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 E. Irion eptemb r 20'h, 2002 And they liked that idea. It didn't appeal to me, but did to an awful lot of p ople y ah. There were a lot of guys chose that. BEN: Did you take the aerobatics? Not all fighter pilots- but it seemed like a lot- they really ... ROB: Oh, I enjoyed it thoroughly. I really did. Anyhow, we graduated, but we still had not gone through our P-40 transition that we were supposed to get at that base. BEN: Was it going to be at the same place? ROB: Yeah- we were supposed to get twelve hours in a P-40 there, and we'd only got you know, about five hours - well, actually about two hours before we graduated. So they said "Okay, we're going to keep you guys here." And a certain group of us were assigned to stay for two weeks, while the rest of them went on their leave, and we were going to get our leave after they came back, we'd get our fighter transition. It was two weeks of lousy weather. I think we got about three hours in that two weeks of time. Finally they sent us home on leave anyhow, but we still hadn't completed fighter transition - had to come back to Maxwell to complete that, before they sent us on to our next assignment. BEN: Did it feel quite different than a AT-6's then? ROB: Yeah it had so much more power you know. It was a bigger engine- it had 1200 horse, well1210 or something like that- 1200 horsepower, and it felt like a real fighter. What you expected a fighter to be, and there I did some things that weren't in the book, and I shouldn't have done, but they taught me some lessons that were helpful to me. BEN: Such as? 37