While at the Air Museum in Ontario, CA in October I had a chance to meet Jack Morgan. Jack is a member of the Confederate Air Force and is a veteran P47 pilot. An unassuming man with a ready smile, he agreed to an interview.

CSim: Jack, what got you interested in aviation?

The first time I saw an airplane - all wood and fabric, was at an army "Open House" at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. I was five and my mother had taken me there. As we walked through the displays as a part of a large crowd, I noticed a beautiful, graceful machine perched upon what appeared to be a stage. I was intriqued, and my little feet came to a halt while my mother's did not. In a minute or so, she came rushing back, grabbed me up and said, "My Goodness, I thought you were lost!"

Little did she know just how "lost" I was. From that day on I was lost to the dreams of flying.

Later, my family was assigned to an oil company pump station located 42 miles from the nearest town. We lived in a camp with about six other families in one of the wildest, most desolate areas in Texas. But it was just a few miles from one of the graveyards of early aviation, Guadelupe Pass, and planes would pass over our camp two or three times a week. And who was always outside with his eyes in the heavens at the first sound of an airplane engine?

Yeah...you know!

That continued contact kept my dreams fueled until the day when I was about 10 years of age, living in a small oil town further down the line from the other place. My dad had a friend, and oil man with a little "wildcat" money, and this friend had an airplane.

Aaah, the beauty of that machine lives in my memory to this day. I never knew the make of the thing, but it was the usual design of the day - bi-plane, tail-dragger with a radial engine that made a hell-of-a-lot of wonderous noise. Old Bill Eppenauer flew that plane all around west Texas and even carried bottles of nitroglycerin in the second cockpit.

Then one day, my dad came in and asked if me, my sister and my mother would like to go out to airport to see Bill's plane. Boy...does a cow have a tail? Then, when we got there, Bill asked if I wanted to go up. I almost floated over to the plane, but since my dad was just a bit apprehensive of flying, my mother, much to my chagrin, squeezed in beside me and we took off.

I won't even try to express my feelings as I saw our car and my dad grow smaller and smaller. The wind was blowing my hair, my mother was grinning at me and my wide-wide eyes, and if I had had a bad heart I would have died a blissful death right then and there.

From then on, it was not what I was going to do in life, it was just, "when was I gonna be old enough to do it."

Click to continue . . .

CSim: You didn't start out the war as a pilot, what were you doing at first?

Well, on Monday, December 8th, 1941 I was `in a recruiting station trying to become an aviation cadet. Due to the lack of facilities to train us, I had to wait until the next April before going to the San Antonio Aviation Cadet Center.

Where I promptly washed out. For medical reasons. Albumin. In my urine.

I was reasigned to a classification center and did manage to qualify for aerial gunnery training. But instead of being quickly assigned to a combat unit overseas, they held me over as an instructor.

So how did I get into piloting?

After about six months of instructing, I had one "student" who was a Major. Since he was to be the new CO of our squadron, he was taking the course to see what he would be commanding. One day he said, "Jack, I am the cadet procurement officer of the base, and since you love flying so much, why don't you apply?"

I told him the whole lurid story of how I couldn't fill the little bottle correctly and after some laughter, he thought a minute and came back with a suggestion. "Why don't you apply again, and when it comes to the time when you are filling the bottle, just ask the guy next to you for some of his?"

You know, that worked for the next three years...and I was lucky enough not to have found someone with VD!

CSim: Where did you take your training?

My primary training was in the PT-19 at Hatbox Field near Muskogee, Oklahoma. The PT-19 was a joy to fly and it taught me well, in spite of those screaming, cussing civilian instructors who seemed bent on making you never wanting to get in an airplane again. But in all fairness, I must admit that because of their "inhuman" ways, after that I was always able to take a lot of outside distraction and still keep my mind on what I was doing.

My basic training was taken at Coffyville, Kansas in the BT 13...a plane that does not hold a soft spot in my heart. It was a fine plane, I guess, but not too exciting to fly. At least not as exciting as that great, great old lady of the skies, the AT-6 advanced trainer.

By being assigned to an AT-6 training facility it indicated that I, we, were being prepped for fighters. What a thrill. What a load off our minds. And what a nice city to have "Open Post" in on Saturday nights, Victoria, Texas.

Go to Part II