The plane we were flying had an open cockpit and, as it was cold at the time, it was very cold up there some days. We had the leather sheepskin lined flying suit and it was very warm. On warmer days we would just wear underwear under the suit. After six hours of instruction we were ready to solo. It was quite an experience and after you got up there all you did was worry about getting down! I had a bumpy landing but soon got better at it. Some days for a whole hour we would just take off and land over and over again for practice. After this we flew part of the time alone and part of the time with the instructor. This was the period when the instructors really washed out the ones they figured would never be fighter pilots and they were sent to other air corps Jobs.
I loved doing acrobatics with the loops, spins, rolls and upside down flying. My instructor took me up once and did an outside loop. I had to hang onto the iron bars in the cockpit and the blood all went to the top of your head. You would nearly pass out doing that one. He also showed me how to fly backwards. On a windy day you would slow the airplane down so it would just stay up and the wind would blow you backwards. You could look down and see the fields and buildings all going in the opposite direction.
One night we had to fly a triangle cross country course of about one hours time. We had not done much flying at night and we took off at intervals and started out all alone towards the first check point. I missed the first checkpoint and finally realized I was lost. I didn't know what to do so the first town I saw with enough lights, I flew down the middle of Main Street real low and got the name of the town either off the movie house or the bank and then looked it up on my map. I was way off course and had to figure my heading to the next checkpoint. I made it okay but was about a half hour overdue and they thought I had gone down. I didn't get reprimanded so I figure they thought I had used my head to solve my problem and did the right thing.
Almost all of our flying here was takeoffs and landings and in the air we practiced spins, slow rolls, snap rolls, and figure eights to get the feel of the airplane and develop our control. It was hard to get the plane out of a tight spin but it was an important thing to learn. The planes that we later flew in California were notorious for not being able to get out of a spin. I had 60 hours of flying time here and in January of 1943 was graduated from primary training school. We had to fly with the commanding officer for our final test. All five students with our instructor passed but a lot of the others didn't make it. Three or four from each group were the average to make it. We really liked our instructor and it was hard to part from him and go on to the next school.