Dear Mother,
Not much to write about tonight. However, I'll try to do my best at bringing you, "up-to-date." We had open post over Saturday night and Sunday. On Saturday, I saw a movie, "The Silver Queen" and spent a hectic three hours at trying to get back to Ellington. It started to rain and when it rains here, it really rains. Naturally, I failed to bring my raincoat to town, so I just went from one doorway to the next trying to get to the bus station.

I finally got there and had to sweat out a long time waiting for our buses. Seems as though the dear little navigators and bombardiers beat me to the station. I came back in town Sunday after drying all my clothes. I saw another show, "Girl Crazy" with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland.

After the show, I went to an ice cream parlor next to the show and happened to meet a very nice girl there. The place was rather crowded, so I just sat down at a booth where she was sitting. Naturally, I struck up a conversation and soon had a date with her. We went out for supper and afterwards she took me to her church - happened to be Methodist, too. She is a very nice girl and awfully cute. We cadets like to be seen with cute girls! Her name is Jo Bradshaw - now I'm not going overboard, so don't get worried.

Today was spent in flying formation, mostly. I took off at 1:00 and landed at 3:30 for refueling. We went right back up until 6:30, at which time I prepared to make a landing. As you know, the landing gear in our plane is retractable - that is, it is folded up out of sight after we take off. The idea is to cut down on wind resistance and get more speed. Anyway, I threw the switch to lower the landing gear, but it didn't work. However, we can crank the gear down manually in such a case, so naturally I started to crank. After about 1/2 hour, we got the wheels down, but we weren't sure if the gear was actually locked in the down position.

I called in to the control tower about our situation and they said to attempt a landing and they would have the "crash truck" stand by. To make a long story short, I made a real smooth landing and the landing gear held O.K. So, everything came out better than could be expected.

It is now the evening of December 1. Not much has happened since the other side of this page. I've been flying lots of formation and shooting stages - nothing exciting. Received your letter today. I've decided what I want for Christmas - a little radio. That's about all I can think of, but I guess that's more than enough.

Ralph is at Ardmore, Oklahoma, isn't he? If so, that means he will be a navigator on a B-17 Flying Fortress. Anyway, Ardmore, I'm sure, is an operations training unit where they give final training to B-17 crews before combat duty. That's the place where the crew learns to work together. As you know, I asked for B-17 - if I were about three classes ahead I'd have a good chance of having Ralph in my crew. But, I'm in 44-A, so I won't have much choice in my crew for quite some time.

I had to do my first real instrument flying today. I had been shooting a stage over at Red Bluff Airport, which is one of our auxiliary fields. While there, a rain storm came up and they sent me back to Ellington. On the way back, we ran into some real weather and the visibility dropped to nothing! So, "little Jack" just flies by his instruments and with the aid of the radio, I made it back O.K. I didn't see Ellington Field until I made a let down through the overcast - broke out at 300 feet right over the field. I was very proud of my flying because of that.

Speaking of weather, us advanced cadets here fly when the birds have to walk. One boy tells of flying in bad weather and as he was approaching the field, he noticed a bird riding on his wing. He didn't think much about it until after he landed, because at this time the little bird just "hopped off" and walked away. It makes rather a good tall story, doesn't it?

Well, I have lots of studying to do, so must close. I'll try to write tomorrow night.

Lots of love,
Jack

p.s. The pictures are of the AT-9. I fly an AT-10, which is very similar to the AT-9, but slightly larger and a year newer. More or less an improved AT-9. The lines of the ship are quite the same. The AT-10 is larger, so that more weight can be handled and more gas carried. Jack

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