[Richard Misenhimer] My name is Richard Misenhimer,
and today is January 21st, 2003.
I am interviewing Mr. Boyd K. Miller,
known as BK Miller,
at his home at 1035 Stadium in Alice, Texas 78332.
This interview is in support of
the National Museum of the Pacific Wars,
Center for Pacific War Studies for
the preservation of historical information
related to World War II.
Mr. Miller, I want to thank
you for taking time to do this interview today.
[Boyd K. Miller] I think it's nice of you to take time to do all of it.
[Richard Misenhimer] Let me ask you, where were you born?
[Boyd K. Miller] In Houston, Texas.
[Richard Misenhimer] What is your birth date?
[Boyd K. Miller] 9.1.23.
[Richard Misenhimer] Did you have brothers and sisters?
[Boyd K. Miller] One brother and one sister.
[Richard Misenhimer] Was your brother in World War II?
[Boyd K. Miller] Yes, he was a pilot and right at the beginning,
I don't know what year,
but he was taught aviation,
cadets and they choose him and
guys taking or parallel with him to their jobs.
They couldn't do anything.
They couldn't join the Navy,
Army, Air Force, or anything else.
They had to stay there and teach.
[Richard Misenhimer] He was a civilian doing that?
[Boyd K. Miller] Yeah, civilian,
and the government contracted with
civilian companies to do this primary training?
[Richard Misenhimer] Is he older or younger than you?
[Boyd K. Miller] He is three years older than I am.
[Richard Misenhimer] Where did he do this training at?
[Boyd K. Miller] He did most of it at Cuero, Texas.
[Richard Misenhimer] He stayed there the whole war then?
[Boyd K. Miller] That's what I say. Most of it,
I believe he was there the whole war.
[Richard Misenhimer] So he never actually got into the military then?
[Boyd K. Miller] No.
[Richard Misenhimer] Interesting.
[Boyd K. Miller] The program that they called it,
it was essentially military,
but they weren't actually military.
[Richard Misenhimer] Right.
[Boyd K. Miller] That school was called Brayton Flying Service in Cuero.
[Richard Misenhimer] CPT, civilian pilot training was program?
[Boyd K. Miller] Well, no.
[Richard Misenhimer] No.
[Boyd K. Miller] That's where my brother got his training.
[Richard Misenhimer] That's what I mean.
[Boyd K. Miller] When you completed it,
he went to work for this Brayton flying school,
and taught, it was Army Air Corps cadet.
Primary (inaudible) training.
[Richard Misenhimer] Where did you take your grammar school
in high school? Where did you take that?
[Boyd K. Miller] Grammar school. Well,
all those in Houston with,
Montrose elementary school and Sidney Lanier junior high,
and Mirabeau Lamar high-school.
[Richard Misenhimer] What year did you graduate?
[Boyd K. Miller] 1940.
[Richard Misenhimer] Forty, okay.
Then when did you go into the service?
[Boyd K. Miller] In January of '43
[Richard Misenhimer] What did you do from 1940 to '43 here?
[Boyd K. Miller] I went to college.
[Richard Misenhimer] Where did you go?
[Boyd K. Miller] I went to University of Houston.
[Richard Misenhimer] What were you studying?
[Boyd K. Miller] I was an art major.
I had won some scholarships in art,
and looked like that was a real easy field for me,
so that's what I started studying.
[Richard Misenhimer] When you went into the service, were
you drafted or did you volunteer?
[Boyd K. Miller] I was drafted.
[Richard Misenhimer] In January of '43?
[Boyd K. Miller] Right.
[Richard Misenhimer] Do you remember what day?
[Boyd K. Miller] January the 19th was the swearing in,
pretty early in January.
[Richard Misenhimer] Then you went into the army?
[Boyd K. Miller] Right.
[Richard Misenhimer] Where did you take your training Miller?
Where did you go from there?
[Boyd K. Miller] Well, I went to four time Houston
and I don't remember what they
call it initial (inaudible).
[Richard Misenhimer] How long was it?
[Boyd K. Miller] Induction center?
[Richard Misenhimer] Yeah, induction center, right.
[Boyd K. Miller] Then they sent me to an assignment,
was called Engineer Amphibian Command,
and that was in Massachusetts.
I was in that for quite a little while.
It was Fort Devens Massachusetts
and and later Camp Edwards.
[Richard Misenhimer] Did you take any basic training?
