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Ben Brew -  Harding Field Training

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Ben was assigned to Harding Field, Louisiana for P-47 Thunderbolt training. 

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"He had been trained at a number of Army air bases and ended up at Harding Field, near Baton Rouge LA, where he was kept on as an instructor pilot for the P-47 for about 3 or 4 months into 1944 before being sent on to England. This was just after D-day. He had always wanted to be in a pursuit plane such as the  P-40 or especially the P-51, but he was tall: about 6’2”, so they told him he should go into bombers…..he didn’t like that. So he was able to stay with the fighters planes instead of bombers." 

 

"The P-47 (Thunderbolt / ”Jug”) was bigger, and would accommodate a taller person than the P-51, so he ended up going into the P-47s instead of the bombers….so he liked that. But I see from the stats, that the fatalities in the P-47s were about the worst. The P-40s were bad, but they were old. I guess the P-47 had a lot of mechanical problems that took a long time, and lives to figure out..."