A few days later I boarded a train with a group of soon to be Aviation Cadets for Basic Training Center #10 in Greensboro, North Carolina. We were quartered in a separate barracks from all the other new inductees and would be rushed through here in ten days. Here we attended all kinds of lectures, received more physical examinations, shots for immunization against stuff I never heard of, hair cuts, and plenty of calisthenics. Up at the crack of dawn, a quick breakfast followed by lots of physical exercises. Ten days of this and we were shipped off to the University of Tennessee where we became members of the 63rd College Training Detachment. We are now Aviation Cadets.
Aviation Cadet
We were subject to discipline you wouldn't believe, it was hard not to get caught doing something that would award you demerits freely handed out by the student officer upperclassmen. How I managed to survive that I'll never know. We were up at the crack of dawn and in the street for roll call before marching off to breakfast in the student cafeteria. A short break after breakfast and we were off to classes. We received cram courses in just about everything. For example, in one day we went from basic arithmetic to quadratic equations to vectors and more. There was little time for anything but study, but we did have Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday free. There was lots of military training also, we had regular parades, and all sorts of military drills. It was here also that we learned to pilot an airplane. Now this was where the fun began. Having now reached the senior class, harassing stopped and we were getting serious about this flying business. I remember my tenth flight where my flight instructor took me up for some aerobatics. We climbed to about six thousand feet as straight up as a Piper Cub could climb. The plane began struggling and was soon hanging on the prop, a condition that doesn't last long before stalling. We stalled and the plane began falling tail first, it soon turned nose down and began spinning, my instructor told me to count the railroad tracks below and on the third revolution he pulled out and began climbing again, except I felt my stomach had run down into my shoes. Now he said it's your turn. I followed his instructions and managed to complete it, a little sloppy the first time, but learning to fly was great fun.
The time finally came when we were to move on to the next training assignment, but something unusual seemed to be happening. We stalled out, we weren't moving, something was definitely wrong. All sorts of rumors began to float around. After about a week of doing almost nothing we were all herded into the auditorium for the big announcement as to what was delaying our progress.
It seems that the war was definitely winding down in Europe and there was a flood of pilots returning that they didn't know what to do with. They were quickly retraining them for duty in the Pacific. So it seems they don't need us anymore, they have more pilots than they know what to do with. Now what do they do with us? Some were hoping they would send us home. Not very likely. Some of the men went AWOL, they just ran off. Some were so devastated they actually became ill. I figured I got this far and it's been good up to now so I'll just take whatever comes next. We were interviewed individually and the senior class was give the opportunity to select what they would like to do as an alternative to being a pilot. I was told I had I had several choices. I told them I wanted to continue flying and that narrowed the choices to aerial gunner or radio operator. Radio operator sounded dull so I chose Aerial gunner.
In a few days we were off to Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida and aerial gunnery school. Because of the snap decisions to eliminate the cadet program we arrived unexpectedly and were temporarily quartered in tents. Now there is a quick switch. At the University of Tennessee we lived in a college fraternity house with all the amenities of home. Almost over night here we are in tents, and it's raining. A week of this waiting for the class in front of us to move on and we were finally moved into barracks and schooling began. Lots of ground school learning all about guns, caliber 50 machine guns especially. We learned to assemble one while blindfolded with gloves on. We learned the name of every part down to the smallest spring. The instructors would throw in some broken or strange parts to help confuse us, but we soon learned the difference. We were given a 45 automatic to be worn in a shoulder holster and this too we quickly learned to detail strip and reassemble in a few minutes. I think the "moving range" was my favorite, here we learned to fire at a moving target with a shot gun rifle while we were also moving. The idea being to learn how to lead a moving target moving in one direction while you are moving in another direction. I stood on a small flat bed truck on a platform surrounded by waist high metal ring to keep from falling off as the truck raced around a zig zag course. As I went around the course clay pigeons (used in skeet shooting) would fly out of hidden places in the bushes. My job was to shoot them, sometimes there would be two at a time. This was so much fun that when I had free time I would go there and ride the course just for fun. Doing this was encouraged by the school and became a great pastime.
To continue reading about Auts' military career, click Flight Training here, or in the frame on the left.