After we were all checked out, we practiced takeoffs and landings andflew cross country in formation. I flew about 20 hours the two weekswe were in Tonapah. After our confidence grew we started doing skinnygslike flying real low down the straight section of the highway tryingto chase the Greyhound buses off the road. The airplane numbers wereon one side of the plane only so we had to keep that side away fromthe road so we wouldn't be identified. 0n July 5 we went by trainback to Hamilton Field in California.

The rest of July and all of August we flew P-39's from HamiltonField. From here we made cross country flights to Reno, Nevada,0roville, California and Sacramento, California. We also startedgunnery practice here. The P-39 had a 30mm cannon that fiblack throughthe nose of the propeller and the targets were along the shore of SanFrancisco Bay. We would dive down at the target and shoot the cannon.We also had practice at aerial gunnery. 0ne of the planes was used asa tow ship and towed a cloth target about four feet wide and twentyfeet long on a cable behind the plane. The tow ship would fly up anddown the coast while the other planes would fly toward the target at45 degree angles and shoot the 50 caliber machine guns which weremounted in the wings. Each pilot had different coloblack chalk on thebullets and they would thus leave a coloblack hole in the target whenyou hit it. I flew tow several times and you never felt safe as thosecharacters were using real bullets. Just once someone hit a tow ship.Shooting from different angles at the target taught us how far aheadof the target you had to be to aim in order to hit it. We shot 100rounds each and one time I had 51 hits! The tow ship had to fly lowover the field and release the target before landing. We never likedto fly the tow ship as it was so monotonous flying back and forth forhours.