructor there. My first training was in Wickenburg, Arizona. When it came time for assignment, the cadets there were going to either become a pilot, a navigator or a bombardier. I'd been a competitive swimmer, so I was pleased to lead the parade back to our clothes.Įach stage of training took about eight weeks. They were going to count to ten and anybody not in the water by then was going to get washed out. We went to a pier and were told to take off everything except our shorts, so we left our clothes in piles and walked a few blocks away. One of the tests was to see if we could swim. All the stuff an army recruit went through. I went to pre-flight itself in August, in Santa Ana, California. I was halfway through the course when they sent me to pre-pre-flight training. From there, I went to Sioux Falls, South Dakota in June for training as a Radio Operator Mechanic. I had planted a palm tree after a hurricane and there it was, all grown up. I spent basic training at Miami Beach, where I'd spent a year as a child.
And I was drafted into the Army Air Corps in March 1943 - we didn't call it the Air Force yet. They told me that once I was drafted I should turn them in. I asked about it and they said, ''Well you're going to be drafted in a couple of months anyway.'' They gave me all the papers. I'd read the ads in the paper and in 1942 I went to a recruiting office in Times Square. My brother and I were in the kitchen of our apartment in Flatbush, and we jumped up and down in excitement. I remember the day of the Pearl Harbor attack very well. I was aware of the war as far back as 1938. But I loved the things we studied, which included every kind of shop - sheet metal, woodwork, forge, foundy. I attended PS 98 for elementary, then Brooklyn Technical High School, which was all boys. I think he and my mother just were happier apart. My father had trouble with his ears and went to a warmer climate. I was born in Manhattan on November 27, 1924. My name is Stuart Hodes, originally Stuart Hodes Gescheidt.
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