NOTICE
This is a transcript of a tape-recorded interview conducted by The United States Air Force Oral History Program . The reader should remember that this is essentially a transcript of the spoken, rather than the written word.

Numbers appearing in square brackets (ex. [45]) within the transcript indicate the pagination in the original, hardcopy version of the oral history interview.

RESTRICTIONS
This oral history transcript may be read, quoted from, cited, and reproduced for purposes of research. It may not be published in full except by permission of the Harry S. Truman Library.

Opened February 1990
Harry S. Truman Library
Independence, Missouri

[iii]

FOREWORD

One of the oldest and oft-used sources for reconstructing the past is the personal recollections of the individuals who were involved. While of great value, memoirs and oral interviews are primary source documents rather than finished history. The following pages are the personal remembrances of the interviewee and not the official opinion of the United States Air Force Historical Program or of the Department of the Air Force. The Air Force has not verified the statements contained herein and does not assume any responsibility for their accuracy.

These pages are a transcript of an oral interview recorded on magnetic tape. Editorial notes and additions made by United States Air Force historians have been enclosed in brackets. When feasible, first names, ranks, or titles have been provided. Only minor changes for the sake of clarity were made before the transcript was returned to the interviewee for final editing and approval. Readers must therefore remember that this is a transcript of the spoken, rather than the written, word.

[v]

KNOW ALL MEN BY THESE PRESENTS:

That I, Maj. Gen Robert B. Landry, have on (date) 1-2 March, 1983, participated in an oral magnetic taped interview with Hugh N. Ahmann, USAF Historical Research Center, covering my best recollections of events and experiences which may be of historical significance to the United States Air Force.

I understand that the tape(s) and the transcribed manuscript resulting there from will be accessioned into the United States Air Force Historical Research Center to be used as the security classification permits. It is further understood and agreed that any copy or copies of this oral history interview given to me by the United States Air Force and in my possession or that of my executors, administrators, heirs, and assigns, may be used in any manner and for any purpose by me or them, subject to security classification restrictions.

Subject to the license to use reserved above, I do hereby voluntarily give, transfer, convey, and assign all right, title, and interest in the memoirs and remembrances contained in the aforementioned magnetic tapes and manuscript to the Office of Air Force History, acting on behalf of the United States of America, to have and to hold the same forever, hereby relinquishing for myself, my executors, administrators, heirs, and assigns all ownership, right, title, and interest therein to the donee expressly on the condition of strict observance of the following restrictions:

DONOR: Robert B. Landry, Maj. General, USAF (Retired)

DATED: Feb 3, 1990
Accepted on behalf of the Office of Air Force History by: Elliott V. Converse, III, Col. USAF

DATED: Feb 13, 1990

[vii]

BIOGRAPHY

OF

MAJOR GENERAL ROBERT B. LANDRY

Major General Robert B. Landry was born on 1 December 1909 in New Orleans, Louisiana. He attended Tulane University for a year and then entered the U.S. Military Academy from which he was graduated in June 1932, and appointed a second lieutenant of Infantry. After serving at infantry installations in the United States for 2 years, he began flying training and in March 1935, was graduated with the rating of pilot and transferred to the Air Corps.

General Landry's first Air Corps assignment was as flying instructor at Kelly Field, Texas, followed by a 2 year tour of duty in the Panama Canal Zone. He then became a squadron Commander of the 493d Bomb Group; and Assistant Chief of Staff for Operations of the Air Staff of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces.

General Landry, in January 1946, was appointed a member of the Joint Operations Review Board of the Army Navy Staff College. The following July he entered the National War College, from which he was graduated in July 1947. A month later he was named executive to the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force. In February 1948, General Landry was appointed Air Aide to President Truman.

He was designated deputy commander of the Second Air Force at Barksdale AFB, Louisiana, in January 1953. On 7 February 1955, he became Commander of the Fourth Air Force, Continental Air Command, Hamilton AFB, California. In July 1957, he transferred as Assistant to the Deputy Chief of Staff, Personnel, Headquarters, U.S. Air Force. In June 1960 he was assigned to McClellan AFB, California. He retired in June 1962.

[ix]

TABLE OF CONTENTS

[1]

Oral History Interview #K239.0512-1372
1-2 March 1983
Taped Interview with Maj Gen Robert B. Landry
Conducted by Mr. Hugh A. Ahmann
Transcribed and Edited by Mary E. Monday

(Interview begins with Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, 7 December 1941)

AHMANN: Have you read this recent book, At Dawn We Slept, by Prange

LANDRY: Yes. I have it up in the library here.

AHMANN: That is a massive account.

LANDRY: That was done by a lieutenant commander in the Navy who continued in the Navy and had very good assignments. Afterwards I think he retired from the State Department or someplace. He continued to pursue this. I'm still reading the bibliography. (laughter) And I was there.

