He was George Eccles from Syracuse, passed three years ago in the home he had been born in. He flew Corsairs during the last couple of years of the war and never flew afterwards, not even as a passenger. I had talked to him some about flying Corsairs and he had never mentioned any particular incidents.

I went to Boston one year to run the marathon, met my daughter and son-in-law there and stayed at the home of one of the son-in-law's sisters. The sister was showing old family photos when she came on one of a T-6, the Navy called them SNJs, in mid crash, going over the side of a carrier. When I asked she said, "that's Dad on his first carrier landing,"

At the next opportunity, I asked George about it. He said that it happened on a training carrier in one of the Great Lakes. Then he said, "I was worried for awhile but the procedures they taught us for getting unstrapped and out of the cockpit worked and I was only about 30 feet under water when I got out and the Mae West floated me right up and they had motor boats surrounding the carrier to pick up the pilots. I then asked what happened next, "they took me to the hospital and said I was ok", and next, "I had to come back the next day and get it right".

Certainly a different philosophy about training losses.

For some reason, I am in a story telling mode this morning. I guess because it is raining in TN and I want to put off working on income tax so I will also tell about Sam Cochran, I think of him as Major Cochran, one of my instructors and friends when I was a USAFA cadet. After USAF retirement he taught at East Texas State.

Sam had been badly burnt during WWII when he was shot down over the coast of France flying an A-26. If you didn't know burns and think about it you would not likely realize that he had been burnt. You could see the difference in his skin where his ear phones had protected around his ears and his nose was a little too narrow for a large man, but most folks would never have noticed. He said he was very fortunate, he landed on the beach, was taken to the hospital and his burns repaired by the Germans. The navigator landed in the water, was picked up by the Brits in a speed boat, and taken back to England. According to Sam, the navigator looked much worse because the Germans were more advanced in their burn treatments that the Allies were. When Sam had recovered and was going to be shipped out of the hospital to a POW camp, the French workers at the hospital arranged for his escape. He just got out of bed at 2AM, walked away and met French resistance outside the hospital. He then walked out over the mountains to Spain and eventually made it back to the States. His reward was that he was assigned a nice, safe, stateside flying job. He had to fly an armored P-39 towing gunnery targets. He said he would get holes on at least every 3 or 4 flights and was actually shot down and had to bail out once.