Robert D. Teran, Sandy, Utah: an interview by Winston P. Erickson, May 23, 2000: Saving the legacy tape no. 18 and 19

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ROBERT D. TERAN MAY 23,2000 (our class). He wrote me a letter and told me that later. There were incidents that happened while we were training there. For example, what you're supposed to do, there was a trim tab in the cockpit of the plane, these older planes, but when you took off, you put the trim tab back a little, and it helped you lift the nose and to take off. Then when you landed and you left the plane, you are supposed to put it back to neutral. Everybody was learning, and there were some that had forgotten to put it back to neutral. In this one instance that I remember, you would give it the throttle and take off, but down the end of the runway there was a high hedge and on the other side was a swampy area. Well, this young man gave the throttle and he was trying to take off but he'd go up and come back down because the trim tab was back. He came down to the end of the hedge, went over, and, of course, he washed out. That was the term for anybody that didn't make it. They always put the student in the back seat because if they got sick and threw up, then it was over the side. You could always tell those who had thrown up because they had to go and wash the plane after they got down. A lot of them washed out because they got sick too often. I don't really know the numbers, but I know that it did happen occasionally. From there, we went to basic training, and you flew in what would be called BT-13s. That was in Alabama. We called them the "Vaulty Vibrator" because if you went into a spin or anything-and you had go into spins and then pull them out and that type of thing-the thing shuddered really bad. One of my fun things that we did was that we took a cross­country trip in BT-13s. This friend and l-and I don't remember his name, but he was one of the guys I got to know-decided we were going to fly together. It was down by 12