Free The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s Over Germany 1944-1945 by Stephen Ambrose Page B

received only $50. So she lived on the $50, as best she could, while he lived on the base. They were too proud to tell their parents that they needed help. Instead, Eleanor lived mainly on crackers and peanut butter. “She doesn’t eat much anyway,” according to George, and the peanut butter filled her up cheaply. That went on for three months. To buy civilian clothes and other necessities, and to expand her diet, she got a job as a legal stenographer with a law firm.
    Just before his graduation, McGovern said he wanted to fly a B-24 but that he would be happy to be a B-17 pilot. At the ceremony, the colonel who had berated the cadets and characterized them as the worst class ever said that this was the finest class that had graduated from Pampa. The men found a manila envelope on their chairs. It contained their commission - “Second Lieutenant, Army of the United States” - and their wings. Another document rated them as pilots. Still another was a personnel order that required them to participate in regular and frequent aerial flights. Charles Watry considered that a bit redundant: “That’s what we came to do - wild horses couldn’t hold us back now!”42 Eleanor was at the airfield to pin on George’s wings. The new and exuberant fliers marched past the reviewing stand, singing the AAF song, really belting out the line “Off we go, into the wild blue yonder.” McGovern looked at his assignment - Liberal, Kansas.43 Eleanor went with him. “I became a camp follower,” she later said. “Ten weeks here, twelve weeks somewhere else.” She again rented a small room and saw her husband on Saturday nights and during the day on Sunday.44 Liberal, Kansas, meant McGovern would be learning to fly B-24s. He was pleased.  Others were not. Watry had put down the two-engine P-70 night fighter as his first choice, the P-61 Black Widow as his second, and the B-25 two-engine bomber as his third. But like 262 out of 290 of his classmates, he was assigned to Troop Carrier Command. Troop Carrier flew C-47 transports, either dropping paratroopers or towing gliders. “It was a great disappointment to all of us.” They wanted combat in modern warplanes, not hauling paratroopers in an airplane that had been around for years (it was the DC-3 in civilian use). The twenty-eight cadets in Watry’s class of 290 who got their first choice of aircraft assignments were the only ones who had asked for four-engine bombers.45 Lt. Walter Baskin had the same fate as McGovern but was not happy. “I have been assigned to a B-24,” he wrote his parents. “That’s just about as far from what I wanted as anything could be, but I can still hope.”46 On his graduation, John Smith was asked to list his choices. Knowing that his list would count for naught, he nevertheless put down the A-20 Havoc, which although a bomber had near-fighter performance and a tight turning radius. It had a crew of three, enough to keep the pilot company but not a crowd to look after, as the B-17 and B-24 pilots had to. It had a relatively limited range, so the pilot wasn’t up in the air all day. As for his other choices, Smith wrote, “If you are out of A-20s, it’s all right, I’ll just go home.” He was assigned to a B-24.47 Whatever their assignment, the newly commissioned officers and pilots had something to point to with pride. Of the 317,000 men who entered AAF pilot training in World War II, that is, after passing their mental and physical examinations, 193,440 were successful in graduating from advanced. More than 124,000, or about two out of five, washed out along the way, most of them in primary, fewest in advanced.48 The AAF in World War II recruited and trained the world’s largest air force. The training was exemplary. On average, before going into combat, the men had 360 hours of flying time. For German pilots and air crews, the average was 110 hours. For the Japanese, Italians, and Russians, it was even less. The three times or more experience