Interview by Daniel Jackson, December 27, 2007
Ernest Weisemiller:
Hello Dan.
Daniel Jackson:
How are you?
Ernest Weisemiller:
I’m fine. I hope you’re feeling better.
Daniel Jackson:
I’m doing a little better. Apparently I’ve got a sinus infection.
Ernest Weisemiller:
At least you’re still in the young, I know that. Well, I’ve got a bunch of these—I don’t know whether you’ve run into them or not—but Jing Bao Journals. They were the Fourteenth Air Force Association’s pamphlets that they put out monthly until they had their last meeting this spring.
Daniel Jackson:
Right.
Ernest Weisemiller:
They have all kinds of stories in them. And the 449th, is one of the squadrons that has the least publicity that I can find. And the second one is the one I was in—the 25th Fighter Squadron.
Daniel Jackson:
Right.
Ernest Weisemiller:
We were both in the 51st group. But I ran into some 449th people in those Jing Bao Journals. Did you say that you got my name out of one of those association member booklets?
Daniel Jackson:
Uh huh.
Ernest Weisemiller:
Somebody sent you one?
Daniel Jackson:
Right. Right.
Ernest Weisemiller:
They put the members every year in them, so one of the people—and you probably have his name—is Richard Maddox. He lives in Texas and he was one of the active members in the Fourteenth Air Force Association. He was in the 449th. Do you have his name?
Daniel Jackson:
Uh huh and I’ve talked with him quite a bit.
Ernest Weisemiller:
Richard Maddox. Now, if you’ve contacted him, he was active in the Fourteenth Air Force and he did a lot of local work there in Dallas. He was one of the people that would know more about the 449th than anybody else that I know of.
Daniel Jackson:
That is true. He’s got—
Ernest Weisemiller:
I don’t know if you’ve contacted him yet or not.
Daniel Jackson:
I have. He’s got a lot of information. In fact, he’s quite an interesting person to talk to. Unfortunately, his wife has Alzheimer’s, I believe, so he’s—
Ernest Weisemiller:
Oh that’s a shame. I didn’t know that.
Daniel Jackson:
He’s pretty busy taking care of her now.
Ernest Weisemiller:
He’s still alive, though, in the 2007 list, and he lives in Richardson, Texas.
Daniel Jackson:
Yep. That’s true. If you wouldn’t mind, I do have some questions for you about your stint flying P-51s out in China that might be helpful.
Ernest Weisemiller:
Go right ahead.
Daniel Jackson:
Well, I was wondering: You talked about how you were assigned to a training unit before you went out to China. What were you guys flying there and what was the purpose of your assignment to that unit?
Ernest Weisemiller:
In the training unit?
Daniel Jackson:
Uh huh.
Ernest Weisemiller:
Or in China?
Daniel Jackson:
At the training unit.
Ernest Weisemiller:
Well, they sent me to—when I graduated from the flying school on November 3, 1943, my first assignment was I had been sent to instructor school then, at Randolph Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. And believe it or not, there were no paved runways there. We took off and landed on the turf. I was sent to basic. We had primary, basic, and advanced. I was sent back to basic instructor school at Randolph Air Force Base and from there, I was sent back to my basic training school at Greenwood, Mississippi, flying Vultee Vibrator basic trainers in those days. And then when I was transferred to China, I was stopped when the [indicipherable] ended for three or four months. And then they were going to send those basic trainers to China—the training planes to China, the Vultee Vibrators—for instrument training for fighter pilots in China. And I flew one of those things all the way across India and across the Hump to Kunming, China, when I was transferred to China, that’s what I did.
Daniel Jackson:
That must have been a little unnerving to fly one of those little planes over the Hump.
Ernest Weisemiller:
Well, it was on the wings of a B-25. They wouldn’t let you go across in single-engine fighters. It was too hazardous. Even P-51s were sent over on B-25 wings.
Daniel Jackson:
Before you went to fly P-51s, had you flown other types of fighters?
Ernest Weisemiller:
Yes. I had ten hours in advanced training school on P-40s. Then I had—when I left the training school in Greenwood, Mississippi, I was sent to Thomasville, Georgia, for what we called then combat training. And I had three months of combat training in P-40Ns. And from there, I went to Bartow, Florida, and was checked out in P-51s. And from there, I went to Miami and was in a converted B-24 bomber and flew in the back end of that from there to China. We also landed in Natal, Brazil, Ascension Island, the Gold Coast at Accra, then Khartoum in Africa, to Karachi, India—which is Pakistan now.
