Oral History Interview with Thomas Fitzgerald, February 19, 2015 Page: 4

                                
that there's an awful lot of them didn't remain. So anyway the next assignment I had was going
ahead and starting in the school, the bombardier school. It was the Norden Bomb Sight. I was
there in bombardier school for all of the time from then on. And I really wanted to be a pilot so I
was a little bit disappointed but I found out later that we were chosen ahead of time (laughter) by
other things that they saw on our record. And that the bombardiers were actually..., everybody
was high class as a pilot or navigator. So then after that I went from the Santa Ana training to
Kirtland Field in Albuquerque, New Mexico and spent that rest of the time in bombing practice.
And we had a black powder charge in the nose of the bomb and so you could see where the
bombs fell. We always had a target of ..., a target day or night. And we used the combat
instructors and bombardier cadets. Each cadet when not bombing would be taking pictures
through the hole in the floor where the aircraft could see the other's results. And our course was
to drop 200 bombs with an average circular area of less than 220 feet from a center called the
shack. My CE was 189 feet, about the middle of the class. Some 20% washed out at Kirtland.
Wash out wasn't so bad anymore because most got an opportunity to be an Air Force ground
officer. Wash out at Santa Ana would put you back in the enlisted pool. We dropped our
practice bombs at 500, 1000, 5000 feet and 10,000 foot elevations. Since ground level at
Kirtland was 5300 feet most of our practice was with oxygen masks. This makes it a little harder
to use the bombsight but we were better trained and readier for the real world than those who had
lower elevation bombardier schools. On July 10' I received my wings and a 2nd Lieutenant's
commission, so this July 10t of 1942 I think it was. I don't have a date right here, cause it was
1943 when I reported to Europe in action. And I get a 2nd Lieutenant's commission. Reported to

Moses Lake Air Force Base in Washington for ten days. Oh just incidentally, while I was at
Kirtland I met my wife-to-be Mary Helen Hein, the daughter of an Oklahoma wheat farmer, who
was employed as a secretary at the Albuquerque National Bank. At Moses Lake we were
assigned to a B-17 crew in process of formation. The pilot, whose name I didn't recall, was
relieved of duty because of serious spells of hiccups and sneezing. And in one case almost
crashed the plane. The co-pilot, Charles Hopla, was elevated to the pilot seat and remained our

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