Old Time Stuff #5

In 1939 the war inEurope was far away. In 1940 it was beginning to effect things at home. The CPTP in Clewiston was training British pilots and there was an undercurrent of bad things to come even though we weren't in the conflict. I was 14 in the latter part of 1940. I was driving our car when I could get it. When I couldn't, I still rode my bike. other things began to interfere with my trips to the airport. A job was one and family responsibilities was another but I still kept i touch with my friends there and worked with them every chance I got.
Dec. 7th 1941 changed things in a trice. All civilian flying except the crop dusters stopped and the country went on a balls out war mode. Florida became one big airbase. Every town had one and sometimes two and the skies were full of every type of airplane there was. An airbase was built just north of town, Sarasota Airbase. For a brief time B-17E's were based there but it was too small to stage them. Then came the P-39's in the latter part of 1941. Then came the crashes because of the people who were made pilots at that time shouldn't have been driving cars much less flying a fighter.
Then came the P-40's in 1942, P-40 short tails and then the N's. Still, there were many crashes, not because of the poor personnel but because of the partying the night before they had to fly. We had almost one a day.
They practiced air to ground gunnery by having the lead plane in a long string fire a burst into the water and the following shooters had to hit the foam. Many times the lead plane was right over our house when he fired into the gulf and then there was 10 -12 P-40's following suit. Soon I had a belt of cal.50 brass that I assembled from picking up links and cartridges in our yard and beach. It was a military air show every day with P-47's, P-40's, B-26's, SBD's, B-25's, and all kinds of stuff flying by.
All my buddies from Johnny Lowe's went to war too and I never saw them again. Some were instructors, some went into bombers, and some, like my friend , Tommy, went into the ATC to fly transports. from the US to South America and africa. One day I read a small article in the newspaper that Tommy was missing on a flight from Brazil to Fla. He was a pasenger on a DC-4 coming back to the states and it went down somewhere in the Caribbean and was never found.
He always said that as long as he was doing the flying, he wouldn't be killed.
All those old planes of the gang were dismantled and hung up and stored in barns and hangars and the war went on.
Switches