Dad’s Letters Home from WWII – Volume 12

In this letter, my Dad’s training had stepped up and his enthusiasm for flying was nice to see. The seriousness of what he’d signed up for was beginning to take shape as well. He commented on a person the family knew who had returned home “shell-shocked.” I was happy to read how up to date on what was happening back home and he was obviously excited to see his family and friends during his upcoming furlough. I can’t help but wonder if there was some trepidation that he wasn’t mentioning to his folks about the likelihood being sent overseas shortly after his visit home. But, then again, maybe he was just looking forward to coming home.

ARMY AIR FORCES
GUNNERY SCHOOL
TYNDALL FIELD, FLORIDA

Dec. 15, 1943

Hi Dad,

            Well, here I am again only this time I have a little more news, I have a week and a half of school left and its all flying. I’m at a small field called Apalachicola to go up on splash missions and camera missions then next week we’ll go up on firing missions.

            I went up for my first plane ride Monday and boy was it great. We were up for about 45 minutes and we fired at wooden targets in the water, from the side waist position of an AT-18, which is a Lockheed Hudson Bomber, it was used quite a bit by the British in the early stages of the war but it is now considered obsolete and is used only in training gunners and bombardiers. In my opinion she’s a great little ship and I certainly enjoy flying. We didn’t go up yesterday or today because we’ve been having rainy weather and it looks as though we won’t fly for a couple of days from the way it looks but we’ll fly all next week and then we’re supposed to graduate a week from Tuesday.

            Then it may be a few days or weeks after that that we’re supposed to leave for home on our ten-day delay-enroute.

            I’m glad to hear that you are still working hard and that everything is fine and dandy. I hope that you do get that break in the weather that you are looking for. Don’t work too hard and overwork yourself.

            Boy, was I surprised to hear about Mr. Kelley, boy he really must have been smashed up pretty badly. Ann must be pretty broken up and it will just about kill John when he finds out about it, he must have seen quite a bit of action if he’s shell shocked.

            I’m glad that you and Ma had a good time at the McGonigle girl’s wedding, how was the rest of the family?

            Last week we had our phase check on the caliber .50 machine gun, we had to disassemble and assemble it correctly and we had to do all this while we had a blind-fold on and I passed it and did everything perfectly then we had our Comprehensive Final Exam and we also had to go out to the machine gun and fire it from a turret and also from a hand-held position and we had to get a certain percentage of hits from so many rounds in order to pass. Well, I passed them all okay and now all I have to do is to get a certain percentage of hits in my air to air firing next week and I’ll be just about all through with this course, oh yes, I have to take a turret phase check next Friday.

            Well, Dad, I guess that that’s about all for now, take care of yourself and God Bless you.

Your loving son,

Frannie

P.S. Give my love to the rest of the Family and wish them all a Merry Xmas for me. See you soon, I hope.