I had more combat training there in some of the war-weary P-40s and P-51s at Karachi. Before I picked up this basic trainer, Vultee Vibrator, BT-13—that’s what I think it was called. It’s been about sixty years ago, of course. And I ferried that thing all the way to Kunming, China. Then I picked up a P-51 and flew down to the 25th Fighter Squadron and there’s where I spent my war years.
Daniel Jackson:
What were the big differences between the P-51s and the P-40s?
Ernest Weisemiller:
About like a Model T Ford and a Cadillac. You could fly a P-51 with one finger. It was so sensitive and so forth on the stick. And a P-40 had a lot of torque on takeoff. You had to hold the left rudder pretty strong when you put the throttle to that thing and took off. If you sat on the end of the runway too long there in Georgia and got too hot, that thing would detonate and backfire. We had one lieutenant that got killed. He got off the ground and the engine stopped and he went right into a forest. These things were very touchy. Of course, you know, the engine in the P-51 was our version of an English engine.
Daniel Jackson:
Yes, the Rolls Royce Merlin.
Ernest Weisemiller:
If there was anything on landing or anything, you could just hit your gas and just knock it forward and that thing would just catch and go right off. It was just a super airplane to fly. If you ever get the chance—well, I don’t know if you’re going to go for a pilot or not with a history degree.
Daniel Jackson:
Yeah, I’m going for a pilot slot. I’m not sure what else you can do with a history degree. Right?
Ernest Weisemiller:
You can teach school in a university. But anyway, you don’t have to make a decision until—you’re a second class now?
Daniel Jackson:
Right.
Ernest Weisemiller:
That’s sophomore, isn’t it—at a regular university? Or a junior?
Daniel Jackson:
Right. It’s a junior.
Ernest Weisemiller:
You’re a junior now and you’ll be a senior next year, right? Is that right?
Daniel Jackson:
Yes, that’s right.
Ernest Weisemiller:
First class next year, is that right?
Daniel Jackson:
Right.
Ernest Weisemiller:
Fourth, third, second, first.
Daniel Jackson:
Yep. That’s how it goes.
Ernest Weisemiller:
Okay. I can keep it straight. I do have [unintelligible]. Yes, there’s all the difference in the world in flying a P-51 and a P-40. The P-40 is much slower. The 51 is faster. It could outrun anything that anybody had, especially in China. And we were taught by General Chennault, that you do not get in a dogfight with one of those Japanese fighter planes. I forget what they call them now, because they can turn inside of you. You stay above them, you make one pass, and if you don’t get them, hit the deck and head for home. That’s how we were taught to fight them in China.
Daniel Jackson:
I heard that some pilots prefer the P-40 for ground missions though—missions against ground targets.
Ernest Weisemiller:
Oh, yes. They were slower of course and they were much—the P-51, with one shot in your coolant and you had about two minutes. You had to get out of that thing because it would freeze up on you. That was a liquid cooled. The P-40 was also liquid-cooled but the coolant was up front, so they didn’t get hit as much as a P-51. But the P-51 didn’t get hit a lot because it was much faster. I did several passes on the ground support, but I never picked up anything in my coolant. I was lucky I guess.
Daniel Jackson:
What sort of missions were you employed on by the time that you got there?
Ernest Weisemiller:
Mostly patrolling the road from India into China. It was called—you might know the name better than I do. It was the—
Daniel Jackson:
It was the Stilwell Road.
Ernest Weisemiller:
Well, the Stilwell Road was the one out of Burma, but this one was from—
Daniel Jackson:
From Ledo.
Ernest Weisemiller:
India. The best I could remember, it was Accra [Assam]. It was where you took off to fly across the Hump. There was the Burma Road, too. The Stilwell Road, though, came out of—Stilwell fought that battle down in Burma then. That’s where the AVG, the American Volunteer Group, started off, in Burma. And then the Japanese ran them out. They moved into China, but Stilwell was still fighting the ground battle down there, but they finally cleared them all out. They were gone when I got there in February of 1945.
