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It's the type of radar, all it did, is have blips and you'd pick something up. We had antennas on the wings and the nose and if you picked something up you'd get blip and would go back and take a look at it. So then the squads broke up, Ray Lands was a close buddy of mine, he was the one that activated the longest TBI here in Houston. His squadron went to Ecuador. And then we had another squadron go over to Trinidad, so the three of us were flying different routes of patrol. Well, then war was declared, so we kept flying this time looking for... MR. METZLER: Tell me what squadron, what wing, what air group? Give me a feel for where you are in the organization. MR. LANCHAK: I was in the 74t'. MR. METZLER: Seventeenth? MR. LANCHAK: No, I can't recall what it was. All I can recall is our insignia then had a pirate's head and on our airplanes we had the bird that they have over there in Panama supposed to be able to fish real well, just dive from the sky right on down into the water. We had that bird as an insignia on the plane. I flew as a gunner all day. All we did was look out the windows to see what we could see. War was declared so we flew some more missions so they decided well, we're going go overseas but they didn't tell us where. So they flew us from Guatemala and outfit Ray Land's crew from Ecuador. Three crews got
together into Florida. When we got to Florida we stayed overnight. Then they woke us up one day and said we're leaving. When we left we had no planes, they wouldn't let us take the planes out of the Caribbean. Here comes a civilian airplane, Pan Am with a stewardess on board so all the crews got on there and flew us down to South America, Belize, and the usual route over to Ascension Island over to Africa.
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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