In November 1940, 44 young military cadets graduated from the first
Army Air Corps Navigational Class at Miami University in Coral
Gables, Florida. The cadets came from all parts of the United
States-from the urban areas of the East Coast, westward to the
Appalachian Mountains, to the Midwest and prairie states, to the
Rocky Mountains, and the West Coast. These young men came from the
inner cities, the farmlands, the mountains, and coastal regions,
and they were all volunteers. Most were college-educated and in the
prime of life. World War II was raging in Europe and it was
becoming increasingly difficult for the United States to remain
neutral. A few farsighted men in our small Army Air Corps saw the
essential requirement for trained celestial navigators in our
military aircraft. The instructor for this navigational class was a
34-year-old high school dropout by the name of Charles J. Lunn.
Charlie Lunn had first learned the art of celestial navigation
aboard freighter ships in the Caribbean and later as the navigator
aboard Pan American Airline planes flying to Europe and Asia. This
book was written by one of those young navigators, Edgar D.
Whitcomb, from Hayden, Indiana. Ed Whitcomb tells about these young
comrades-in-arms and draws vivid word portraits of them as we learn
of their assignments to Air Corps units. We learn how they survived
and how some died in World War II. We learn about Ed's own
pre-Pearl Harbor assignment with the 19th Bombardment Group at
Clark Field in the Philippines and the unfortunate, and perhaps
inexcusable, decision not to deploy our B-17 Flying Fortress
bombers immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor resulting in
the loss of 40 percent of thoseaircraft as they sat parked at Clark
Field when the Japanese destroyed that vital military air base on
the afternoon of 8 December 1941. Charles J. Mott, Colonel, USAR,
Retired
General
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