Daniel Jackson:
Were you guys sent into French Indochina at all?
Ernest Weisemiller:
No—wait a minute, I flew one mission over French Indochina after—I lost my logbook, but it was around in April or May of 1945. And that was beautiful to fly over. It was kind of like Florida. It was a lot of jungle and trees. We had one mission in there, as I recall, Indochina. We were out of southeast Florida [China]. We were on temporary duty at an outlying airfield down there in southeast China. I flew down there on one. Never saw an enemy plane, though. At all. They were back defending the homeland, I guess.
Daniel Jackson:
What was the purpose of your mission there?
Ernest Weisemiller:
It was observation. It was just to see what was left. To see if there was any shipping movement along the coast, or anything at all down there. We didn’t spot a thing. There were four of us down there.
Daniel Jackson:
Do you remember what the facilities were like at Yunnanyi when you were based there?
Ernest Weisemiller:
What?
Daniel Jackson:
What the facilities were like at Yunnanyi.
Ernest Weisemiller:
They were very crude. We had tarpaper sacks, we called them, that we lived in. For heat, we had charcoal and we had to keep that ventilated. We had nothing but boiled water for drinking and brushing our teeth and taking a shower in. We were about a mile from the flying field up on the side of a mountain. That was because the Japanese had bombed the airfield earlier in the war. They didn’t bother when I was there.
We had several transport planes crash on the runway at night because of bad weather and they would lose their way and they kept the light on down there. We had vehicles would line the runway when they knew they were coming in. But I woke up several times when there was one crash down there—especially those that were not C-47s. They didn’t use them much. But there was one twin-engine plane that was difficult to fly, I understand. I never flew it. They would crash. But no four-engine planes was ever down there, just these two-engine ones. Coolies about about a mile away and they’d get out there and drag them off once they were all there when you get up in the morning.
And you know those runways were all built with crushed stone. The Chinese people built them and they tamped them by hand. It was kind of like landing on gravel runways but they were tamped down tight. They’d get about two or three thousand of them out there and tamp them down. We didn’t have any surfaced runways except at headquarters over at the Kunming. They had blacktop runways there.
That was about it. We never got too cold there. We were far enough south. In fact, during World War II, I was never far enough north that I ever wore—we had pinks and greens back then, not blue.
But I was recalled in the Korean War. I stayed in the Reserve. I got out and stayed in the Reserve and I was recalled in 1951 in the Korean War and we had blues then. The Air Force was separate from the Army. It was Army Air Corps in World War II.
I had two tours. The second was very easy. I was called up to Langley Air Force Base, Headquarters for—then it was the fighter command, I think it’s been changed now, though. But that was very nice duty over there—another headquarters base for the flying—fighter command. We had a commanding general, four stars, with the name of Cannon, [unintelligible] felt for sure, number one. He was a fine old gentleman. Four stars, he was the commander of it. I enjoyed that tour. Too much. I did a lot of hunting and fishing.
Daniel Jackson:
Yeah, that must have been nice.
Ernest Weisemiller:
It certainly was.
Daniel Jackson:
Did you ever get sent to Korea during the war?
Ernest Weisemiller:
No, sir. I was never sent overseas. I was briefly under the base commander, a brigadier general, by the name of Jones. And there were things that came in that he told me about. It asked for my availability and he just said not available and sent it back. So that’s what I did in the Korean War. I didn’t fight much there.
Daniel Jackson:
That’s pretty lucky.
Ernest Weisemiller:
Yeah, that’s pretty lucky, Dan. And I found out that there was a whole lot to the military. Always, it was who you knew more than what you knew.
Daniel Jackson:
That’s still true today, too.
Ernest Weisemiller:
You better believe it. It will always be that way. I brought us to Jacksonville. I don’t know what you’re planning to do after getting out of school. Just don’t make a lot of noise and get in trouble. Keep caring about little things and you get along fine in the military—especially with academy graduates. I was in there with only the West Point graduates, you know, and they got the best assignment of everything—the best quarters, the best everything.
Daniel Jackson:
Interesting.
Ernest Weisemiller:
I was just an aviation cadet that went through training command during the war. I hope at this rate, Dan, I don’t want to pull you out of your money. I really appreciate you allowing me to try to help a little bit, if I can. If there’s anything you can use. One of the things in your letter was flying in the mountains and valleys and so forth. In P-51s we were about five thousand feet altitude and we always flew over—above—all the mountains and we didn’t get down in the valleys, either, ’cause they twisted a lot.