AHMANN: Has anybody ever come to talk to you about Pearl Harbor at all?

LANDRY: No. Just some friends of mine who were over there.

AHMANN: Did you know Kermit Tyler [Lt. Col. Kermit A.] over there when you were there? He was that man who was at the plotting board on 7 December, that morning. He was at the control center, the AC&W [air control and warning) control center.

[2]

LANDRY: I probably have met him because Fort Shafter had the responsibility of setting up that plotting board. The Army was so goddamn jealous of the Air Force all the time that, Christ, they wanted to do everything. They set the goddamn various degrees of alertness. We fought them on that and lost, and we lost the whole goddamn air force out there because we lined them up wingtip to wingtip. They wanted to run the plotting board and was slow in getting it started. Of course we were not getting the equipment anyway. But we had nothing to do with it except as they might ask somebody something when they wanted to.

I'll guarantee you, after the attack came, we took it over right away, and the Hawaiian Fighter Command was set up. As a matter of fact, I became the executive officer, first to "Monk" Hunter [Maj Gen Frank O'D.] who was flown over and then replaced by Howard Davidson [Maj Gen Howard C.], who knew nothing about fighters. It was my responsibility to get that plotting center going. We got it going, and of course, we got materiel from the States. We got all the volunteer ladies there whose husbands were out fighting the war and people living there. We had a hell of a good plotting center eventually.

AHMANN: Where did the idea germinate for that plotting center? When did that originally get set up? Do you remember that? Or was that going when you got there?

LANDRY: Like I say--oh, no, it was not going when we got there. They had nothing like that. As a matter of fact, I got there in November 1940. There wasn't anything like it; there wasn't any feeling of a great threat although the Japanese were acting kind of funny even in those days, but no threat

[3]

of immediate attack. I would say that probably the priority for the equipment available, considering expenses, costs, and budgets, I guess Hawaii was pretty low on the totem pole. But eventually, I think as the situation began to deteriorate, the Japanese Fleet was sailing all around the Pacific; the possibility of an attack was always there, but it seemed so far away that a lot of people thought it would be other places first.

AHMANN: It was that remote.

LANDRY: It was that remote. So we did get the station up there on the northwest point of the Island of Oahu that detected the airplanes coming in, picked up the B-17s that were coming in and the others. They thought they were all the same thing. That was going, and the information was not even--well, it was probably telephoned to Shafter. Somebody took it, but they didn't know what to do with it. It was Sunday morning. There was no procedure; there was nothing written. We had not a goddamn thing to do with it. The Army was running it.

AHMANN: What was the Army, ostensibly, supposed to do with the information, alert the Air Force?

LANDRY: Eventually, I suppose they would have gotten an operational procedure going and alerted somebody. I was assistant A-3 in addition to being aide to General Martin [Maj Gen Frederick L.] and we didn't have any information about anything up there. We knew people were up there.

But it wasn't piped to the Air Force; it was piped to Fort Shafter to Mr. Short's [Maj Gen Walter C.] outfit. Those b-----ds were so jealous of their goddamn authority and

[4]

prerogatives that it was always a fight with them. As a matter of fact, General Martin ordered us to make a study--Art Meehan [Col Arthur W. ] who was the A-3, and I--of the capability of the Hawaiian Air Force to fight. We had the B-18s which had a range of action of a very small bomb load of about 225-250 miles. We had a bunch of fighters up at Wheeler (AFB HI) and that sort of thing, but we had no warning business.

The Air Force could never go direct to our own Air Force Headquarters at Langley--General Andrews [Lt Gen Frank M.] in those days. Well, in a sense you could, because our efficiency reports went through there and all that, administratively. But if you got into policy, and you got into budget; you got into equipment, and you got into control, if you got outside the Army lines, I want to tell you, you got fired or court-martialed or both.

It wasn't easy. General Martin was dealing with some of our people I suppose. I know he was. We wanted to get a study to show that the equipment we had was inadequate for the defense of the island, for the air defense, for the air support and defense. So we made this study. We worked on it for 90 days. They gave us 90 days to do it, Art Meehan and I, and I did a great portion of it. All we did was plot possible routes out from the island 225-250 miles. Well, Jesus, a carrier could stay outside of 350 and launch, and you would never know it. Then they could come in and recover, and we would just be flying around out there boring holes in the sky.

It was that straightforward. We just said it. We said, "It is absolutely impossible. We have to have the equipment out

[5]

here. The Navy is patrolling and is supposed to give us early warning with the old PBY boats." So there was no great deal of priority put on Hawaii by the bigshots in Washington. All this foolishness about messages being received and transmitted or not transmitted, it was a mess. Who is responsible? I really don't know. I don't think Mr. Roosevelt [President Franklin D.] had anything to do with trying to start the war.

AHMANN: The responsibility for the defense of Hawaii had to be with Kimmel [Adm. Husband E.] , Short, Martin, and Kimmel.

