Originally Posted by
USMCFLYR
For the mid-south region, I wish I had more time to sit around the restaurant next to the FBO at David Wayne Hooks (KDWH) airport just north of Houston. I've only been there a few times, but around lunch it seems to be a popular hang out for some of the old-timer local pilots. I wish I had even 30 minutes to sit round after lunch and bend their ear for a good story or two.
Also - the airport restaurant at Walnut Ridge, AR (KARG) has an enjoyable all-you-can-eat fried catfish buffet (on a certain day which I can not remember off the top of my head). The restaurant is situated in the body of an old SWA 737. Across the street is an Army Flying School museum. A good 30 minutes of history about the flight training that went on there during WWII. It is sobering to see the list of fatalities though from those years in the memorial at the front door. So many fatal mishaps in such a short period of time. Those volunteers will certainly have stories to share as well if you have the time.
USMCFLYR
If you haven't read "The Wild Blue" by Stephen Ambrose yet, get it. It's about B24 pilots in WW2. A whole lot more pilots were killed in training accidents (something like 25%!) than in combat.
Hendricks Field, in Sebring, FL was built as a B17 training base.
Hendricks Field, Sebring , FL (1941_1946)
There was another training base in Arcadia, FL, where the Brits sent kids to learn to fly in the Steamans. They even have an entire section in the Arcadia town cemetary just for all the Brits, killed in traing accidents there. I saw it when I went to my Wife's Grandmother's funeral.
Another great book, which discusses what it was like to live (barely) and fly back then, is Jimmy Doolittle's auto-bio, "I could never be so lucky again".
He crashed so many airplanes in training and 'exploring the envelope', how he lived through all that is just amazing, but I guess it was either learn to fly...or be a grunt, in the trenches of WW2, so, chose your poison.
Oh, and I just remembered the name of 'that polywog looking thing' from my earlier post, it's a CTSW.
http://www.flightdesign.com/
I flew it a couple times but never liked it. They do seem to sell a lot of them though, so somebody likes it!