Daniel Jackson:
Right.
Ernest Weisemiller:
We didn’t have—one of the main things over where I was, and it applied to everybody, was the navigation [aids]. There were crude navigation things [aids] and a lot of pilots were getting lost. They weren’t heard from. They would run out of gas or something, or crash or something. Might have run into the Japanese shot down, I would think. There weren’t many Japanese left in China where I was. I think I told you that before. There were all that were left were all on the east coast of China and I was back close to the mountains.
Daniel Jackson:
Right. I do have one—
Ernest Weisemiller:
Yunnanyi [Yunnan] Province.
Daniel Jackson:
Right. Yunnan was the province, I think.
Ernest Weisemiller:
Yunan Province, yeah, where we were located. I think there was but one fighter squadron, all up in there. The Burma Road was the one we patrolled quite a bit. There was nothing there and no Japanese fighters were left. We didn’t see any, but we still patrolled it.
Daniel Jackson:
I do have one more question for you, if you don’t mind.
Ernest Weisemiller:
I don’t mind. I just don’t mind, Dan.
Daniel Jackson:
How long did you stay in China?
Ernest Weisemiller:
I got overseas in India in November of ’44. I flew into China in January of ’45. And I was already in—I think it was, the first of September, or July in the summer and they dropped the first atomic bomb and I was in Calcutta, India, on rest and recuperation. And before I could get back from leave, they dropped the second one and Japan surrendered. And I got home in December of ’45. So, I was overseas about a year and three months.
Daniel Jackson:
Okay.
Ernest Weisemiller:
During World War II.
Daniel Jackson:
Right.
Ernest Weisemiller:
There in Europe, I think twenty-five missions, they allowed us to come home on leave for a while, if you were in Europe. But that didn’t fly in China. Some of the pilots in my squadron, when I got there, they had over a hundred missions.
Daniel Jackson:
I heard some pilots had trouble flying a lot of missions because the weather was bad in some areas.
Ernest Weisemiller:
Well, I was far enough south that it wasn’t too bad. We didn’t have too much bad weather. But some of it—up north, I understand, was pretty bad. The main thing was the gasoline. We didn’t have a surplus of gasoline. I’ve seen it when they—we got it one time in India in training. I was down there taking rocket training. Rockets would land near you. They were putting some rockets on the wings of the P-51s. I was down there for some training and they ran out of gas in India. Lend-lease, the British were still in control of India and they had all kinds of gas. Our commander ran over there and tried to borrow some so we could get some to finish our training. And they wouldn’t let us have it. So, I was sitting down there with no gas, too.
Anyway, we never had a surplus of gas in China, that I can remember. But we had enough that we could always stand by on alert. And had enough planes that could get off the field if anybody—any Japanese planes were sighted. But we didn’t have any while I was there.
Daniel Jackson:
When did you go—
Ernest Weisemiller:
That was one of the things that there wasn’t a surplus of in China because they had to bring it in over the Burma Road or fly it in—one or the other. It was a real critical item.
Daniel Jackson:
Right. When did you go to rocket school?
Ernest Weisemiller:
In India, and I’ve forgotten the base, but I was down there about two weeks. In the Tenth Air Force—that was in India—I’ve forgotten the base. We were shooting rockets at the ground targets and one of the boys that went down there with me flew down into the ground. He got so darn centered on it that forgot that he was flying and piloted towards the ground, I guess. But anyway, he flew right in the ground. I had one—the P-51 had a—when they built the P-51D, it allowed them to escort the bombers in Europe all the way to Berlin and so forth. They put a, I believe it was about a 500-gallon tank in the fuselage.
Daniel Jackson:
Right.
Ernest Weisemiller:
We had one of them in the training in Karachi, India, that we were taking. And there were always—the one thing they would tell you, if you flew that one—they would schedule—there were P-40s and P-51s there for training, and this was the only D they had. And it had that fuel tank in it and they would say, “Burn that first.” Because if you burn your wing tanks out, that will—the balance of your plane will be adversely affected.
