Pratt Army Air Field

My father enlisted in the Army Air Force in August 1941. He always said he joined the Army Air Corps, the predecessor of the AAF, but the Army Air Force was created in June 1941.

Still, there seems to be some confusion. Army Air Corps continued as training and logistics elements of the AAF. My father was an airplane mechanic, so he might have joined the Army Air Corps, rather than the Army Air Force. Whichever way it was, all Army Air Corps personnel were accessed into the AAF in March 1942.

My father was initially stationed at Ellington Field near Houston. In 1943, he was transferred to Pratt Army Air Field, near Pratt, Kansas. All he ever said about Kansas was, “People there don’t like Texans.” That attitude of Kansans could have been a holdover from the 1861-65 American war, from Southern sympathizer guerrillas, from cowboys on trail drives from Texas to railheads in Kansas, or from general dislike of so many outsiders. Pratt’s population in 1940 was around 6,600. Work on the air field began in late 1942, with thousands of soldiers arriving in 1943 and 1944.

These days, Pratt Regional Airport and several businesses occupy the air field. The airport also has Pratt All Veterans Museum. Several aircraft are mounted on pylons at the gate.

My father did talk about a squadron commander at Pratt Army Air Field. The lieutenant commander had a German name and the accent to go with it, my father said.

“I think the old son of a bitch flew for the German air force in World War I,” he said.

“The son of a bitch got in just enough hours to keep his flight pay.” That would have been four hours a month. Flying an AT-10, a pilot could come close to four hours in one flight.

“The son of a bitch always asked the same question when he came down to the flight line,” my father said. “He always said, ‘Did you check mit der walwes?’ I always wanted to say, ‘Jawohl, Herr Oberstleutnant! I checked every one of the sonofabitchin walwes.’”

Another habit of the old son of a bitch was taking his English bulldog Fritz on every flight.

“One day,” my father said, “he and Fritz showed up. The dog wouldn’t get in the airplane. The old son of a bitch said, ‘I tink ve do not fly today. Fritz says dis ist not a goot day to fly.’”

My father was on Okinawa in the fall of 1945 when he last heard of the old son of a bitch. While landing a B-29 on Okinawa, the lieutenant colonel dropped the airplane about 40 feet, bursting tires and breaking the air frame just forward of the tail section.

“I heard they put him in charge of a P-38 squadron,” my father said. “I hoped the son of a bitch crashed one of those, too.”