Santa Paula veteran was pilot during two wars

Bob Grainger considers himself a simple man.

He was born a third-generation Santa Paulan in 1924. His father was a dairy farmer, as was his grandfather, operating out of the family's dairy on the east side of Harvard Boulevard. The business opened in 1920 and operated for 30 years before it closed in 1950.

The youngest of seven children, Grainger attended Santa Paula High School, where he was a member of the gymnastics and track teams before he graduated in 1942.

As a junior, Grainger began dating Peggy Prieur, a freshman whom he met as a young child.

By the middle of his senior year, the simplicity he had known was no more.

When the Japanese bombed the American military bases at Pearl Harbor, it became almost a given that young men from throughout the United States would become members of the armed forces. Among those who volunteered within weeks of the attack was Grainger's brother, Perry, who joined the Army Air Corps.

Next was another brother Don who volunteered for active duty in the Navy.

By December 1942, Grainger, who had become eligible to enlist in July of that year, traveled to Oxnard to complete the exam to train to become an aviation cadet. He passed and was called to active duty with the Army Air Corps in February 1943.

“At the time, they were sending some of us to college training instead of the more rushed training that others had gone through,” said Grainger, 86. “No one knew when the war would end, and I guess they assumed they would need as many pilots as possible.”

Trained as fighter pilot

He was sent to Fresno for basic training, then to the Eastern Oregon College of Education in La Grande, Ore., for five months of formal college courses.

By the beginning of 1944, Grainger was sent to Santa Ana for nine weeks of preflight training and classification, a process in which the cadets were ranked as pilots, navigators or bombardiers. Grainger had earned the rank of aviation cadet and eventually became a pilot.

He was sent to primary flight training in Visalia, where he flew an open cockpit PT-22, then to Bakersfield for basic flight training where he flew a BT-13. Finally, he was sent to advanced flight training at Luke Field in Arizona, where he flew an AT-6. It was there that he began his training as a fighter pilot, a task that, upon completion, led to his first flight aboard a P-40.

In July 1944, Grainger was sent to Washington to complete his fighter pilot training aboard a P-39, P-63, and P-38. Seven months later, in February 1945, the 20-year-old pilot was given orders to report for active duty overseas on Nadzab, New Guinea.

“They needed us there as reinforcements,” he said. “About 400 or 500 of us were there at a time just waiting for our assignments. Little did we know, the war was coming to an end.”

For his first seven months overseas, Grainger was sent on reconnaissance missions to retrieve various aircraft from throughout the Pacific and return them to the Philippines.

In August 1945, he was assigned to the 49th Fighter Group, and was preparing for war in Japan. But within days, the atomic bombs were dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ending the war in the Pacific.

Served as flight instructor

Grainger did make it to Japan and served occupational duty until he earned enough points to return home in April 1946.

His brothers, Perry, who served for three years overseas as a mechanic, and Don, who was entering naval flight training when the war ended, also made it home at the end of the war.

Grainger reunited with Peggy, whom he married before going overseas. Their first daughter was born while Grainger was away in 1945. The couple had two more children.

The young pilot began working in Santa Paula but had volunteered to remain in what had become the U.S. Air Force as a reservist. In 1953, he was called back to active duty.

For more than 15 years, Grainger, who served some time as a flight instructor, moved with his young family from base to base throughout the United States. He also had one assignment in Germany, flying daily missions aboard a C-97. In January 1969, he was called back to war, this time in Vietnam.

For one year, the then 44-year-old flew reconnaissance missions aboard a C-47. His crew's duty? To fly over a 300-square-mile area and listen for enemy broadcasts, record them, translate them, and determine where they were coming from.

Grainger completed 145 of those missions.

While in Vietnam, Grainger was reunited with his son, Butch, who was an artillery officer. The two were stationed in the same city for six months.

A short time after he returned to the United States, Grainger retired from the Air Force, and became a letter carrier for the U.S. Postal Service in Santa Paula, a position he held for 13 years.

“I've never considered my story to be much of anything,” he said. “It's not one of heroics. Nothing extraordinary.”

- Of War and Life tells the stories of area veterans. Contact Jannette Jauregui at jannette@ or by mail to Jannette Jauregui, c/o Ventura County Star, P.O. Box 6006, Camarillo, CA 93011.