“AS A KID GROWING UP on the bow of my father’s tugboat, hauling oil from Seattle to Alaska, I had a lot of time on my hands. I used to read the pulp magazines about the aces of WW I, such as the Red Baron. That’s probably how I became interested in flying. But when I became a fighter pilot, I didn’t care about flying straight and level; I was more interested in the fighter aspects of pursuing and attacking an enemy. It was the aggressive instinct of being a fighter pilot in combat, hunting and attacking other airplanes as opposed to being the hunted, that intrigued me the most.”
Earning my wings
My initial exposure to the military was in 1939. At the ripe old age of 17 I joined the 41st Infantry Division of the National Guard in Seattle, Washington, because my parents thought that serving a year in the Army would do me some good. I guess it was because trouble always followed me wherever I went—thankfully always two steps behind! As a foot soldier, my mind was always in the clouds, so when the opportunity presented itself for me to go into aviation training, I was at the front of the line signing up. After completing preflight, I was sent to Cal-Aero in Chino, California, and almost washed out.
I had been out over the desert on a solo flight in my PT-17 Stearman and began to do some unauthorized aerobatics. As I looped and rolled my biplane around the sunny California sky, I didn’t notice the other PT-17 nearby with an instructor seated inside. By the time I got back to base, my punishment awaited me: 25 tours of walking guard duty. Back to being a foot soldier again! The only reason I wasn’t washed out of flying was because I was the only cadet in my class who hadn’t ground-looped