We had one of the boys there went up, and the last thing I heard the instructor tell him, “Now be sure you burn that tank out in your fuselage first.” Doggone if he didn’t go up for about two hours, come back, came in the way we always came in and went up and made a turn, shut the gas off, and just as he went up and started the top of that turn, he evidently didn’t use the fuel tank and that thing spun in, just about eight hundred to a thousand feet.
That was one of the many things that I still remember. I can close my eyes and see that now. The thing just quit flying and nosed down and in the ground it went.
That’s something that, flying airplanes, you’ve got to—I found out—what I did, I checked everything twice before I took off. You won’t have any trouble if you do that. And it’s not anything to have something on [your mind] besides flying while you’re doing it, I also found that, too, on your mind.
I don’t think you’ll have a bit of trouble with the training you receive this day and time and the way these airplanes are built, I think they’re pretty darn safe—about as safe as driving on that interstate there from Colorado Springs at the academy.
Daniel Jackson:
It’s probably safer than driving these days.
Ernest Weisemiller:
You’re right. You’re absolutely right, because these aircraft, they have jets now and they’re a lot safer than those engines we had. That engine that was in that P-51 was super in my day and time. And I sure did enjoy flying that airplane.
And there’s still quite few of them around. I was talking to a fellow around Christmas, who had come to some kind of a meeting or conference and they had a hundred P-51s there, he said.
Daniel Jackson:
Oh wow.
Ernest Weisemiller:
I didn’t know there were that many left.
Daniel Jackson:
Yes. That’s quite a few.
Ernest Weisemiller:
I watched them fly over once in a while when I lived in Texas, before I moved over here. Because there’s an Air Force down there in Texas—
Daniel Jackson:
The Commemorative Air Force.
Ernest Weisemiller:
Yes. That’s right. They have some P-51s in it. People owned them and they’d fly over once in a while. You can tell one in a minute, if you’ve ever been around them, by the sound. I can tell them. I wouldn’t have to see them. I know the sound of the engine. They are the only one that sounds like that.
Daniel Jackson:
Well, I’ll tell you what. My class, the class of 2009 at the academy, is actually the 51st class and I’m sure—
Ernest Weisemiller:
No kidding.
Daniel Jackson:
Yeah, and in fact, we put a P-51 on our class crest, so it will be on our rings.
Ernest Weisemiller:
Super. Super.
Daniel Jackson:
So, we’ll actually be the only class to have a prop plane and not a jet on our class ring.
Ernest Weisemiller:
I don’t remember; I’ve seen Jackson’s. But I don’t know what was on his. It may have been an A-10, I don’t know. But he’s got one on there, I know that.
Daniel Jackson:
Yeah, I think usually there’s a couple because—
Ernest Weisemiller:
No propeller airplanes, yeah.
Daniel Jackson:
Right. But since we’re the 51st and we have a P-51, we only have one airplane on ours.
Ernest Weisemiller:
51st Group. There is also one that is on the academy grounds, too, a P-51. There’s one there. I know I’ve seen pictures of it. There’s one there at the Air Force Academy, a P-51D.
Daniel Jackson:
I haven’t seen it. That’s interesting.
Ernest Weisemiller:
You haven’t. And you’re a junior?
Daniel Jackson:
Yeah. Are you sure it’s at the Air Force Academy and not one of the other bases in the area?
Ernest Weisemiller:
Yes, sir. It’s out on the Air Force Academy and there’s a P-40, too. Have you seen that one?
Daniel Jackson:
There’s a P-40 at Peterson Air Force Base.
Ernest Weisemiller:
There is.
Daniel Jackson:
Right.
Ernest Weisemiller:
There’s one there in the Air Force Academy, isn’t it?
Daniel Jackson:
Nope.
Ernest Weisemiller:
I’ll be darned. I’m going to call Jackson here and see if he’s seen them. He’s got, wherever it was, I have a picture of him standing by it because he knew I flew P-51s in World War II. It might be at Peterson. It’s right there, that Peterson Air Force Base.
Daniel Jackson:
Right. Yeah.
Ernest Weisemiller:
Well, I thought it was on the Air Force Academy grounds, but the—
Daniel Jackson:
In fact, the P-40 on Peterson is painted up in a Flying Tigers Fourteenth Air Force motif and I was reading the Jing Bao Journal that a couple of the guys from the 76th squadron got jealous that the nose cone was painted in the color of the 75th squadron, so they sneaked onto base and repainted it.
