Robert E. Irion, Sandy, Utah: an interview by Benjamin Bahlmann, September 20, 2002: Saving the legacy tape no. 537, 538, and 539

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Robert . Irion eptemb r 20'h 2 02 to fly the darned thing. It was great to get in there. So we went from th r into Maxw ll Field Alabama for pre-flight training. And this was again, schooling- military schooling- it was all military subjects this time. And you had classroom half a day, you had physical activity the rest of the day of some type or another, a drill or an actual sports activity. We ran an awful lot, we climbed walls a lot, we did all those things to build up our physical condition. BEN: No planes? ROB: No, no airplanes at all. Not actual flying. So the actual flying stage came when we went down to Dorr Field, Florida. I think that was about August of 1943, and we were there- each of these were two month stages, by the way, up from there on. Pre­flight, primary training- primary training was in a Stearman Bi-Plane, PT-17. And flew that for two months down to ah ... BEN: What do you recall about your first flights? About your instructor? ROB: Well, I had a flying instructor named Don Goodsell, and he was a guy from Iowa that was very patient, very good instructor, very quiet mild mannered type, but very thorough. And I enjoyed it very much with him after I- I think I had seven hours or something like that, when he said, "Okay, we're going to do a solo flight." BEN: Did he take you on aerobatics when you first started? ROB: Oh no. Not early on at all. We didn't do any of that early. BEN: Did you learn on your first flight, did he try to show you what it was going to be all about? ROB: they just basically flew the airplane, but they didn't try to do a lot of aerobatics or anything like that, no. 27