Priceless Memories

by Bob Barker; Digby Diehl

  I was a member of the Sixth Battalion at William Jewell. Soon after our arrival, our battalion was addressed at some length by a gentleman whose name was Mason. As I recall, he was a lieutenant, and he was a very good speaker. His speaking ability is probably the reason he was given the assignment to sell us war bonds.

  He told us what fine young men we were to have volunteered to become naval aviators, that our assignment would be one of the most important in winning the war in the Pacific, et cetera, et cetera.

  “But,” Lieutenant Mason added, “I want to ask you to do even more for your country. I want each of you cadets to sign up to buy a war bond every month.” Then he explained in great detail why war bonds were so important to winning the war. After holding us transfixed for several minutes with his war bond pitch, Lieutenant Mason said, “In conclusion, gentlemen, I think I should tell you that I am in charge of all weekend liberty at this base and I take my job very seriously.”

  We laughed, but we all bought war bonds.

  • • •

  About two months later, another officer, a commander, spoke to the Sixth Battalion on a subject that would deeply affect the lives of many cadets in the battalion. It was in this speech that the Great Purge reared its ugly head for the first time. It wasn’t mentioned as such, but the Great Purge is what it came to be called.

  You talk with any cadet of my era, and they all know about the purge. Basically, when I originally signed up to become a naval aviator, you were given nine months of training as a cadet, and if successful, you got your wings. If you washed out, you went back to civilian life so you could join the Army Air Corps, the merchant marines, the U.S. marines, or whatever you wanted to do. While I was at William Jewell, the navy changed all that and gave us a chance to get out. Anybody who wanted to could get out immediately, but if you stayed in and you washed out later, you went to the Great Lakes and became a sailor. You didn’t have the opportunity to go choose something else. I’ll never forget it.

  The commander encouraged us to stay in the cadet program, of course. He said, “You’re the cream of the crop. We haven’t had a better battalion come through here than you. You are not going to wash out. Don’t leave the navy now. You came into the navy because you wanted to fly for the navy. You will fly for the navy. You stay with it.”

  All but one cadet in the battalion did stay, but later on, during the purge, probably 25 percent washed out, maybe more. The navy didn’t lose as many pilots in the Pacific as they thought they were going to lose, and now they had more pilots than they needed. I talked with instructors after the war who told me they had been forced to wash out a percentage of their cadets, even though the instructors thought the cadets were qualified to continue in the program.

  So to get your wings after I got in the navy, you had to be able to fly and you had to do well in ground school, but it also helped to have lady luck on your shoulder. I was a good pilot; I worked hard and did well in ground school, but I was also lucky. I got my coveted wings of gold in spite of the purge, and though some cadets in my class had hairy crashes and some were killed, I was never in an accident or suffered injury.

  • • •

  My first taste of flying came at the next training base, which was in Ames, Iowa, at Iowa State University. We had ground school and athletics at that location also, but at last, we did a little flying. We had civilian flight instructors, and my first one was a fellow named Mr. Shivers. I thought the name was appropriate because he was liable to be shivering with me at the controls of an airplane for the first time. He must have gotten very nervous because one morning I came out to the airport and Mr. Shivers was gone. My new instructor was a very attractive young lady. I approved of the trade. I can’t remember her name, but she took me up, up, and away in a canvas plane called a Taylorcraft.

  Mr. Shivers had familiarized me with the controls and the basics of flying before he suddenly bailed out. Apparently, my new instructor thought I was about ready to solo because she emphasized emergency landings in our first couple of flights together. Undoubtedly, her thought was that before she sent Cadet Barker up alone, it was her responsibility to prepare him to get back down safely in case the engine of his Taylorcraft conked out. I learned that in an emergency, the pilot should immediately spot a place on the ground where it would be as safe as possible to land his plane.

  Now, my instructor didn’t tell me what I am about to write. She didn’t even hint at it. This was my own idea: If I were flying over a forest or a city, finding a place to land an airplane in an emergency could indeed pose a problem, but because I was flying over Iowa, it was no problem. There were excellent landing fields in every direction. In fact, that’s all there were—beautiful open fields. Besides, I had a backup position. We always wore parachutes, and parachutes are for jumping. Jumping was exactly what I would do if there was a really serious problem. Let the airplane get down on its own!

  In any event, the fateful day for my solo flight arrived. An instructor doesn’t tell a student, “Tomorrow you’ll solo.” The poor student probably wouldn’t get a wink of sleep. The accepted way for an instructor to solo a student is to take the student up for a routine lesson, at the same time checking to see if the would-be soloist is behaving in a reasonably sane manner that day. If the cadet’s behavior justifies the risk, the instructor has the cadet return to the airfield, where the instructor gets out of the airplane, and almost casually but with an air of complete confidence, tells the future ace, “OK, take it around by yourself.”

  That is precisely what my instructor did. When she said, “Take it around by yourself,” she meant for me to take off, fly once around the field in the landing pattern, and land the plane, hopefully without unpleasant incident.