[Boyd K. Miller] I took basic training at both,
at Fort Devens and Camp Edwards.
[Richard Misenhimer] This was infantry basic training or what?
[Boyd K. Miller] It was infantry basic training.
[Richard Misenhimer] About how long was that, do you recall?
[Boyd K. Miller] No, I don't remember, pretty long. (laughing)
[Richard Misenhimer] Where did you live in there?
[Boyd K. Miller] In barracks.
[Richard Misenhimer] Barracks. That was January when you went up there.
That was pretty cold up there?
[Boyd K. Miller] It is very cold.
We got out of a truck in the middle of
the night and snow up to our hips,
and here this whole South Texas boy,
and weren't really used to that,
but it was interesting.
[Richard Misenhimer] How was the food there?
[Boyd K. Miller] The food was fine,
I don't remember anything specific.
Some place along the line,
I know we had pork chops 49 days in a row.
I thought I liked pork chops,
but after that, you get to one.
[Richard Misenhimer] That's right. How did you travel up to Massachusetts?
[Boyd K. Miller] By train
[Richard Misenhimer] Troop train or were you on a civilian train?
[Boyd K. Miller] It was just a civilian train,
and they had I don't know,
maybe there were separate cars for the military.
I don't even know how many guys were sent.
Not a whole lot.
[Richard Misenhimer] Approximate how long did it take to get there?
[Boyd K. Miller] I would guess something like four or five days.
[Richard Misenhimer] Did you have a sleeper
or were you in a chair or how did you go?
[Boyd K. Miller] No, just a regular chair.
[Richard Misenhimer] Then no stopping along the way,
as far as getting off or anything.
[Boyd K. Miller] No.
[Richard Misenhimer] You arrive there, hold that snow.
(laughing) There you took
infantry basic, is that correct?
[Boyd K. Miller] Right, but I also took training for
this Engineer Amphibian Command.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Boyd K. Miller] They were activating what they call
the 4th Amphibious Brigade.
I never did find out for sure what happened at 1,
2, or 3, but this was four.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Boyd K. Miller] I worked in an office.
I ran a transient barracks,
where we would get recruits.
It's like how I was.
You get one of those big barracks,
two story kind,
where I had double bunks.
I don't recall how many in here,
but somewhere around 200.
These recruits would come in and I started
out assisting the sergeant in
processing the other recruits
and issues of special equipment.
I had paratroop boots and different types of (inaudible).
Maybe something else and
set it out a little different
than other outfits in the army.
[Richard Misenhimer] Now this is while you were taking infantry basic,
or just everything, or you were doing it.
[Boyd K. Miller] Yeah
[Richard Misenhimer] Did you have to go on quite a bit of marching?
[Boyd K. Miller] We had that. I know sometime those night marches,
I think we had buddies
and you were supposed to stick close to the buddy.
I had groups divided into
two parts like A and D, red and blue,
or something, some type of a military tactical thing,
where one group was supposed to try to outdo the other.
I was walking with his buddy and we were whispering,
because it's security,
and I whispered something.
He didn't respond and I turned
around and looked for him and he wasn't there.
(laughing) Sure enough, he had fallen
in a snowfield fox holes.
(laughing) Kind of amusing.
[Richard Misenhimer] Right. Anything else
amusing happened while you were there?
[Boyd K. Miller] Yeah. Something real amusing.
We had some people from the Signal Corps.
Fairly they were in the service,
but they got in the Signal school,
they were about five of them.
One was a guy named Jimmy LaCurto who
said that he was
the radio actor that plays a part of the Shadow.
Then from Houston we'd hear it every now and then,
but it was this real regular.
But one time I had a barracks full of
the New York recruits and that's
the heart of the Shadow country.
We had a typically ghosty night,
it was stormy, and power went off,
and there was snow and ice everywhere,
and this barrack for
New York kids that they were frightened anyway.
I asked Jimmy, I guess
the most famous thing for the shadow was
this laugh where it would start out high
and go down low.
Said Jimmy, why don't just for entertainment,
the lights are out and go out in
the middle of the barracks and do
the shadow laugh and he thought,
I better not do that.
(laughing) I finally talked him into it and
so he did it,
and it was booming.
When I knew what was going on and it scared me,
Bobby, New York had started running and stumbling,
falling over the larn balcony
(laughing) and the next day it's
sick call when I had
over half my barracks report
(laughing) and I had a lot of explaining to do.
