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turned around. My dad never owned a house; never owned a car, which is typical of the young. We lived in that part of town that they called the "waddies" because we were down there on the Ohio River. A buddy and I went down to Pittsburgh and joined the army. MR. METZLER: Now this is before the war started? MR. LANCHAK: This is in 1939. I got out in '38, worked a little bit, '39 we went down. So we joined and the fellow asked me "What do you want to do? Do you want to take foreign duty which is a two-year service or do you want to stay in the States here somewhere that's a three-year service and you can re-enlist or get out?" He took foreign duty and he took coast artillery down in Panama. I figured, well, I'll join you but I'll take the air corps. They had the Air Corps there so I went down. Panama had all but filled. He was in the Coast Guard. I used to like to visit him because we weren't too far apart. He was down in the ground where they had these big guns up above, you know when you fire the big gun it disappears. Where he lived it was nice and cool where in the barracks we didn't have air conditioning in those days, just the fans going around. MR. METZLER: So this is in Panama? MR. LANCHAK: In Panama. MR. METZLER: Now where did you do training? Where did you go to basic training?
MR. LANCHAK: At Fort Slocum, very basic. About maybe two weeks we had some marching and things like this. So when we got shipped out, we went by boat to Panama then we took some training there at Corazal, Panama, with some of the ??? down there. So we got a little training over there. Back on Abbott field airplanes and all, they had planes down there called the A-17. It was what they called an attack plane. the pilot in
Transcript of an oral interview with Peter Lanchak. Lanchak joined the Army in 1939 and was sent to Panama to serve in a coastal artillery battery. He enjoyed riding in airplanes and volunteered for duty as a crewman or as a gunner on the various aircraft stationed where he was. Eventually, after the war started, he was shipped to India in 1942. Once he arrived in India, Lanchak began participating in missions over Rangoon and eventually flew over the Himalaya Mountains to China. After 47 missions, Lanchack was shipped back to the US in late 1943. When he returned, he served as an aerial gunnery trainer at Colorado Springs and in Idaho.
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Lanchak, Peter.Oral History Interview with Pete Lanchak, October 7, 2005,
text,
October 7, 2005;
Fredericksburg, Texas.
(https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1604895/m1/3/:
accessed July 17, 2024),
University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.;
crediting National Museum of the Pacific War/Admiral Nimitz Foundation.