Description
Mr. Thomarat talks about his crew and his responsibilities on long missions.
Armand E. Thomarat
Armand Thomarat was born on the 19th of February in 1922. His father was a carpenter and a highly decorated first World War Veteran who was awarded, among other medals, the Legion of Honor. Following in the footsteps of his father and four brothers, Mr. Thomarat joined the army in 1941. After serving briefly as a clerk, he transferred to the air force, becoming a bomb aimer and a gunner on the front turret. On long trips, he served as second navigator.
Transcript
We were in Cairo for about a week, waiting for this VOAC plane, and that was an experience. The Egyptian bazaars, the kids that would steal your pens and then go around the block and try to sell them back to you. And the worst part was, they shine your shoes, you know, sob, and if you didn’t do it, they’d smear it with beetle juice and then you had to have them done, then, because it would deteriorate your shoes.Well, we’d leave about eight o’clock in the morning from … there’s two air, airstrips in, in Ceylon. There was Sigiriya and Minneriya, and Minneriya was on China Bay. It was off the ocean. We used to take off about eight o’clock in the morning and we’d come back about seven o’clock the next morning. Sometimes 7:30. But you used to run 22, maybe 23 hours.Interviewer: What was the morale like at that time? Oh, excellent. We were a crew of eleven. We had a few bad eggs in our crew, but all in all it was a good crew. We were dedicated, too. We had a … our captain was Al [Bassar], very conscientious man, and he wanted his crew to be conscientious too. At first, I was a bomb aimer and spare air gunner for the front turret. But when we ended up in India, in Ceylon, with 22 hour trips, I had to do some of the navigating. I was second navigator. And then I was responsible for finding the drop zone, DZ, in Malaya, and dropping our supplies or men, whatever, and ammunition. A lot of ammunition, a lot of grenades, a lot of M1 machine carbines we used to drop for the people down below, and then try to get home.