Here's one of my late father's flying stories that I hadn't heard before. My mother told it to us over Christmas.

Like most of his Cadet Training graduating class, my parents got married on November 1st, the day after Dad graduated. In those days the Army would not let anyone take flight training if they were married, so there were even some guys who divorced their wives so that they could learn to fly, and then remarried them after graduation. See, flying caused an increased divorce rate even then. Mom and Dad weren't one of these couples, but had dated for much of Dad's training and got married the day after graduation too.

In those days the Army would allow pilots to take their wives up occasionally, but only if they had no children. Mom recalls Dad taking her for a ride one day in a British-built Avro Anson, a plane the Army designated the AT-20 and used as a bombardier trainer. The pilots always called it the "Banana Wagon" because of its shape. This particular day Dad decided to show her what he did during the day, and flew her over all the places that the Cadets went on their various training runs. He even showed her their favorite spot, a woman's bathhouse on one of the local California beaches that didn't have a roof. Whenever they were in the area, the Cadets always made a low, slow pass over this bathhouse to see if anyone was changing. They claimed the success rate was pretty high, particularly on weekends. Some of the women even waved back.

Mom wasn't sure this was a good idea, but couldn't do much about it. She did make Dad promise not to do that any more. I'm sure he never did. Yeah, right!

Bob

Copyright Ó 1999 Robert T. Chilcoat

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