Ernest Weisemiller:
No kidding! Well, that was a famous group in the Fourteenth Air Force. It was commanded by Tex Hill, one of the AVG people that stayed in when it became part of the Army Air Force—Air Corps.
Daniel Jackson:
You know Tex Hill just died.
Ernest Weisemiller:
Yes, he did. And he was a fine gentleman, I’ll tell you that. He was super, ace, and anybody who ever visited him down there in San Antonio, he would always serve them barbecue. That’s barbecue in Texas, you know, that’s one of their things that they have all the time. But Tex Hill was quite renowned and he was—I think he was a Navy pilot.
Daniel Jackson:
Right.
Ernest Weisemiller:
He volunteered. You’ve been studying this quite a bit. I can see that. Yep. Quite interesting. In my own time, I enjoyed flying that P-51, I’ll tell you that. A lot more than the P-40. But the P-40 was a pretty—it was a real stable gun platform and the P-41 was faster and little more wiggly. I mean the P-51, yeah.
Daniel Jackson:
Right. Right.
Ernest Weisemiller:
You feel a lot better than you did this afternoon when I called.
Daniel Jackson:
Well, I got a chance to get some medication into me.
Ernest Weisemiller:
Great. Do you go to a civilian doctor or do you back to the Air Force—on, the Academy?
Daniel Jackson:
I just—the academy clinic is actually closed over Christmas, so I just went on my parent’s insurance to their doctor.
Ernest Weisemiller:
Oh, well that’s great. I know there is a hospital out there, I think, at the academy, or clinic or something.
Daniel Jackson:
They do, but they are getting rid of it in the next couple of years.
Ernest Weisemiller:
They are? What are they going to use?
Daniel Jackson:
They are going to contract everything out.
Ernest Weisemiller:
They’re not going to operate themselves, huh?
Daniel Jackson:
Apparently so.
Ernest Weisemiller:
I just don’t understand that. That’s going to cost more than them operating it, I imagine. I don’t know.
Daniel Jackson:
I don’t know exactly how they justify all that stuff.
Ernest Weisemiller:
That is the federal government. They do things that everybody wonders about.
Daniel Jackson:
That’s true enough.
Ernest Weisemiller:
Especially the military, you know they love that lock, stock, and barrel.
Daniel Jackson:
Yep.
Ernest Weisemiller:
Anyway, they’ve got to have it. You may not remember when the Clintons were in the White House; he didn’t like the military at all and he almost ruined it. He let it run down to practically nothing.
Daniel Jackson:
Yep.
Ernest Weisemiller:
And they had to build it back. But that’s neither here nor there.You have to live with it, whatever it is.
Daniel Jackson:
That’s true enough.
Ernest Weisemiller:
[inaudible 00:38:10] but I’m sure glad to answer and tell you anything that I know.
Daniel Jackson:
Well, I appreciate the interview, sir. Thank you very much. You gave me a lot of good information.
Ernest Weisemiller:
Well, I had two careers, but I enjoyed both of them. War or no war, being in the Air Force is not like being in the Army. I’ll tell you that. There’s no ground crunching in the Air Force. They do a lot of it in the Army. I grew up close to Fort Knox, Kentucky—all of the armor, tanks, and so forth. We had a famous general there—Patton—at Fort Knox for a while and he was something else. He loved war. He was a fighting fool.
Well, Dan. I’ve certainly enjoyed talking to you. I’ll be glad to answer any more questions you have.
Daniel Jackson:
Well, I enjoyed talking to you, sir. I hope you have good night and a good rest of your holiday season.
Ernest Weisemiller:
I hope you do, too. I want you to get that second lieutenant’s bar and a pair of silver wings. I hope the best for you. You’re getting a fine education, I’ll tell you that. That’s my opinion of it. I never had one when I was there in service, in school.
Daniel Jackson:
Well, I appreciate it. So, have a good night and thank you very much.
Ernest Weisemiller:
Thank you.
Daniel Jackson:
I really do appreciate it.
Ernest Weisemiller:
Appreciate it.
Daniel Jackson:
Thank you very much. Bye.
Ernest Weisemiller:
Bye.