  I’m delighted to report that I did my instructor proud. As I was flying, I thought: “Here I am, a nineteen-year-old kid who had never been up in an airplane until a few weeks ago, and now I am up here flying this thing all by myself. The United States Navy has worked a miracle.” I was elated.

  I made a nice three-point landing, navy style, taxied to the hangar, shut off the engine, jumped out of the plane, and gave my instructor a big kiss right on the lips. It was a lot more fun than kissing Mr. Shivers would have been.

  • • •

  After learning to fly a Taylorcraft at Iowa State University, I headed south for the University of Georgia and what the navy called preflight school. At preflight we put flying aside again and concentrated on ground school and physical conditioning. Our day was to consist of four hours of books and four hours of bruises. But, as I shall explain, I lucked out.

  The navy had four preflight schools in the United States: the University of Georgia, where I went; St. Mary’s in California; the University of Iowa (not to be confused with Iowa State University, where I soloed); and the University of North Carolina. These preflight schools were notorious throughout the navy for being tough, both in the ground school and in physical training—particularly the physical training program.

  Both at William Jewell and Iowa State University, the athletic instructors had warned us that if we thought it was tough with them, just wait until we got to preflight school, and it was to preflight that aviation cadet Robert W. Barker was headed. Was I quaking in my boots? No, not quite… but almost.

  We studied everything from engines to navigation to airplane identification in preflight. They wanted us to be able to identify all the different kinds of airplanes in the enemy’s arsenal. We also had to study all the American aircraft as well. The navy considered it bad form to shoot down your own planes. The curriculum was quite intense. For example, to train us in identifying aircraft quickly, the instructor flashed a picture of a plane on a screen and we had to instantly identify it in a fraction of a second. It was thorough and professional training. We studied meteorology, navigation, engines, Morse code. You name it. We studied it.

  But the most demanding part of preflight was not ground school, it was the athletic program, and the most gruel
ing part of the athletic program was said to be the obstacle course. The course incorporated all kinds of physical rigors—not just running, but acrobatics, tumbling, crawling, climbing, scaling, jumping, and more running. It was brutal.

  Now, you will recall I indicated that I had lucked out. Well, let me explain. When I got to preflight school in Georgia, they had tryouts for the preflight basketball team. All branches of the service had athletic teams, and they were an important part of morale. I had played basketball all my life, so I tried out and was selected for the team. I could hardly believe my ears when I was told that playing on the basketball team meant that I avoided all other athletic training, including the dreaded obstacle course. I went to ground school for four hours a day and I played basketball four hours a day. Just too sweet! Unfortunately, as irony had it, in our first scrimmage, I went up for a rebound, came down on another player’s foot, and severely sprained my ankle. It popped so loudly that everyone thought it was broken. I had been playing basketball since I was seven years old and never sprained an ankle before, but this was really a bad sprain. I was in the hospital for three days, and my leg was black-and-blue almost to my knee.

  When I got out, my ankle was still too bad for me to march with my platoon. I had to join the crippled platoon. This was a group of cadets with broken arms, broken collarbones, separated shoulders, and every other injury known to man. Still unable to play on the basketball team, I ended up shooting free throws for four hours a day. As you can imagine, I got to be a pretty good free throw shooter, but one day the coach came to me and said, “Look, Barker, you’re not helping the team. If that ankle isn’t better and you can’t play, I’m going to have to send you back to the platoon.”

  That meant the obstacle course. Fear is a great motivator: I said, “I can run, Coach. I can play.” And to demonstrate to the coach, I started racing up and down the gym. I practiced from that day forward. Miraculous healing started right then and there. I am still one of the few cadets from World War II who can tell you he never saw the obstacle course at preflight. I will always be grateful to basketball.

  • • •

  With each step in our progressive cadet training, we gained more knowledge and flight experience. After preflight, I went to Millington Naval Air Station just outside of Memphis, Tennessee, where we really got into flight training, including night and formation flying. At the Memphis base, we were trained to fly the Stearman, which was a biplane—upper wing and a lower wing and an open cockpit. It looked like an old World War I fighter plane. They were great airplanes. I always said if I ever had an airplane, that would be the one I wanted to own.

  The Stearman was called the yellow peril because it had a very narrow landing gear. If you came in for a landing and you weren’t lined up well with the wind, the wind would lift one wing so high that you would scrape the opposite wingtip on the ground, but you could really have fun in those planes. You could do acrobatics. You could loop it. You could do almost anything with that plane, but you couldn’t fly it upside down because the carburetor cut out.

  • • •

  After Memphis, my next stop was the huge naval air station at Corpus Christi, Texas. Corpus Christi was a vast complex of airfields, and if the wash-out monster didn’t tap me on the shoulder, it would be at Corpus Christi where I would complete my flight training, be commissioned as an ensign, have the commanding officer pin my wings of gold on my chest, be assigned to fighters, get leave, go home, and marry Dorothy Jo. All in that order.

