Pratt After We Left
There were 13 of us that reported to the 40th Group in Pratt on 18 August, 1943 direct from B-29 school at Boeing in Seattle. After a few days of deciding what to do with us, we were split up to the various squadrons. Clifford Bell, Ernest Bickendorf and I went to the 44th. We started working nights from 7:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m., seven days a week. We worked on the YB-29 plus any other assignments that came along. I finally became part of the ground crew on a B-26 in addition to working on a B-17. Mostly it was engine changes on the B-29s.
I spent Christmas 1943 and New Year's going to R3350 school in Patterson, New Jersey. We stayed in an old silk mill and took our meals at an engine plant. I returned to Pratt to continue the battle. (What battle? The Battle of Kansas, what else?)
I don't remember anything outstanding during the summer except the preparation for going overseas. In October I was rushed off to Wright Aeronautical again for direct fuel injection school.
When I returned to Pratt, the Group was gone.
A new chapter opens. Base headquarters didn't know where I belonged and ran around several days inquiring at various units. They finally ran into a first sergeant from the Group who was gathering up stragglers since there had been others like me who had been on detached service. Word was that we were in the 40th pool and assigned to temporary duty with a maintenance squadron of a new Group coming in. I worked on B-29s. One day while working on the line, a runner from the orderly room came by and said drop everything and report to the orderly room. They said get a haircut, draw
partial pay from finance, draw a carbine from supply and move to another barracks. We were told we were leaving in less than 24 hours to join the 40th in India.
There were 102 of us--two lieutenants, one master sergeant, two staff sergeants, one buck (me). The rest were corporals and privates. The 24 hours came and went. We were relieved from duty and restricted to the base. We had clothing inspection and rifle inspection about twice a day for about two weeks and one trip to the firing range to
try out the carbines. Next we had to evacuate the barracks we were staying in, and we were moved to a hutment area at the north end of the base past the end of the runway next to a creek.
After a month someone thought we should do some work. So, we broke up clots of ground in a newly cleared area, cleaned up some barracks for the WACs that were coming to Pratt and kept some boilers fired up. Finally, a small number of us were given passes to go to town for two hours. Not many got to go at once. We were at this for about two and a half months when word came to break up the pool. The officers
and master sergeant were the first to go followed by the two staffs with about 12 men each in tow.
One batch went to Oklahoma and the other to Nebraska. (I heard later that the batch that went to Nebraska were locked up for carrying guns.) The rest of us left in groups of five or six, and I was slated to go to Dalhart but orders were changed to Clovis and then canceled. It was getting late on a Saturday afternoon, and about a dozen of us were left with no place to stay as the beds and everything had been picked up. No one to report to, no orders, nothing. We went to Base Headquarters and talked to the sergeant major. He didn't know what to do as the base was shut down for the weekend. He suggested we report there at 8:00 a.m. Monday. At the hutment, we found
our old passes and spent the weekend in Pratt.
Monday we were assigned to various units at Pratt. I ended up at a ground school that was being organized. I had done some teaching before enlisting. We took over the south end of the 40th Headquarters building. Gunnery school took over the north end. Records show that I was in the 93rd Bomb Group, 330 Squadron. We made training aids, cutaways of R3350 engines, carburetors, fuel injection systems, hydraulic and electrical systems, a working nose and main gear. A flight engineer's station was hooked up to four Waukesha putt-putt engines with all the gauges working. The engines
really made a racket with straight pipes going up through the roof.
There were six or seven officers
and seven or eight enlisted men assigned to the school. We taught cruise control, navigation, flight engineering and all B-29 systems. In enlarging the school during the fall of 1944, we closed in the open porch of the building, partitioned
the large central room into classrooms and cleaned out a junk room in the southeast corner of the building. There we ran across some crates of 40th Group records. Word and samples of the records went up the line as to disposition. The word came back about two weeks later: destroy. We sat there for days--officers and enlisted men--tearing all the papers into four pieces (official destruction) and then hauled them to the incinerator and watched them burn.
We had lots of visitors in the office as it was the coolest place on base. We had resurrected the old evaporator cooler that was in the south wall, and that was used to run the flight engineers station. After VJ Day, things tapered off pretty fast with people leaving for discharge daily. A few of us held the school down until December when three of us were declared essential. A lieutenant, a sergeant and I were sent to Roswell, New Mexico. One of the COs there had been one of the pilots from the 40th back from overseas. In January of 1946 we received word that the Fourth Air Force was going to
take over the base from the Second Air Force, and we were to get orders to go to Ft. Worth. The lieutenant got his orders and left. Jack Sager and I didn't and became part of the Fourth Air Force.
The Fourth wanted to know what we were still doing in the Air Force? They said we were not essential and sent us to Santa Ana, California for discharge. We were processed, but within two hours of being out, we were handed orders to report to Ft. McArthur at San Pedro. They were full at Ft. McArthur, and we were told to stay away from the base for at least a week. We got a hotel room and took in Hollywood and the nearby area for the week. We were processed out in three days and headed home. During our out-processing, we met one of the guys from the 40th who was out and was processing back in. When I was being discharged and went for a records check, they asked me if I thought it funny that I never went overseas. I said yes, they were always looking for people with time in the service who had not been overseas. They tossed me a letter from my file that said I was assigned to a General and was not to be moved without written orders from him. I told them this was the first I knew of it. They said the letter had been rescinded when they broke up the 40th pool and someone didn't pull it so
whenever they got to the letter, they dropped me like a hot potato.