(laughing) We were just playing games, sir. (laughing)
[Richard Misenhimer] Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men.
[Boyd K. Miller] Yeah, and the shadow knows.
(laughing) But he told me how he developed that laugh,
but the director knew a certain sound that he wanted,
so Jimmy said he'd laugh into different types of
containers like boxes and buckets and various things.
They got the sound with the echo like effect from
this particular container that the director likes.
They taped it and he
practiced it to where he could do it
real well without the aid of the bucket.
He did it really well that night. (laughing)
[Richard Misenhimer] Now, what did your amphibious training consist of there?
[Boyd K. Miller] Well, I didn't really train in amphibious equipment
but Allison had, what do they call it?
There's a number for your occupancy.
[Richard Misenhimer] The MOS.
[Boyd K. Miller] MOS. Yeah. Mine was
artist draftsman since I've been studying
in art and I did drafting
too for our next door neighbor was an architect,
so anyway, I would do artwork and
drafting for these training manuals that they
used for the Amphibious Program
that was how to establish beach heads.
We'd had diagram that show where you put the gasoline,
where you put the food and ammunition,
and there were various types
of craft that would come out in the front,
would open up and either
the men would run out or tanks or something.
There are different kind of they call them dumps,
they establish the dump or
whatever type of equipment it was.
[Richard Misenhimer] You drew the diagram for that or whatever?
[Boyd K. Miller] Yeah. Whatever artwork was needed.
There were, I think four of
us in this office who did that.
It was unusual.
One was a Captain and one was a First Lieutenant,
and one was either a Corporal or a Sergeant,
and now I was just a Private.
(laughing) We all did the same work.
(laughing) I don't think we got the same pay.
[Richard Misenhimer] Speaking of pay, do you recall
what your pay was when you went in?
[Boyd K. Miller] I sure don't see like $28, does that ring a bell?
[Richard Misenhimer] Could be.
[Boyd K. Miller] I think that was it.
[Richard Misenhimer] Yeah.
[Boyd K. Miller] I'm not sure.
[Richard Misenhimer] This was at the same time you're
taking your basic you're doing this. Is that correct?
[Boyd K. Miller] Right. Then I went
to Camp Edwards with the Amphibian Command.
That Camp Edwards is where I
work on those training guide.
[Richard Misenhimer] Oh, okay.
[Boyd K. Miller] Not at Port Daven.
At Port Daven I was
the Sergeant Assistant to
running those transient barracks.
(crosstalk) Later,
he went somewhere or went to the hospital really.
I just ran the barracks by myself.
Did his work and mine too.
(laughing) In addition to your normal duties,
you will do this,
that and the other and that what they said.
[Richard Misenhimer] Yeah. Right. (laughing)
[Boyd K. Miller] Then I went to Camp Edwards and that's where I did
the basic training and again
and it was a little more intense,
and there was a field
associated with Camp Edwards called Otisfield.
I'd be marching along tearing that path,
and I didn't want to rifle and I'd see
these planes taking off and landing.
Those guys, I guess they're in
training pretty much the same as I am,
but they're not walking.
(laughing) I applied for transfer to the Air Corp.
My brother being a pilot and
a lot of my buddies signed up
for the Air Corps to be pilots,
and the reason that I didn't go in earlier was that I was
trying to complete the second year
of college before I went in to service.
I finally managed to get the okay to take
the series of tests to see if I
qualified to go on the Air Corp or Air Force,
no it was a Army Air Corp.
Eventually, I got in and it was unusual there was
a Adjutant General Officer
that would come by and check
this place where I was working it was all,
I don't remember the level of
restriction but it was pretty classified.
This guy would check out everybody out from
time to time and just look around
and he's the one that signed
the application for me to apply for
this Air Corp training or transfer.
One day, when he was down at our area,
it didn't seem like several months.
He said, "What in the world are you still doing here"?
I said, "It's where I work".
He said, "What about your transfer"?
Well I said, "Nothing ever
happened," He said, "We'll find out."
We got in a vehicle and we went from station to station,
it's a great big field
and we'll find out where it got pigeonholed,
and sure enough, he found it.
He was a Major and he let some Carnal have
it (laughing) (crosstalk)
for pigeonholing that application.
I did get the okay to take the test
and I passed the test and got into Air Corp.
[Richard Misenhimer] About when or day was that?
Do you recall the date when you transfer to the Air Corp?
[Boyd K. Miller] No, sir. I might.