  Getting my wings and being assigned to fighters were certainly important to me, but my ultimate goal was to make Dorothy Jo my bride. I had looked forward to having Dorothy Jo become Mrs. Bob Barker since our first date six years before when we listened to Ella Fitzgerald sing “A-Tisket, A-Tasket” at the Shrine Mosque in Springfield. We wrote to each other regularly, and I called her frequently. Every letter and call was filled with “when you get your wings” plans. These were not detailed wedding plans. Actually, we never bothered with those. It was just a matter of “we’ll get married.” And we did.

  • • •

  But before that, the next step was what the navy called basic training. “After all the training I had already had,” I thought, “are we only now getting down to basics?” I was assigned to Cabaniss Field for basic, and this phase of our training concentrated more on flying and less on everything else. Not only were we flying more, we were flying in our biggest airplane yet, the BT-13. It had a retractable cockpit hood and retractable landing gear—wheels, that is. And woe be to the cadet who forgets to pull up his wheels after takeoff. Or even worse—much worse—the cadet who forgets to put down his wheels before landing.

  Takeoffs and landings are considered emergencies. Bad things can happen, and when they do, you want to get out of the airplane fast. Hence, the cockpit hood is retracted on takeoffs and landings and closed in flight. After checking out in the BT-13, we decided that we might not be hot pilots as yet, but we were certainly getting warmer. In a month or two, we were completely comfortable at the controls of a BT-13, takeoffs, landings, formation flying, night flying, dogfighting, dive-bombing, acrobatics—we did it all. We were ready to move on, and move on we did.

  Next, we went from all the good stuff I listed above—stuff that was genuinely fun for anyone who aspired to go to the fleet as a fighter pilot—to something new and mentally demanding: instrument flying. I was sent to the field at Beeville for my instrument training. At Beeville we flew the SNJ, an even more powerful plane than the BT-13. The SNJ was a trainer that was the next thing to a fighter. In fact, I understand that in some countries not as advanced as the United States in airpower, the SNJ was used as a fighter plane in combat.

  In instrument training, the cadet closed a canvas hood over his cockpit, effectively blinding him to anything outside the cockpit. Of course, the instructor in the front cockpit was on the alert for other aircraft and prepared to prevent any catastrophe that the cadet under the hood might otherwise cause. The instruments we used were an airspeed indicator, altimeter, compass, and turn-and-bank indicator. With the turn-and-bank indicator, we could determine whether we were flying straight and level. If we weren’t straight and level, the turn-and-bank indicator would show us which way we were banking and how steeply.

  These instruments are very basic and simple, and can serve you very well. However, if a cadet misreads them or fails to give them his full attention while under the canvas hood, these instruments can send the cadet to the Great Lakes, washed out. It happened to many a would-be ace.

  • • •

  Advanced training was next, and supposedly it was the last hurdle before graduation—more about that a bit later. I went to Waldron Field for advanced, and it was more of the good stuff, including dogfighting, this time flying the SNJ. It was at advanced that I received a compliment I have savored all of my life.

  Robert L. Voight, from Nebraska, was an exemplary cadet who excelled in ground school, flying, physical training—the works. He and I were selected to go up and dogfight one day—and did we ever get it on. Both of us tried every trick we had been taught and some we improvised. When we came down, our flight suits were drenched with perspiration and we were exhausted. Voight said, “Bob, you are the best I have ever fought.”

  “I was about to tell you that you are the best I ever fought,” I replied. Coming from a cadet for whom I had so much respect, it was a compliment I shall always remember.

  • • •

  I finished advanced training and was ready to graduate, go home, and get married. Right? Wrong. Earlier I explained that the navy had not lost as many pilots as they had expected, so the cadet program had been lengthened. Well, when we finished advanced training, we were informed that the program had been lengthened again.

  We were sent to the main station for what was hastily dubbed preoperational training. The good part about preoperational was that we checked out in the SBD dive-bomber, one of the most famous navy planes of World War II. It was SBD p
ilots who sank four Japanese carriers at the Battle of Midway, the turning point of the war in the Pacific.

  We didn’t do any dive-bombing. We just went up and flew around the countryside for a few weeks, and at long last, the order came to prepare for graduation. Man, was I prepared! I got to a telephone as soon as I could and called Dorothy Jo. I told her that there weren’t going to be any more delays. I was going to become Ensign Robert W. Barker and she was going to become Mrs. Bob Barker.

  • • •

  I have told you the story of our elopement; now my bride accompanied me when I reported for operational training at the naval air station in DeLand, Florida. At DeLand, I flew the FM-2 fighter, which I have already described as an improved version of the much acclaimed F4F Wildcat. We were commissioned officers now, proudly wearing our hard-earned wings of gold, and we concentrated on flying and more flying. There was no more physical training or ground school. We were full-fledged naval aviators, and our next stop would be the fleet. As fighter pilots, our principal responsibility would be to shoot down enemy airplanes, with some strafing of enemy ground targets and ships thrown in.