[Milsurplus] Bomber Fantasy Camp, OK

[Hue Miller]

The responsibilities borne by people just shortly out of high school were 
huge, yes, and the wartime losses, terrible.
But what really gets to me, is the numbers lost to accidents. You look at 
the periodicals of the time, and there were continuously
flying and training flight accidents. Some due to mechanical failure, some 
to limitations of the navigation equipment, some due
to human error. Remember that WW2 story about the people marooned in some 
valley in New Guinea after their plane crashed?
Human error, the pilot, who was so experienced that he was above errors, was 
taking a bunch of people on a sightseeing flight and
made a slight mistake about a mountain, which cost his life and the lives of 
some of his tourists. I recall reading about one pilot
trainee in the USA who buzzed a car on the highway, but misjudged his height 
a little and mashed the roof of the car. Luckily,
no casualties on that one. ( I wonder if such an incident occurred in the 
Luftwaffe. )  I recall Donald R. Blaney, TBM radio op -
gunner, telling me that at his base in the Philippines, a pilot had to take 
a TBM up for a checkout, and he invited a cook to
accompany him, as a treat, something out of the cook's ordinary day. 
Unfortunately, one of the wings fell off in flight. Is it
"Flyboys" that tells in incident where a bunch of GI's were watching a 
movie, outdoors, next to an airfield, when a plane
came in for a night landing and crashed in flames before the eyes of all the 
movie goers. LOTS of accidents.
-Hue Miller