[Richard Misenhimer] Read it again.
[Boyd K. Miller] Sworn in. Well,
this information down here is really not very applicable.
No, I don't have when I changed.
[Richard Misenhimer] Had you been in about a year, do
you think or less or more?
[Boyd K. Miller] Oh no, less.
[Richard Misenhimer] Less than a year, okay.
It's still be sometime in 43 then?
[Boyd K. Miller] Yeah.
[Richard Misenhimer] That's close enough.
[Boyd K. Miller] It said I got an emergency furlough.
(inaudible) I got an emergency furlough for
my mother's illness and I was
already in the Air Corps but I wasn't doing anything.
I was at Classification Center, Nashville.
[Richard Misenhimer] Where?
[Boyd K. Miller] Nashville. That's where you
take this test and then you just lay around and wait.
[Richard Misenhimer] I know of it.
[Boyd K. Miller] It was real cold air and they'd burn
coal and it was black snow. (laughing)
[Richard Misenhimer] That was in Nashville, Tennessee, yeah?
[Boyd K. Miller] Right.
[Richard Misenhimer] So you went from
Camp Edwards down to Nashville, Tennessee?
[Boyd K. Miller] Yeah.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Boyd K. Miller] Took these tests and that's where they would decide.
I had applied to be in the flight program.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Boyd K. Miller] You take this test and they would determine whether
you're best suited to be a pilot,
navigator, or a bombardier,
or none of the above.
Then I think also in
the pilot category there was
single engine or multi engine.
Everybody I knew wanted to be
single engine and that's what well, I got to be.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay. You passed the
(inaudible) went into
pilot training for single engine then?
[Boyd K. Miller] Well, yeah. I was signed up for it but they
didn't have room in the schools at the time,
and so we just got assigned to
some other fields and they did things.
Well, that gave me the
okay to be in the cadet program pilot training.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Boyd K. Miller] Then I went to,
I call it Pre-flight, was at Montgomery?
[Richard Misenhimer] Ground school?
[Boyd K. Miller] Yeah.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Boyd K. Miller] No flying involved at all there.
Somewhere along the way,
I went to thing called CTD,
which was the College Training Detachment.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Boyd K. Miller] I was sent to,
I'll think of it in a minute, but then Pennsylvania.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Boyd K. Miller] You had a series of
college level courses in history and speaking.
Then he also had 10 hours of riding in a cab to see if
he could be acclimated
to flying because some people just couldn't go up.
[Richard Misenhimer] When you transferred to the Air Corps,
did you get a increase in rank or anything?
[Boyd K. Miller] No.
[Richard Misenhimer] Still Private?
[Boyd K. Miller] Well, it was aviation cadet.
It was just a change but it
was essentially like a private.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Boyd K. Miller] Somewhere I got to be a PFC when I
was in the (inaudible) (laughing) command.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Boyd K. Miller] As a result of that and the basic training,
and I took basic training again
and (laughing) in the Air Corps.
But they had a system of
cadet officers so guys with previous experience,
like I was six months, eight months,
whatever it was, made me an old hand (laughing).
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Boyd K. Miller] So I was always a cadet officer which
meant rarely you do
the work and put your one on the cadets.
Then you're in-between because you had to regulate
the cadet program and
be sure your body was where it was supposed to be.
It was this really double duty.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay. So in Pennsylvania
then you took these college courses.
Were you at a college there?
[Boyd K. Miller] That was Lafayette College, Eastern Pennsylvania.
I don't know why that's considered an
Ivy League school or not,
but it had a lot of Ivy on big old stone buildings.
(laughing) We lived in dormitories there.
It was just a real pleasant experience.
There weren't any military bases around,
but there were a lot of girls (laughing).
They would call the dorm and there was
a phone in the car or outside of our room.
There were three guys in the room I was in
and one of them would answer the phone most
of the time and he would talk to the girls and he'd
line up a date which I'm
sure the girls were interested in.
He'd line them up for Saturday at
noon or something like that and said,
"I'll meet you at the town square."
So they would be on the square itself and
he would be maneuvering around on
the other side across
the street and then he'd pick out the best looking
one and then go over and tell her who he was and leave
the rest for scrubs. (laughing)
[Richard Misenhimer] I got it. Of course,
there were still college students going there
also as well as you Air Corps people?
[Boyd K. Miller] Yeah. But there was also
some native boys going there and
some type of program that required a
few more of those than there were us.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay. About how long were you there then?
