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As Seen from the USA

by duxford04

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Mr Russel De Castrongrene
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13 October 2004

My dad was in the army air corps during WW2 but he was with the second Air Force in the states and the second Air Force was a training Air Force. They trained the B17 and B24 bomber crews and they had bases all over the United States. He was stationed at Peyote Texas which was out in the middle of no where, it was one of the B17 bases where they did a lot of training. From there he went up to second Air Force headquarters up in Calahaus Springs and there he was with procurement of equipment for the bombers and after that he was transferred up to Detroit where he was in procurement of the L5 aircraft and the R6 helicopter.

We moved with him to these different places, he trained in Miami, they had officer training school in Miami and we all went down there, I was in sixth grade. From there we went up to Peyote and Texas where he was a staff officer supporting some of the squadrons that were training there. And they had a bombing range down in southern Texas where they would go down and bomb and then come back for training. The crews were already together by then and there they would actually take off, head to the United States East coast and then fly across to England. They operated out of England with the eighth aircraft.

We had some shortages but they weren’t real severe the biggest thing was gas lane. When he got transferred, on the way from one base to another, he had to stop at different places to get coupons so he could get gas to get to his next base... Because he was on orders they would always give it to him but it was a process you had to go through.

Sugar, you had to have ration stamps for sugar and bacon and meat and shoes and things but compared to over here it was relatively unnoticeable really.

On the East coast we had a lot of black outs and on the West coast because of German submarines they could spot the American ships against the lighting in the back ground, so if there were no lights they couldn’t see them as well. We had a lot of ships being sunk up and down the east coast. The Japanese never really came to the West coast very much, they did shell one ford up in Origin, but that was about it, they had one plane that they launches from submarine that bombed the forest in Origin but nobody was there at the time.


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