A Bombardier is Born
Here’s an interesting, if not disconcerting, cartoon drawn by Walt Disney. It appears in the On Course class book for Class 45-1B at the Childress Army Air Field.
This field near Childress, Texas, was a bombardier school during World War II. Graduating cadets earned their wings as bombardiers.
Here’s something interesting from On Course!, class 45-14B at the San Angelo Army Air Field. This class trained at least fifteen black cadets to be bombardiers. Assigned to Flight 6, they are pictured along with their Bomb-a-dears (wives, sweethearts and children) starting on page 57.
That they are pictured at all, especially with their family members, shows the base was somewhat ahead of its time. They were still segregated, but they appear in the book like any other cadets. A cartoon on page 67 emphasizes the situation. It’s humorous, but still not quite right.