[Boyd K. Miller] It was about six months or something like that.
[Richard Misenhimer] So you probably went there towards the end of 43 and
then the middle of 44
or some (inaudible) when you finished up there?
[Boyd K. Miller] I think so. Probably about right.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Boyd K. Miller] Then like I mentioned earlier there,
they didn't have room for all the cadets in
the training program so they just found jobs for us.
They were supposed to be in training or you'd learn
a little bit about the airplanes
and most of it was putting chalk,
and filling gas tanks on
planes, and assisting mechanics.
I guess one of the first actual flight that
I went on beside that cab was with a WASP.
They had some WASPs,
they would do the engineering flights and they would
check planes after a wing change
or something of that nature,
and they would try these prescribed maneuvers.
The crew chief or the mechanic for
that particular plane had
the right to adjoin the test pilot on the flight.
I guess it would just be proof that he had
confidence in his work (laughing).
This mechanic that I worked
with let me go on one of the flights
and this Wasp was really
wringing the plane out as they call it,
and doing a lot of
acrobatic maneuvers to see
if she could get the wing to come off.
It didn't (laughing).
[Richard Misenhimer] Where was that at? This was
after you left Pennsylvania, is that correct?
[Boyd K. Miller] Yeah.
[Richard Misenhimer] So when you left, is that when you (inaudible).?
[Boyd K. Miller] We're in Alabama, I guess.
[Richard Misenhimer] So when you left Pennsylvania,
you went to Alabama then?
[Boyd K. Miller] I'm not real sure.
No, I went to Mississippi for training.
Now, Clarksdale, Mississippi is where I took
primary but I don't recall where that was.
I'm thinking (inaudible) Gulf Port, Mississippi.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay. The training at the primary,
what did that consist of?
[Boyd K. Miller] Well, that was your first flight training.
Normally, the training was
[three levels] there's primary, basic, and advanced.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Boyd K. Miller] Then you would go
half the day to
ground school and the other half to flying.
Of course, you didn't try the whole half-day.
The whole squadron flew
and they'd divide up the airplanes.
They had some instructor time to explain things to you.
But this school was Clarksdale.
Can't think of the name of it.
It was a school
where my brother (inaudible) and (inaudible).
It had civilian instructors.
We flew PT-19's.
It was an lower-class arrangement and upper class.
When we were there, we're flying PT-17 Stearman.
We thought, well, that's where we're going.
It's a bi-winged plane and very maneuverable,
but they changed with our class
when we got there to the PT-19,
which was a single- winged,
a very nice aircraft as Fairchild as that was called.
Then after the primary training,
I went to basic training,
and I mentioned that about the cadet officers took,
but that was the cadet commander
there and the director
of flying and a (inaudible) cadets,
and all decided they selected some people they
thought should have this opportunity
to go to Stuart Field for basic training.
Stuart Field was in New York,
and that's where the West Point cadets flew,
and they had really the very latest equipment and
the nicest condition and that steam
heated brick barracks with
hardwood floors and somebody else did the polishing,
(laughing) which wasn't really
the case in a normal program.
[Richard Misenhimer] Yes.
[Boyd K. Miller] We were really fortunate to get to go there.
[Richard Misenhimer] Well, let's go back to this primary training.
This is where you took your first instruction flights?
[Boyd K. Miller] Correct.
[Richard Misenhimer] Did you solo when you were there?
[Boyd K. Miller] Yeah.
[Richard Misenhimer] About how long? How many hours
do you have in your solo, you recall?
[Boyd K. Miller] Well, I think it was eight.
About eight hours of
dual instruction flying before you solo.
[Richard Misenhimer] Do you recall how it felt to solo the first time?
[Boyd K. Miller] (laughing) No.
[Richard Misenhimer] I guess solo I was just
thinking the first time. Only one time.
[Boyd K. Miller] Yeah. Right. I saw oh,
you're the only one in there.
(laughing) You got to make it happen, right.
[Richard Misenhimer] Right. Okay.
[Boyd K. Miller] That was a real thrill.
You go through it, prescribed maneuvers,
and then come in and land,
and I guess the landing was the trickiest part.
[Richard Misenhimer] That's basically what you did there when
you're at Clarksdale (inaudible)?
[Boyd K. Miller] Right.
[Richard Misenhimer] This primary training?
[Boyd K. Miller] Yeah.
[Richard Misenhimer] Then you transferred down to?
