Oral history interview with Estel G. Burns, 2009 October 14.

ArchivalResource

Burns, Estel G., 1921-. Oral history interview with Estel G. Burns, 2009 October 14.

Oral history interview with Estel G. Burns, 2009 October 14.

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/761731196

Interview with retired Lieutenant Colonel Estel G. Burns, an Army Air Forces veteran (8th Army Air Force, 401st Bombardment Group) and a recipient of Distinguished Flying Cross, concerning his childhood and education in rural Missouri; struggle to survive the years of the Great Depression and the drought ; enlistment in U.S. Army following two years of farm work after 1940 high school graduation; his pre-aviation cadet basic training at Sheppard Field II Army Air Corps Training Center in Texas, and training as a radio operator in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, followed by extensive pilot training at Maxwell Field in Montgomery, Alabama (pre-flight school), Thompson-Robbins Field in Helena, Arkansas, Freeman Army Airfield, Seymour, Indiana, Sioux City Army Air Base, Iowa, and Chanutte Field, Illinois; Burns's marriage to Dorothy Perin; promotion to First Lieutenant as a B-17 pilot in charge of a nine member crew; deployment to England, and crossing the Atlantic on USS Brazil; the accident at RAF Deenethorpe airfield; thirty-five combat missions flown over France and Germany from Deenethorpe, England as a member of the 612th Bombardment Squadron (part of the 401st Bombardment Group); return to the US in November 1944; his training as an instructor pilot at Lockbourne Air Force Base, Columbus Ohio, and assignments in Charleston, South Carolina; release from the service and work for Naublits and Sparks Industries in Indiana, and, later, for an Indiana telephone company; his return to active duty and service for twenty-seven years before retirement in 1969; loss of his first wife and loss of the eldest son. The interview contains many details about the training, the daily life of soldiers, B-17 and its operation. Estel Burns remembers each of his nine B-17 crew members and recounts some of the many dramatic moments of his service in WWII. Appendix consists of photocopies of photographs of First Lieutenant Burns, his B-17 crew, a list of their names and of the thirty-five combat missions they flew.

223, [5] leaves of plates ; 29 cm.

University of North Texas Library, UNT