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Shaw Field South Carolina WWII
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Written by an air cadet, who was at Shaw Field, Sumter, South Carolina, during WWII, in August 1942. From the letter…..Just finished the Sunday papers after having a chicken dinner. Since we’re not flying Sundays, it’s an ideal time to get lots of sleep. I slept until 10:30 this morning, so much like the old days, I’ll bet you were just getting up Butch?

Tomorrow, morning we have our first country flight and we’re all supposed to bring in our charted courses and be familiar with the territory. It’ll be about 156 miles, I want to have it down, because it’s bad if you get lost on these flights, and it happens in all classes……Yesterday morning we had our usual Sat. morning inspection, then in the afternoon we flew. We didn’t have many planes, so I only got one hour of solo. Just flying one hour seems so short a time……In that one hour I practiced air work, I had to go about scattered clouds which were above 3,500 ft. I went up 6,000 ft. and it was so nice and clear and you could see the big fluffs of white clouds moving underneath. The rest of the time on the flight line I spent in weather office, looking over weather maps etc. It’s amazing how these weather stations receive weather reports from all parts of the U.S…….So yesterday we figured out the route we’d take from here to Akron, it’s planned we’ll go up through Charleston, Parkersburg, Cambridge, Canton, then Akron…..