[Boyd K. Miller] Well, that's then I went to
the basic training in Stuart Field, New York.
The town was called Newburgh.
I was the guy that took the paperwork for the group.
I think there were 10 from our field
and report it in to the (inaudible) cadets,
and I was ready to get put in abrase,
yes, sir, no, sir,
and have them chew you out for no reason.
(laughing) But this guy said,
"Have a seat," and say,
"You're here a little before
the rest of the group is due,
so it's actually the rest of the weekend.
If you'd like to ask officer,
he'll be glad to take after the skeet range,"
and one is the (inaudible),
(laughing) but I never did,
and they were always real nice.
That skeet range, that was part of the training,
where you would shoot skeet,
I guess just to get (inaudible)
shooting. I really liked it.
It had a card that had so many numbers around the edge,
and they punched it, get
punched every time you went to the reins.
A lot of the guys didn't particularly care to
go and get their card punched.
(laughing) I liked it.
[Richard Misenhimer] Yeah.
[Boyd K. Miller] After that, when we flew the latest,
it was the first class of
basic cadets to miss the basic trainer, the BT-13.
We went directly into the 86,
and it was a pilot type program or rather experimental,
and to see if cadets that had completed
basic training could go into
the advanced trainer and work out real well.
[Richard Misenhimer] But you'd only finished the primary and so basic,
what kind of planes you fly in basic?
[Boyd K. Miller] That was the ATC, first-class.
[Richard Misenhimer] (inaudible) primary to advance.
[Boyd K. Miller] Into advanced trainer, but it was basic training.
[Richard Misenhimer] I see.
[Boyd K. Miller] In basic training,
I was just more of the same type of
stuff as it as primary only more advanced,
and then they included navigation,
in the beginning of radio work and instrument flying.
[Richard Misenhimer] How about the jump? Was it from the PT to the 86?
[Boyd K. Miller] Well, I really didn't have anything to compare it to.
It worked out this time.
[Richard Misenhimer] It wasn't a big problem if they're down?
[Boyd K. Miller] No, apparently not because they seem to stick
to that program after that (inaudible).
[Richard Misenhimer] The 86 retractable gear,
but the element is not.
[Boyd K. Miller] Yeah. That's one thing,
and it was just more powerful,
it was just a bigger plane.
[Richard Misenhimer] Yeah.
[Boyd K. Miller] It was a radial engine, single winged.
They used it a lot in these movies
for the (crosstalk) Japanese (inaudible)
[Richard Misenhimer] How long were you there?
[Boyd K. Miller] I think it lasts
four months or maybe something in that neighborhood.
[Richard Misenhimer] You did cross countries, I'm assuming?
[Boyd K. Miller] Yeah. I did a few.
We had to do the navigation calculation,
and then fly them to see if it'd work.
[Richard Misenhimer] (laughing) Anything humorous to
be happen along here anywhere?
[Boyd K. Miller] Well, yeah. I don't know how long your tape is.
[Richard Misenhimer] I got plenty of tapes.
[Boyd K. Miller] When I was in primary, I got pleurisy.
Pleurisy is an irritation in
lining between the lung wall and the pleural cavity.
That skin tries to grow together.
Then when you move, what pulls it really is painful.
It caused me to be in
this little medical facility for a while.
I said that if he did anything that
was particularly strenuous or
tiring until you got completely well,
well, that thing would cut out.
While I was in basic training when we had night flying,
which began first of that,
as well as the navigation.
We were flying at night,
but that didn't change the day schedule.
We even had grounds schedule in
flying during the daytime.
As a result of that,
I guess the added hours so
that made that pleurisy kick in.
I was on one of these navigation flight,
it was day time, and it was a triangle shaped thing.
You navigate the first two egs,
and then you're pretty close out of gas,
so you land and gas up.
Then you fly that last leg back to home field.
In that particular country,
it was the geography was such that it was very simple.
But last leg, it was in a valley, the mountains,
and it was parallel to the Hudson River,
and so that was just to get home.
After I gassed up,
after those first two legs,
where I got to where my pleurisy was hurting,
and I was squirming around trying to
get in a comfortable position,
and I started listening to the commercial radio,
but you really weren't supposed to do that,
so I didn't do that right at all.
I finally found out that I didn't know where I was.
I started looking on the chart and try to
match what was there was something on the ground,
and I want to see different things like landmarks,
football fields, or some type of
a race track or something that was a bit notable,
and you could tell.
