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Last Tuesday I went to visit my youngest son Jeff, who cooks at the Blue Springs, Mo. Waffle House. I was getting ready to go back out on the road, so stopped by to say "Hey" before I left town.
I had Scott Thompson's 4th edition of Final Cut with me to read while sippin' the java. I noticed an older gent that kept looking over at my book, as he was finishing up his waffle. I spied his hat that read USAF VET. I couldn't resist, so I bet that he couldn't tell me what kind of plane was on the cover....His eyes lit up and he smiled real big at me...I lost the bet
We introduced ourselves, and set in for, as my son calls "talkin airplanes".... Mr. LeMarr joined the Army Air Corps in 1942, in Kansas City. I can't recall what all of his training consisted of, but he told me that after basic air training, they shipped him to Florida to learn to fly the B-26... Mr LeMarr told me that the Martin was too much airplane for him, and he washed out, and was sent to...??? to learn to fly the B-25.
He said he really liked the 25.
He ended up in Lincoln , Ne where he did some instructing with the B-25. He related that it seemed like it rained all the time he was in Ne. From time to time, he volunteered to fly factory new B-25s out of North American's plant in Fairfax, Ks...so he got to visit his parents quite a bit. He said that he accumulated almost 200 hours in the Mitchell.
His story really got interesting when he told me that he was getting bored with stateside duty while a war was going on, so when some folks came out from Washington looking for air-sea rescue pilots, he jumped on their offer. He ended up flying what he called "Dumbos" I asked what kind of a transition he had from flying for the Army, to flying Navy aircraft...He told me he went to a class somewhere in Fla., where he had a 2 week school to learn "seamanship" and got checked out in the PBY. He said the hardest part was learning who to salute.
Mr LeMarr related that he spent the entire war patrolling all over southern Fla, Cuba, and S. America, but never got a chance to fire a bullet in a wartime situation.. In fact the only time any of his guns were fired except for target practice, was when his crewmen decided to shoot at a whale somewhere in the Louisiana Mississippi delta....turned out the whale was actually an off shore dock that rich folks tied their big boats to...
He said he had only one bad experience when a wing started buckling on the Catalina, but they all managed to bail out without harm. One story he told very much amused me....He said that standard equipment on the Cat, was a bag filled with golf tees and a big mallot. He said that every time they made a water landing, that a few rivets would always pop on the hull, so his crew would pound the golf tees into the rivet holes when they got her up on her gear.
Thanks Mr LeMarr, for your service, no matter how boring it was! I hope to run into him again soon when I get back home, maybe I'll lose another bet, and have to buy his dinner again!
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