Release #9

U. S. ARMY ENLISTMENT BROADCAST

JUNE 17, 1941 - KOIN - 10:30-45

ANNCR: KOIN presents ........ "Soldiers of the Air".

MUSIC THEME "SECOND CONNECTICUT REGIMENT" (475) UP AND FADE TO BACKGROUND.

ANNCR: This evening KOIN is pleased to cooperate with the United States Army

Recruiting Service in presenting the ninth in a series of broadcasts bringing you the informal, informative and interesting story of "Soldiers of the Air".

MUSIC THEME UP AND OUT.

ANNCR: Ladies and gentlemen, time speeds on. Our young friend and "Soldier

of the Air" Larry Foster is making rapid progress. Another six months has passed and tonight Larry is once more our guest and will tell us about his promotion and experience as a full fledged Crew Chief. Of course his Buddy Bill "Butch" Harris is with him. Larry, I suppose as Crew Chief your duties begin to pile up?

LARRY: You bet they do. Not only my duties, but my responsibilities are piling

up. I don't mind telling you I get stage fright once in awhile.

BILL: And you ain't seen nothing yet, "Dog Face".

ANNCR: Bill, it seems to me that Larry deserves a more dignified name. How about it, Larry? Don't you think you are out of the "Dog Face" class?

LARRY: Hadn't thought about that. I guess so Bill, I'll always be the young recruit that looked to him for help.

BILL: Yeh, I'm like the father that never realizes his son grows up.

ANNCR: Maybe that's the way it should be. Larry, I want to hear about your new experiences. And s-a-y, what's that on your sleeve? Stripes at last 1 The Reward of Duty Well Done.

LARRY: Yep, that comes with my new job as Crew Chief. My rating now is

Master Sergeant.

ANNCR: Larry, you are stepping right along.

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BILL: And maybe he isn’t flashing that badge. You’d think he had the seven year itch the way he keeps rubbing it.

ANNCR: Now Bill, just how did you feel when you got your first stripes.

BILL: I slept with my coat on the first night to make sure I had them.

ANNCR: I'11 bet you did.

LARRY: W-e-1-1 you know Mr4 to an old-timer like Bill—

BILL: Better start asking him questions, he’s going to ride me.

ANNCR: Larry, I suppose you are now supervising a lot of men under you—

BILL: Yeh, and over him too—

ANNCR: Be nice, Bill. I suppose you are constantly on watch that there are no mechanical slip ups.

LARRY: I've got to see that they do a good job on the "innards" of the motors. And that keeps up night and day. I realize now, more than ever that air soldiering is the most highly specialized branch of the army.

BILL: Barring none.

ANNCR: How about flying, Larry. As Crew Chief I've an idea you ought to be soaring.

LARRY: Oh yes. I've had a good, deal of flying. Had some interesting experiences too.

BILL: (Laughing) I'll say he has. He never dreamed he'd be flying with a hammer I

ANNCR: A hammer?

LARRY: Bill means a hammer got me out of a jam one day during tow targeting.

ANNCR: What's tow targeting?

LARRY: Pilots of pursuit planes must have target practice to perfect their aim. The towing plane drags a long rectangular strip of cloth attached to a cable - sort of a tail. The cable works on an intricate mechanism that winds the cable back to the plane, so that the target can be

removed and the pilots shots checked.

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BILL: And. if that winder doesn't work, its just too bad.

LARRY: So I found out. Any how, I was detailed to go along with a towing plane. When the pilots were through taking pot shots at the target I had orders to wind, in as we were going d.own to check up and get a new target.

ANNCR: How long are the cables that tow the target sheets?

LARRY: They run about 250 yards in length.

ANNCR: What's the length of the target sheets?

BILL: They run different sizes. Some are forty feet long. Some are fifty.

ANNCR: Why the different sizes?

LARRY: To perfect the sight of the gunner. The smaller the target sheet the better shot the gunner has to be to make a hit.

ANNCR: Just how fast does the target plane move to keep a head of the pursuit planes?

LARRY: They make about 200 and 300 miles an hour.

BILL: And don't get the idea that the pursuit planes follow directly behind during practice.

ANNCR: How do they work it?

LARRY: They fire at the target from different angles. It would be dangerous for the tow plane if a pilot forgot and fired directly from the rear.

ANNCR: Yes, I imagine it would. Anyhow, Larry, what was it happened to the winding machine?

LARRY: That winding machine absolutely refused to work. No matter what I did, it just wouldn't budge. I was getting orders from the pilot to hurry up as we had to land and reload. Other planes were waiting their turn and using up a lot of gas.