Well, I couldn't seem to match anything,
so I thought, well,
I'll just fly straight East until I hit the Hudson River.
It might be a long way,
but that sure,
and then I can just go North up the Hudson.
I kept flying to just do 90 degrees,
and I finally saw that water.
Geez, where is it?
Wherever it wide down here.
I never did see the other side,
and it turned out I was too far South,
and the Hudson had already emptied into the Atlantic,
and I was just seeing the ocean. (laughing)
I flew up the coast and found
out where I was. I saw Sandy Hook, New Jersey,
and I could recognize a lot of things
and mostly was just a lot of buildings.
(laughing) About then my gas gauge
started coughing or whatever,
(noise) and says,
"You're out of gas again,
boy, are we getting close?"
They told us that there was some amount of gas left once
the signal came on and I couldn't remember
if it meant two hours.
I doubted that because it's pretty
long except that two minutes is not very long.
I decided that I would just get out.
I aimed at playing out toward the ocean
and I got at
some altitude that I thought would be about right.
I got over the water enough just eyeball the wind
to try to fall fairly close to shore so I could swim in.
I was really ready to go.
I wasn't scared to jump at all.
I had the canopy bag
and I got to thinking it's going to be really
embarrassing getting back home without
the '86 I had strapped on me when I left.
(laughing) So I decided that
there's bound to be some fields around there.
I decided I would
land at the first field I saw no matter what and it
was a navy field where they
manufacture these Hellcats across
the highway and they bring them over to
this field to test fly them.
This was a Saturday afternoon
so there wasn't a lot of traffic.
I landed there and
the navy boys said, "What's going on?"
I said well, I got lost and decided to pay you a visit.
He said, "Well, oh,
I'm out of gas too."
I said, oh, well, we can gas you up
and you know where you are now, right?
He said, "Yeah, you bet."
I said, well, who's going to sign
the ticket? Then he said, "You are."
I said, no, I can't do that.
That's a big no.
I had to call in the Home Base
and I could hear them when I was flying.
I could hear guys calling in for landing instruction,
but they couldn't hear me when I would
transmit and I was,
really, pretty much desperately calling
in for some instruction.
So the CEO said,
when I phoned the Home Base
and told them what had happened,
he said, "Well, you just stay there
until somebody comes asking."
Well, I know where I am it's
just a matter of this gas. "You just stay there."
I waited and at least there were two instructors
left at our squadron shack,
and the CEO called them and they were sitting there
playing squirrels not in drip for
that afternoon instead of cadet time.
So they had to come get me.
They didn't even chew me
out and say, "Are you, Miller?"
Yes, sir. "Get in the back."
They wouldn't even let me fly my own plane back.
That was unusual.
A couple of weeks after that,
they call us all out in
the formation and we lined up out in
front of the flight check and
stood normally in the back and
they had real brass out there.
The Director of Flying in real formal occasion,
and then this wack that checked the planes in and out.
When I landed, I was on the last flight of the morning,
she said, "You better hurry up and get in formation.
Some big doings out there."
I ran and got in
formation and they called me front-and-center.
Wow, what's that?
So this major pulled out a scroll like
they do in military fashion and in mine,
he said that I showed
extraordinary heroism in landing
in an enemy field, the navy.
[Richard Misenhimer] The navy. (laughing) .
[Boyd K. Miller] I was awarded a furline plastic pot,
a little pot-like ketches.
[Richard Misenhimer] Yeah.
[Boyd K. Miller] There was a group of us,
something like six or seven that
had done some goof up and were
awarded these things and
we had to wear them on this string around our neck,
hairy things at PE,
in flying, and sleeping.
What every place else you're on
public display so the other guys,
of course, they had to ride us pretty heavy.
Once they were wearing the pots that they had balked at,
that's the one they really got.
Well, I got a kick out of it.
I guess they didn't pressure me too much,
but it was funny having to wear that.
After a while,
there was another group that had fouled up,
so they took our pots
and awarded them to these other guys.
(laughing) The guy that got my pot
was flying someplace and he got lost.
But he saw another one of
our planes that was flying the same heading,
so he said, "Hey, I must be okay.
He is going there and I'm going in."
But it turned out
that the guy who's heading he was flying,
was lost also and he was flying these guys (inaudible).
[Richard Misenhimer] (laughing)
[Boyd K. Miller] They landed and they did worse than I did.
