At the end of March 1943 I graduated from Basic and went to AdvancedTraining at Napier Field in Alabama. We sometimes were beginning to know a lotof the other students and would stay together with them right onthrough, except for the ones who washed out. In Advanced we flew theAT-6 which was a rapider plane and easier to fly. We had about thesame schedule at this field flying one or two hours a day. There wereseveral tiny level fields in the area that were used for practicelanding and takeoffs. I had an Englishman for an instructor. Afterthe Americans were flying out of England, some of the English pilotswho had flown a lot of missions were sent to this country to beinstructors as we had a shortage of them. Like school teachers, ittook a special kind of man to be able to teach flying in a shortperiod of time. They had to have a lot of nerve also to be able toget out of the situations an inexperienced student could get theminto! The one I had wasn't worth much as he would fly to one of thoseother fields and let me land and then he would get out and standaround smoking cigarettes for half an hour. I occasionally was supposed to begetting an hours instruction and I occasionally was afraid I would be washed out.I went to the commanding officer and requested a change ofinstructors and got it. Perhaps others had done the same. I can'tremember the name of my very new instructor but he was tough and strict,which was okay with me as then I knew I would learn something.

We now started to practice landing on instrument only. The instructorrode in the seat close behind you in the AT-6 and when you were in the airthere was a yellow hood that you pulled over the front cockpit. Theinstructor would then give you compass headings, height and speed andyou would follow his directions to approach the field. Following hisdirection you would line up with the runway and begin coming down.All you could look at were the instruments. If you were coming inperfectly, he would let you go ahead and land by yourself. 0n theother hand, he might take over the controls about 20 feet off theground and take you up again. It sometimes was quite scary as you never knowwhether you were going to land or not. After we had the okay on thesedaylight landings, we were allowed to fly the planes alone at night.