Page 84 - Appendix A

Ivan: Okay.

Bob: All about aviation which is similar to what the whites were doing at that time. And
then later upon completion of ground school we went into flying. We would fly
half a day and do ground school half a day. So that went on until we completed
primary training. And after you completed primary training then you went over to
the Air Base and you follow the same curriculum that the whites were following
in their cadet training. You go through basic training, lower basic, upper basic,
lower advance, upper advance and you graduate and become an officer or flight
officer. And that was something that probably was not brought out too much. But
in graduating they establish who is going to be a second lieutenant and officer and

who is going to be a flight officer. Which is equivalent to warrant officer within the
Air Corps. So we had a lot of... some classes had maybe three-fourths of the class
graduating as flight officers and a small group as second lieutenants. In our class,
I can’t remember how many lieutenants we had. I'll have to look that up and how
many flight officers we had when we graduated.

Ivan: I've never had that. I've never heard that before. Because you know in the movies
they always show everybody you know that graduated became a lieutenant, they
didn’t show these other...

Bob: We had lots of flight officers graduating and most classes had more flight officers
than second lieutenants.

Ivan: So tell me…at a unit what does a flight officer do and how is it different from a
lieutenant?

Bob: Well he was not an officer so he cannot perform any officer's duty, so primarily
what they did was just fly.

Ivan: Wow.

Bob: And of course, I graduated second lieutenant and we second lieutenants would
say “hey what the heck those guys that sit around and play cards all day and fly”
and they got us doing Class A agents, we had so many additional duties. I mean
everything they found that you needed someone, an officer to do it, especially
when the base was being reduced and closing. You were given additional duties