Before he became a bombardier, Louis Zamperini was training as a pilot. Here’s his description of learning to fly from Devil at My Heels:
MY PRIMARY TRAINING started on March 19, 1941, at the Hancock College of Aeronautics in Santa Maria, just south of San Luis Obispo, in California. They’d named the field after Captain G. Allan Hancock, a big oilman who built the Hancock Library of Biology and Oceanography at USC. He also created Hancock Park in Los Angeles, a famous mid-Wilshire neighborhood, on part of the land left to him by his father, Major Henry Hancock. I drove north with a couple of buddies. The army took pictures of me in my tracksuit, posing in a racer’s starting-line crouch, on an airplane wing. Because of my track career, I was always good for some free publicity, and I was happy to help. After a few weeks of ground studies they finally put me in a training plane. What a shock. I’d flown to New York on commercial planes, but it’s different in a small craft. Some guys loved it. I didn’t. At first I got a little disoriented, twisting and turning, but when they put me through the “spins,” that was it. I had a better time on the ground. We got weekends off, and most of us went into town to drink. That was fine as long as you didn’t come back drunk. If you did, the MPs would haul you to the infirmary and forcefully inject a 15 percent Argyrol solution straight up your penis. It burned and you’d scream your head off and not sleep well that night. They said it was for our own good, though. The air corps didn’t want anyone to catch VD from the girls in town. I heard more than one recruit protest, “No, I didn’t have any sex with any woman.” But who trusts a drunk?
Delightful details!