I will always cherish that 8-minute flight, and will always remember what Vern Peterson meant to me. Today I still get Goosebumps remembering that flight like it was yesterday. As we were coming in approaching the airport from the north Vern nosed down his majestic bird and we were 300 feet off the deck screaming down the runway at about three quarters of the way down the end of the runway Vern pulled the throttle all the way back and made a steep climb up and left turn to get into the downwind leg of the pattern. After every flight upon returning to the airport Vern would always do a screaming low pass fly-by over the North-South runway at Gainesville going about 400 miles an hour! This day it was no different. Flying west over the Red River at about 1,200 feet Vern barrel rolled this amazing plane once to the left, then once to the right. Vern then circled back around and we were heading back towards the Gainesville Airport. Within another minute or two we were flying over the Willis Bridge US-370 on Lake Texoma. Within, what seemed like a minute and a half he did a low fly-by and buzzed a friend of Vern's home near Callisburg, TX. We took off on the east runway flying directly over the northern edge of Gainesville. He told me that he would take me up for a flight when he got back from lunch.

On this day after retuning Vern parked his plane on the apron in front of the FBO office. One afternoon he came out with a friend and the two went on about a 40-minute flight. On several occasions I would volunteer my time to clean it for him. Vern's gorgeous plane seemed to always have pigeon droppings on it. I knew Vern Peterson fairly well it seems if memory serves me correct that he would come out to the airport several times a month to take a friend or two up for a half hour or so flight.At that time the Old Camp Howze era kwansit type hanger was infested with pigeons. In the summer of 1980 I was working as a lineman at the Gainesville, TX airport. I had heard he walked away - if he was injured, it was minor.The aircraft had been housed at the Gainesville TX airport for several years, before moving down to Denton. His passenger was thrown clear, and was still strapped in his seat. He lost too much altitude, dug a wing in, and cartwheeled. Rather than bellying the aircraft in the farm fields that surround the Denton airport, he tried to turn back to the airport's runway. Post mortem showed that the crankshaft had broken in multiple places. The crash was on the first flight after engine reinstallation.Vern took off, and almost immediately the engine siezed up. Due to the cost of the rebuild, the other bank was to be done at a later date. One bank of cylinders was rebuilt to factory specs. The engine had just undergone a partial overhaul. That flight remains one of my most cherished memories.The cause of the crash was engine failure. This fact may explain why American fighter aces (such as Richard Bong or Thoma McGuire) had 'only' dozens of kills compared to several hundred kills of German aces (such as Erich Hartmann or Gerhard Barkhorn).My father knew Vern very well, and I flew with him in this aircraft about a year before it crashed.

It is also worth remembering that, unlike the German aviation, the American crews and pilots were rotated and after serving a certain period of time, they most often returned to the country, to training units, passing their experiences on. The USAAF pilot training system can also be considered successful and well-thought-out, as it was able to provide the rapidly expanding air force with well-trained pilots. Moreover, among these thousands of machines produced, one can point to the very successful P-38 Lightning, P-47 Thunderbolt or P-51 Mustang fighters, B-25 Mitchell or B-26 Marauder tactical bombers, but also the legendary B-17 Flying Fortress strategic bombers. machines, and therefore more than the aviation industry of Germany, Italy and Japan combined. It is worth remembering that in 1940-1945 it produced a total of approx. In the course of this conflict, they became the most powerful military aviation in the world, and at the time of the end of hostilities, they numbered about 2.25 million people! Due to the fact that the American aviation industry was one of the most modern and efficient in the world, the USAAF saw many successful, and sometimes great, aircraft models. During World War II, the US Air Force, the USAAF (United States Army Air Force), was not an independent type of armed force and was formally under the command of the army.

P51 cockpit seat