I do not remember the Student Squadron I was assigned to while attending technical school.  I, along with two of the other six from Clarksville, arrived at Sheppard around mid-September, 1955.  We were to be trained as aircraft mechanics.  We would be here for approximately five months.

Some of the aircraft we would be using for training were the B-29, the T-6 and I believe, the C-54.  All of the aircraft were getting old at the that time and all are now considered antiques, with few flying today.  I'll bet I used up 500 feet of safety wire on the control cables alone on the T-6.

At that time the Air Force was only some eight years old, spliting off as a seperate branch of military in 1947.  I remember some of our instructors wore the Army OD green uniform with the blue and white Air Force chevrons.

We learned that the yellow paint on the tips of the aircraft propeller blaces was not actually there to keep the black paint from slipping off.  It was to draw attention to a rotating propeller, "The Circle of Death", sort of a safety warning to keep clear.  We also learned that you could not carry "Prop Wash" in a bucket, that it was actually the wind generated by the rotating propeller.  Those were just two of the humorous things we learned.  We had one fellow also learn, that no matter how fast you ran, you could not start an auxilary power unit by pulling it

Being only 405 miles from home, we made the trip home on 13 weekends during our 5 month stay here.  There were no Interstate Highways then, we just lit out cross country, the shortest distance between two points, as long as the road was hard surface and heading in the right direction.

From here it was off to my first Permanent Duty Assignment, Kelly AFB,Texas