Perrin Aircraft

“The only planes we had were BT-13s. Of course, that was February 1942. Everything was BT-13s.” Morris Guzick (1941-1946; 1948-1971)

“The first accident we had at Perrin Field (of course it was Grayson Basic Flying School then) was a cadet. He was hedgehopping down Red River. On Red River they used to have a ferryboat crossing, and they had this big cable crossing the river.  We were flying BT-13s. And the BT-13 did not have retractable landing gear. So as he was hedgehopping, his wheels hit this cable. . . . It stretched that cable out and then flipped the airplane back over on its back right in the river. The ferry operator went out there to see what was going on. The cadet had his mouth up under the seat. Of course, the seat had a little air pocket, so he got the canopy open and got the cadet out. He was busted, so I guess he left probably the next day.” Morris Guzick (1941-1946; 1948-1971)

“This was 1946. They started using Perrin as a storage base. They brought in AT-11s and AT-11s were the bombardier trainer.  It’s a twin-engine airplane. They started bringing in B-25s and these AT-11s, and, well, nobody at Perrin Field had any experience with those airplanes.” Morris Guzick (1941-1946; 1948-1971)

AT-11

B-25

“When I first got there, they had what they called the ‘Texan.’ It was an AT-6, Advanced Trainer 6. North American. They were two-seated trainers, and that’s what we did. We trained pilots, fresh out of college or high school or whatever the education they had to get to be a pilot. They learned to fly out here. They learned to navigate.” Bob Jennings (1948-1951)

[When they re-opened the base in 1948] they were going to fly T-6s. That was just like duck soup, fly that little old airplane. We could rebuild a T-6, and believe it or not, we were the only base world-wide, the only United States base that was flying T-6s that had 100% aircraft in commission.” Morris Guzick (1941-1946; 1948-1971).

“On occasion, too, gliders they used back in World War II when they invaded France landed here.” Morris Guzick (1941-1946; 1948-1971).

“Things were pretty easy, and then they started bringing in some AT-28s. That was a Northrop trainer that sounded like a tractor.  We had those a while. Then they started bringing some B-26s in.” Morris Guzick (1941-1946; 1948-1971).

“I had a friend who worked in manpower at base headquarters when the jets were coming to Perrin. They had a wire they were carrying around. Big secret. Jets coming to Perrin. Got home, picked up the Sherman Democrat, and the headlines said, ‘Jets Coming to Perrin.’ Big secret!” Overton E. Jay (1951-1971).

“When I got here they had B-26s and T-28s.  Then the F-86Ds started coming and the T-33s.  And we kept those until I guess about 1960 they started bringing the F-102s.  They had 104s out here, in and out.  They had B-58s come in later, used to come in and refuel or something like that.”  Ken Hayes (1953-1971)

“The Air Force had a squadron in here that was from Randolph AFB with those little trainers. We did maintenance on those things, that squadron of T-37 training planes. I think they were basic trainers.” Morris Guzick (1941-1946; 1948-1971).

“There were three flights down in the T-Bird section. The flight ramp was a concrete ramp; they call that the flight line, and this is where the planes were parked.  There were three groups or flights. The flight line, the T-Bird end, was good duty. The T-33s were trainer aircraft but they were also target aircraft for F-102 pilot training.” Ralph Waterloo (1963-1966)

“We had helicopters. And the helicopter was an emergency helicopter.  It carried a fire bottle on it, about a thousand pounds of foam with some guys that wore suites, and if we had a crash, that helicopter was maybe in the air hovering around waiting.” James McCall (1951, 1956-1971).

“It was very common, very common, to have a crash. And very common to have some guy off somewhere call and say, ‘This airplane is out here in my pasture burning.’ We had a big map of the area with grids on there, and our job was to locate where that guy was calling from, where that plane was. . . . Then, if the plane had crashed off base, we formed what we called convoy, led by our base operations vehicle, which had radios and so forth in it, to go out to the site, taking the fire department, you know, as quick as we could.” James McCall (1951, 1956-1971).

“[We had] lots fatalities.  I went to work our there one time as an aircraft dispatcher at about 4:00 or 5:00 and before 10:00 or 11:00, we had five major accidents, killed two or three guys. It was dangerous.  That training was dangerous.  Now, if we have an airplane crash, as you know, in training, we practically have a congressional investigation. 

 We didn’t do that then.  We were training pilots for air defense command. . . . They were loaded with rockets. Sometimes they’d crash out there, and they had a load of rockets on them.” James McCall (1951, 1956-1971).

Edwin A. Link provided a giant step forward when in 1931 he received a patent on his “pilot maker” training device.  Organ bellows and a motor provided the means for the trainer, mounted on a pedestal, to pitch, roll, dive and climb as the student “flew” it. Ironically, most of his first sales were to amusement parks.  In 1934, the Army Air Corps bought Link trainers to train pilots to fly at night and in bad weather relying on instruments.  In the World War II era, virtually all aviation cadets took blind-flying instruction in the Link.  Movement of the trainer was accomplished by vacuum operated bellows, controlled by valves connected to the control wheel (or stick) and rudder pedals. An instructor sat at the desk and transmitted radio messages which the student in the Link heard through his earphones.  Inside the “cockpit,” the student relied on his instruments to “fly” the Link through various maneuvers while his navigational “course” was traced on a map on the desk by the three-wheeled “crab.” Slip stream simulators gave the controls the feeling of air passing over control surfaces and a rough air generator added additional realism during the “flight.”

“This one guy I was rooming with was assigned to the link trainer-type maintenance crews. Our squadron also took care of the trainers.  Since he operated the Link trainers for the pilots, after the pilots were gone, sometimes we’d go down to the simulator building and get in the trainer, and we could fly the plane.  They could do all kinds of stuff with the controls.  They could even lower the runway out from under you.  We spent a lot of time down there.” George Kerns (1957-1960)

Base Life