ANNCR: What did you do?

LARRY: Picked up a hammer and smashed the machine, releasing the cable so that it floated down and we returned to the base for a new machine.

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BILL: That's one time a specialist got stuck.

LARRY: That won't happen again. I got busy on that gaget and. found, out what the trouble was.

BILL: Better men than you, Buddy, have met with the same trouble.

LARRY: If emergencies never happened the army wouldn't need men.

ANNCR: And because they do happen—?

LARRY: The layman hasn't the slightest idea how specialised this game is. It's true the army needs men but then it's equally true that lot of men need the army. Fellows who really want to get an education that money can't buy can get in the army.

ANNCR: Whoa, Larry 1 You sound like an advance agent for a correspondence school.

LARRY: Maybe I ami Maybe you've forgotten my name for the army—the United States Military College I

BILL: OK, Sergeant, but let's get back to flying.

LARRY; That's good enough for me. You remember I told you some weeks ago, that the pilot without the ground crew is absolutely helpless.

ANNCR: Yes, I remember the number 13, and what it means to a bombing machine.

LARRY: A pilot in a single seated fighter was ordered to make a flight east. When he got over the wilds of Montana he found that his motor was going bad, and he decided to make a landing.

ANNCR: I hope he was near an airport —

LARRY: He landed in a prairie among the prickly pear and scared a lot of jack rabbits half to death. But before he landed he reported his position and what the trouble was.

zxNNCR: Pretty much up against it out there in that country, wasn't he?

BILL: Just for a little while.

ANNCR: How do you mean, — for a while?

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LARRY: As soon as we got his report, we realized that the only thing we

could do was to load a new engine on our plane, go out and find him, and change the motors.

ANNCR: And did you?

LARRY: Sure. We knew just about where he was. Vfe landed, changed the "pot"

that's our name for motor, and he was on his way. We packed the old

pot in our plane and came back to the base.

ANNCR: Must have taken you a couple of days to do that.

LARRY: Oh no. Time is an important element in this man's game. It doesn't

take a crew of seven men very long to make repairs.

BILL: "One goes up and seven stay down." That means it may take seven men

to keep one flying.

ANNCR: Well, just how long did it take to make the change?

LARRY: We got there in the morning and wo were back the same day, ready for

supper,

ANNCR: No time lost there, that's evident. Does motor trouble like that

happen often?

LARRY: Not very. You see, motors arc being continually checked. The work

goes on night and day. There's no let up.

BILL: Motors are checked after every five hundred flying hours.

ANNCR: You mean the entire motor is removed and a new one replaced?

LARRY: Absolutely. Think of the workout the mechanism gets after 500 flying

hours. Five hundred hours with the propellers revolving from fifteen hundred to two thousand revolutions a minute.

BILL: If you want to do a little arithmetic, figure that one out.

TARRY: That means about 45,000,000 revolutions in 500 hours.

ANNCR: By the way, Larry, June 14th is Flag Day. That's a big day in the

army, isn't it?

BILL: That's a big day any place in this land. 5-5-5

ANNCR: I often wondered how our flag got the name of Old Glory. Do you

happen to know, Larry?

LARRY: Yes, I do. The history of our flag is an important part of our

study in American History. And it's remarkable how few people know anything about it. The name of Old Glory was given to our flag by a man named William Driver, a seaman. This happened on his twenty-first birthday, on March 17, 1824, at Salem, Mass. His mother and some of the young ladies of Salem presented him with a flag, and he was so proud of it he named it Old Glory. That flag sailed over the seven seas with him. Before he died he entrusted it to his daughter, and in 1922, Old Glory was presented to the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, D.C., to be preserved for all time.

ANNCR: I suppose you might really call that the inspiration for Flag Day?

LARRY: No. That's something else again. Flag Day was first suggested by

Dr. Edward Brooks in 1893. Dr. Brooks was the Superintendent of Schools at Philadelphia, Pa. June 14th was the anniversary of the day on which the flag resoltuion was passed by the Continental Congress, But it wasn't until May 30, 1916, that Flag Day was recognized nationally. President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation to that effect.

ANNCR: And so once a year one day is set aside to honor Old Glory,

BILL: Once a year! As a soldier, Flag Day is every day with me. It's

sort of like a religion.

LARRY: Isn't it in every soldiers life? He salutes the flag in the morning

at reveille, and again at retreat, at night. Wen I look at the flag, I see the nation and the things it represents. The principle, the truth and the history of MY AMERICA.

