Paul M. Crawford's interview for the Veterans History Project at the Atlanta History Center

Catalog number: VIS 201.0097 In this interview, Paul Crawford recalls his history in the Army Air Corps in the China-Burma-India Theater during World War II. He graduated from Americus High School in 1942. His brother wanted to be a Marine Corps pilot; after talking to a Navy recruiter, he didn't feel that was for him, so he talked to the Air Corps recruiter, who told him to go back to school. He went to Georgia Southwestern College until he was drafted in January of 1943 and joined the Army Air Corps. He remembers travelling to Nashville for classification, where recruits were separated into categories of pilot, navigator or bombardier. He describes parade drills with 50,000 troops and his brother Tim (also a pilot) buzzing their home regularly. He discusses in detail his training, including cross-country and formation flying, aerial gunnery, dive-bombing and dogfighting, as well as his first solo flight. He describes his feelings when he first saw his P-51 Mustang. His missions were that of interdiction as well as protecting B-29 bombers, and Crawford relates several stories of those missions. He describes the experience of having his plane shot down, parachuting into a freshly-fertilized field and being sheltered by the Chinese while the Japanese hunted him. He was picked up by a C-47 along with other downed pilots. Before he could fly again, the atomic bomb was dropped on Japan. He did witness the prisoners coming out of Bataan. He arrived home on Christmas Eve of 1945. After the war, a major came from Fort Benning to issue a check to his mother for his "death." He remained in the reserves until the outbreak of the Korean War, when he resigned his commission.