In January of 1943, my mom’s brother Alva left their home in Michigan to join the United States Army Air Forces. After pre flight school, he arrived at the Corsicana Airfield in Corsicana, TX on 23 May 1943 to begin his flight training. Just three weeks later, Alva was ready to solo! Alva wrote 150 letters home during the year and a half he served his country. This is the letter he wrote home sharing his experience of that first solo flight in a 175 horse “power” plane.
May 15, 1943
Sat 9:45 P.M.
Dear Folks:
Well I had my first solo ride today. I had 25 min in the air by myself. I was second ride today. We went up and went to an auxiliary field. There I shot 3 landings. I did pretty good on them. It was sort of surprising too because yesterday I couldn’t land that plane right to save my neck. My instructor got so mad he couldn’t see straight. Every time I tried to land it, I bounced way up in the air. This was because I didn’t level off quick enough, and I sort of dived the plane into the ground. And then when we went back to the home field, I made a nice landing. About the first I had made yet. Today I went and made 3 pretty good ones. The first I bounced a little but I made a good recovery and set it down nice then.
After the third one today, the instructor took the plane and parked it in the neutral zone. He never said a word. He just climbed out and handed me the book that we make our flight records in. I made it out and handed it back. He slapped me on the back and said “Good luck.” Then he climbed down and walked away. There I was with a 175 horse power plane on my hands. So I turned around and taxied to the end of the field, headed it up the field and let it go. We have the throttle wide open on the take-off and that engine just roars. I took off and went around the field and landed 3 times. All 3 times I made pretty good landings. The wind was blowing pretty hard too and that makes it difficult to land. I was the first one of my instructor’s students to solo but the boy who went up right after me did too.
I got a letter from Jim the other day. He is pretty smart getting an 11th grade average. My my. I can’t think of much more to say now. It is Sun morning now. I had to stop last night because they made me put the lights out. A lot of the boys got drunk last night. 5 from my room and another fellow were drunk and they run a truck in the ditch. They couldn’t rent a car so they rented a 1 1/2 ton truck. They run it in a ditch and wrecked it. Now they don’t know what is going to come of it. They are saps.
Now that I have soloed I can wear a pair of little wings on my little hat. Not the one with the bill but the other one.
Well I will close I guess.
Ancestors Across the Ages 