Dick had to defend a large number of AWOL cases and, since they were all cut and dried, lost them all. In fact, none of the AWOL cases was won by the defense, regardless of who was defending them. Nevertheless, it was somewhat embarrassing for Dick whenever we went to the post exchange (PX). At that time the base stockade was right next to the PX, and as he approached, a large percentage of the prisoners would wave and shout, "Hi, Captain Jones, have you won any cases yet?"
We tried about a dozen cases over the several months of my tenure on the board, but two of them stand out in my memory. The first was a particularly pitiful case involving a young, illiterate, enlisted man who had to depend on his squadron mates to read items on the bulletin board for him, including the daily bulletin, required reading for all personnel. During this period, shortly after the end of the war, soldiers were getting discharge orders almost every day. One day, as a cruel joke, the other soldiers informed him that he was discharged and that he should go home and wait for his discharge papers.
His home was on a farm about twenty miles north of Pensacola, Florida, which is forty miles west of Eglin. On the stand he said, "When they told me I was discharged, I hitched a ride to Pepsicoly, and my folks picked me up. I waited for two months, still wearing my uniform, awaitin' my orders, and then the MPs [military police] come to take me back." He was accused of desertion because of the length of his period of AWOL, but he was obviously not a deserter. He was convicted of being AWOL, but the sentence was suspended, and he received an honorable discharge and went back to the farm near Pepsicoly, where I hope he has had a good life in those more gentle surroundings.
The second case was more serious. A lieutenant, in an enlisted man's uniform, had visited a bar off-limits to officers in the nearby town of Crestview for reasons he never made clear. He probably would have gotten away with that, but he got drunk and started a large fight, or a small riot, in which a lot of furnishings and windows were destroyed. Then to top it off, he tried to get away in his car and promptly collided almost head-on with another car. Fortunately there were no serious injuries. He was arrested, however, and turned over to the MPs for trial by general court-martial.
One of the first witnesses was an old man from Crestview who had been in the bar and seen the whole fracas. After the trial judge advocate (TJA) had established that fact, he asked the witness if he could identify the lieutenant, and if so, would he point him out to the court. To the consternation of the TJA and to my astonishment, the witness pointed at me. I think he must have suffered a whiplash as the TJA spun him around to face the accused, whom he subsequently identified as the bad guy. I was about the same build and height as the accused, and we both had dark hair, but the similarity ended there. Besides I was a captain. That tended to discredit the witness, but as there were four others to identify the lieutenant, correctly this time, it didn't hurt the case, and the defendant was found guilty on all counts and given an appropriate sentence. Shortly after that my legal career came to an end with the appointment of a new board, and I was able to go back to full-time flying, at which I was much more proficient.
In early January I was excited by the prospect not only of visiting New Orleans for the first time but also of flying in my first airshow. Both were in conjunction with the opening of Moisant Field (now Moisant International Airport) in New Orleans. Moisant Field, just west of New Orleans, was scheduled for completion and opening in the second week of January 1946. It was named for John B. Moisant, a wealthy sportsman and pioneer flier who won a number of air races in 1909 and 1910 and was a public idol. He was killed in a crash in New Orleans on December 31, 1910, while attempting to win the Michelin Prize for flight duration. His sister, Matilde, was one of the better-known woman pilots during that period.
Although the field was far from ready for opening, the city fathers decided to have the ceremony on schedule but not to open the field to traffic until sometime later. They asked Harding Army Airfield, near Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to provide AAF aircraft and Naval Air Station (NAS) Pensacola to provide Navy aircraft for both static display and fly-bys for the ceremonies. NAS Pensacola, a training base, had no first-line operational aircraft for the show. Therefore, they arranged for a Grumman TBM Avenger torpedo bomber from NAS Opa Locka and a pair of fighters, a Grumman F6F Hellcat and a Vought F4U Corsair from NAS Jacksonville, to participate. Then, for the sake of the airshow, the Navy swallowed its pride and asked Eglin if it would fly the three latest naval aircraft, the F7F and F8F and the FR-1, in the show. Since the Navy is one of our allies, the commanding general of the Proving Ground Command approved the request, and Dick Jones, Bill Greene, and I were chosen to fly them.
Consequently, on January 11, we took off — Dick in the FR-1, Bill in the F8F, and me leading in the F7F — for the fifty-mile flight to Bronson Field, one of the Pensacola training fields, where the Navy planes would assemble and where we would be briefed. After being cleared by Bronson tower, we approached the landing runway at about 250 mph and a height of about 100 feet. At the beginning of the runway we peeled up to the left out of our right echelon formation and made a standard AAF fighter approach, which is essentially a loop except that instead of being in the vertical plane, it is about 40 or 45 degrees from the vertical. The gear and flaps are lowered, and the plane is slowed to landing speed and rolled onto the runway heading just as it crosses the end of the runway. This was a much different pattern from the one the Navy pilots fly. They fly long, low, straight approaches used for landing on aircraft carriers.
After we parked we were taken to meet Comdr. Harold Funk, the commander of Bronson Field, who was in charge of the airshow detachment. He was a fighter ace from the Pacific, where he had flown Grumman F4F Wildcats and the version built by General Motors, the FM1, which he called the Housecat. He was intrigued by the F8F Bearcat, which he had not seen before. After looking it over, he said he would like to fly it, and after a brief huddle we agreed that he could. It may have been the only time a Navy commander (equivalent rank to a lieutenant colonel in the Army) asked an Army Air Force captain for permission to do anything, especially to fly a Navy airplane. Bill gave him a short briefing and a cockpit check, after which he took off and put on a great show. Starting with a steep climb after takeoff, he performed a series of well-executed loops, Cuban eights, and vertical rolls, ending with a top-speed low pass followed by a double Immelmann. All of the spectators, AAF included, were duly impressed.
Today's pilots could never get away with giving a pilot from another service, or their own service for that matter, a spur-of-the-moment checkout. Of course, the World War II aircraft were orders of magnitude simpler, and less expensive, than today's aircraft. A P-51 cost about $60,000 in 1944; today a Grumman F-14 Tomcat runs about $30 million. Things were much looser then, so there were no repercussions.