This one guy pulled up his wheels instead of
his flaps and it sheared that prop off.
He was in a little more trouble.
But he was wearing his pot down.
The flight line where the base commander
came by and he was
the West Point bird colonel and he
saw that and he asked the Director of Flying,
"What's going on with that kid?"
He called him over there and he said,
son tell the Colonel why you're wearing that.
He said, "Well, I got lost,
pulled up my wheels, and set them on flaps."
He said, Oh, my, that's pretty bad but he said,
"Ask the major if he's ever landed wheels up."
That major popped to attention and said, yes, sir.
(laughing) He said, "Sir do you
think that I've ever done that?"He said, I have no idea.
Have you sir? He said,
yeah, but these chickens up here helped me out.
(laughing) So that was
an amusing thing that happened there.
It wasn't amusing at the time.
[Richard Misenhimer] Oh, when you got back,
did they chew you out much
then or anything or what did they say?
[Boyd K. Miller] No, the CEO is headed the
Camo Nana Cadets. I guess
they had really leave till all the cadets are in. He
and his wife had some social thing planned.
(laughing) She was all dressed up and she was there
and she was pacing up and down more than he was.
So he said, I can't just let you get away with this
so over the remainder of the weekend,
you write a 2,000 word theme on basic navigation.
(laughing) You know what I did. There were no follow-up,
that was just, I guess,
considered part of the game.
[Richard Misenhimer] It's one of those things that happened.
[Boyd K. Miller] Yeah.
[Richard Misenhimer] All right. Now, this is there in Pennsylvania?
[Boyd K. Miller] No. This was in Newburgh, New York.
[Richard Misenhimer] Oh, you backed up there (noise) (inaudible).
[Boyd K. Miller] That was basic training, Stuart Field.
[Richard Misenhimer] Oh, okay.
[Boyd K. Miller] That's the one where the West Point guys fly.
[Richard Misenhimer] I'm sorry. You're right.
[Boyd K. Miller] They fly in a good time of the year
and we were there in
the wintertime because we were
regular cadets and we were extendable.
(laughing) When I reported in and at the next base,
I took the paperwork and that
was in Spence Field, Moultrie, Georgia.
That's where we took advanced training.
I reported to the CEO and
turned the papers on all our group
in and he saw that we were
from Stuart Field and he blinked and said,
well, "We'll treat you as
regular cadets" because he knew that's West Point does.
I said, well, I'm sure that'll be all right.
(laughing) Oh, they did.
Back to the grindstone. (laughing)
[Richard Misenhimer] Let me ask you, so far,
has there been any crashes, people
have been killed, or anything?
[Boyd K. Miller] Well, there were some.
I know there was one at Stuart Field.
The guy didn't get killed,
but that's why we started night flying
and this guy did just real great up
till then but he couldn't seem
to understand how far down
the ground was because they had
a big bank of light shining down the runway.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Boyd K. Miller] It had dust particles in
the air and this guy would land on the dust,
which was ten or 12 feet,
maybe more, in the air.
He had stalled out that '86 and it dropped.
But you're supposed to do it pretty close to the ground.
[Richard Misenhimer] Right.
[Boyd K. Miller] He tore up some planes doing
that but I don't think he got hurt.
But there was one place
when we first went to Stuart Field,
and they were taking us around,
showing us the whole base
and we went through this one hanger and there was
an '86 wing that was about a foot and a half
or two feet wide at the root and they're
normally six feet or eight feet.
These two West Point cadets were
flying in what they call a buddy ride,
they're two cadets and no instructor.
They put the plane in
a dive and they were playing chicken,
and the one that pulled out was
chicken and he didn't want to have more chicken.
They piled it into the ground and it crunched
that wing and I think they showed
us that to let us know that it was pretty serious stuff.
[Richard Misenhimer] Did he kill the man on his plane?
[Boyd K. Miller] Yeah.
[Richard Misenhimer] Yeah. Right.
[Boyd K. Miller] We didn't see it.
[Richard Misenhimer] Yeah.
[Boyd K. Miller] We just saw the wing.
[Richard Misenhimer] Right. Okay. Then after you
left New York,
you went to where? I'm sorry.
[Boyd K. Miller] That was Georgia at Spence Field.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Boyd K. Miller] That's for advanced training.
We flew the '86 in
advance because I was already familiar with it.
It was just more intense training,
more navigation, and all of that.
That's where I graduated from the cadet program.
Following that is when we go to the-