ANNCR: I am sure every patriotic American will agree most heartily with you.

And thanks, boys, for coming up and visiting with us.

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(Cont.)

ANNCR: Ladies and gentlemen, may we present Mr.__________________ _ __ ____

who has a few words to say to you on the subject of the "Soldiers of the Air" .

OFFICER: Thank you Mr. ___________ __________________. Tonight I have a

message that I am sure will be of vital interest to every young man who has graduated from high school. Last week the Congress of the United States passed a bill for "ENLISTED MENS PILOT TRAINING". The President affixed his signature to the bill soon afterward.

The new bill authorizes the Secretary of War to detail enlisted men in the Regular Army for training and instruction as aviation students, with pay and allowances of their respective grades while learning. When they have won their "Wings they will fly as noncommissioned officers, and these aviation students will be issued $10,000 in Government life insurance, the premium to be paid by the Government while learning, and by themselves afterward. While all of the manifold details of selecting, training and using these enlisted pilots have not been worked out, these are some of the probabilities: Applicants will be enlisted in the Regular Army Air Corps for three year enlistment term and those between the ages of 19 and 22 will be given preference. The physical requirements of all Student pilots will not be lowered, - it will bo the same as that for Flying Cadets. Graduates of accredited secondary schools who have credits for at least 1-g units of mathematics will be accepted for training without examination.

A plan is being considered whereby, on completion of training as a student pilot, the enlisted man would be appointed as a flight sergeant, 3rd class, ranking as a Staff sergeant in the Army with pay of $108.00 per month while on flight duty. After completing a three-year enlistment, he would be appointed flight sergeant 2nd class ranking as a Technical Sergeant of the Regular Army and drawing $126.00 per month. 7-7-7

(Contd)

OFFICER: Upon his third three-year enlistment, ho would be promoted to

sergeant, 1st class, and rani: as a Master Sergeant with pay of $207,00 per month. After none years of service, Flight Sergeants, 1st class would be eligible to participate in a competitive examination for appointment as Warrant Officers, Junior Grade. All enlisted pilots would be entitled to clothing substitence and rental allowances normal for their grade in the Army. Under the "Enlisted Pilots Training" bill, men who formerly were ineligible for pilots training in the Air Corps because they lacked the requirements of two years of college or it's equivalent (that is for Flying Cadets) will thus be afforded an opportunity to win "Wings" under the same general system of training us that now in effect for Flying Cadets.

Lt. Col. B. H. Hensley District Recruiting Officer U. S. Army for the State of Oregon, stated that enlistments for this new pilots training would begin immediately upon receipt of the "GO" signal from Washington. (Which is anticipated about July 10th) Of course the enlisted men already in the Air Corps will be given first preference for this training, therefore it will be a young mans advantage to make his application for the Regular Army Air Corps and be in the service at the time the training starts .

At this time I would like to impress upon you the real opportunity this "Enlisted Mens Pilot Training" affords the young high school graduate. The Profession of a Military Pilot is one of the highest types of profession a man can get into. After a three year enlistment a man may go back to civil life with a profession that can be used to a great advantage. Aviation is becoming one of the fastest growing businesses in the world. Commercial aviation wants young men trained by the Army and for him to learn a profession without charge to him one that would cost him thousands of dollars to learn on the

outside.

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(Contd)

OFFICER: And if he wants to continue on in the service, he has a most promis-

ing career ahead of him.

Young men throughout the United States are fast becoming aware of the opportunity in the Army and I for one can say that there is no business or trade in civil life can equal it. If a man leads a honorable career, he may retire on a good pension, and during all those years in service he has the security of his job, knows he will be furnished all of his clothing, have the best medical and dental care and a good place to sleep with all the food he can cat.

May I suggest that you sec your nearest Army Recruiting Office

at once they are located in room 323 Main Post Office Bldg., Portland or in the Post Office in, Salem, Eugene, Medford, Klamath Falls, Ontario and in the Post Office Building Boise, Idaho.

ANNCR: Than!: you very much sir. You have just heard

who was kind enough to come to our studio and add a few words to our program. You are all invited to come up to the studio again next Tuesday night if you can and we’ll have another informal chat about a "Soldier of the Air".

MUSIC THEIffi_(475) UP AND FADE TO BACKGROUND.

ANNCR: These programs are produced in cooperation with the Portland Regular

Army Recruiting Station, and the Oregon Writers' Project. Tune in next Tuesday evening at this same time when the "Soldiers of the Air" will again be broadcast from the studios of KOIN, the JOURNAL, Portland.

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