Richard F. North, Murray, Utah: an interview by Joel C. Calderon, 29 March, 2002: Saving the legacy tape no. 377

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Richard F. North 2 ar h 2 2 on February 2, 1943, I had one week's leave and on February 9 w w nt by train t Fresno, California where I took basic training, which I think was about thirty day if I remember correctly at Fresno. Then we went over to the University of alifomia at Berkeley where this program was to take place. The first part of the program was one year of intense college education. We just went to the school at the University of California for one year, but it was so intense that when I finished they gave me credentials of two years of college credit. Actually when I returned from the service in 1945 I was really a junior in college. Anyway, we went one year there, after which the Army Air Corps had decided that they had over-subscribed this program, so they cancelled every one of us out that were in that program, three hundred of us there at the University of California, but gave us our choice of whatever branch of the Army Air Corps we wanted to go into. So I chose something I'd always been interested in, and that was to go into flying. I was enrolled in the Army Air Corps Cadet program; went to Santa Ana, California for preliminary training there at Santa Ana. During that training I was tested and failed the depth perception test and was not permitted to become a pilot. So, I was assigned to navigator training. From the cadet training, which was several months in Santa Ana, I was transferred to Hondo Air Force Base, Hondo, Texas where we did our navigator training. That was completed in September of 1944. We received our navigator wings and our commission to Second Lieutenant. At Hondo they asked me to be an instructor there for a short period of time until in November of that year when they decided they didn't need us for instructors. 2