LANDRY: If you want to do it that way, but you have to remember that in those days we had a thing called unification. Even though the Air Force was not a service--it was the Army Air Force--we had the only goddamn air force that was land based anyway, except for the carriers.

We had unification, and under the unification act--I think Forrestal [James V.] was in those days--the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines were all supposed to get along. You were not supposed to use your position of superior rank and all that if you sat, say, at the council table.

Well, you know that old dog won't hunt, because you take a four-star admiral, who has the overall responsibility for the Pacific, who is sitting at the table with a three-star Army man, who has the responsibility for the land based thing, and a two-star guy, who is not responsible to Short and then to Kimmel and can't talk to his own War Department in Washington, well, you can see how silly unification was. It was just an awful phase, in my opinion, during my experience, to see some effort to get people to work together without

[6]

having the proper setup to do it, the controls, the law, the authority.

AHMANN: At the time you went to Hawaii, it was obvious that there was no plan--I mean, was it pretty vague?

LANDRY: There was a War Department plan that the Navy would offshore patrol; we would build up the bomber force with the B-18, which was all we had then. The B-17 was not really in production. There were a few coming along. And the P-40s that we had and the fighters. So you build up your local war plans based on the equipment you had. I just got a feel that Hawaii was not a very high priority target. It wasn't close enough to Japan. That's my opinion.

Sure, we had a war plan, but I think all of us felt that, Christ, what we got--nobody anticipated a surprise attack. You have to admit that the Japanese did a beautiful job, and they handled it beautifully and executed it beautifully and did a great deal of damage. I think even had we known we might have made it a lot more difficult for them, but coming in with the force they had and the equipment we had, I don't think the B-18s could have done much. They couldn't have gotten out there, for Christ's sake. I mean, they just didn't have the radius of action.

We couldn't send them out there and have them all drop in the ocean coming back. So like we had the limit of armed endurance with the fighters over in the Eighth Air Force later, which I was in, a limit of armed endurance was the radius of action. The bombers wanted to go in further and get the hell shot out of them, which they did a few times like at Schweinfurt and Regensburg, and lose 50 to 60

[7]

bombers. They didn't keep doing that. They waited for their little friends. You had better believe it.

AHMANN: The reason I asked if anybody had ever talked to you is that I have read books where this Kermit Tyler--he retired out of the Air Force as a lieutenant colonel in the 1950s or 1960s--is quoted in books, actual words he said and things he did. I went to interview him one time, and I missed him. But I talked to him on the telephone. I said, "Did Walter Lord ever talk to you?" He said, "No, nobody has ever talked to me." Here, they were putting words in his mouth and everything. So that was one reason I asked you.

LANDRY: I don't even remember seeing that name. I think I read most of the books.

AHMANN: Yes, he would be mentioned in all those books.

LANDRY: It may be in there. That, in my opinion, is the best book ever put out. I don't think it is prejudicial at all. He just calls the facts. As I say, I haven't even gotten to the book yet. I'm reading the bibliography. I have several others.

AHMANN: Another book by Toland, Infamy, I just read that recently as a matter of fact. He tries to build a case that Roosevelt knew full well that----

LANDRY: I'll tell you one thing. Anybody who takes that position is either stupid or prejudice or crazy.

AHMANN: You are totally convinced in your mind----

[8]

LANDRY: No way in the world is the President of the United States going to do anything like that. Jesus, all you have to do is read this book, and you will find out the problem the President had, A Man Called Intrepid. That is not a history, but it is 95 percent true. It wasn't written until after the information could be verified at, what is the place in Washington? 25 years.

AHMANN: The National Archives.

LANDRY: Now if you think that Mr. Roosevelt was going to accept an attack like that and be in danger of losing the whole fleet, and if you consider the battleships, anything--you know, what Mitchell (Maj Gen William) had shown them would happen to them--well, then goddamn it, they sunk the Navy, just about. Just lucky that the Saratoga and Lexington were out at sea.

AHMANN: These same people who wrote this At Dawn We Slept have now written a book that has just come out about the Battle of Midway. Apparently that is a definitive study, too, about the Battle of Midway.

LANDRY: A lot of people have said--I was not there. I was in Hawaii at the time--the Navy was in it, and of course, we sent what we had, the B-17s that we had by then. That was really the turning point in the effectiveness of the Japanese Fleet, because I think we sunk two or three carriers.

AHMANN: Three or four as a matter of fact.

LANDRY: Three or four was what the figure was. That was the turning point because without those carriers, they were fairly vulnerable even with the submarines.

[9]

AHMANN: All their good pilots and everything.

LANDRY: We just shot them out of the sky.

AHMANN: In this interview I want to get a little bit of your family background too, by the way, General--where you are from. It shows you are from Louisiana originally.

LANDRY: I was born and raised in New Orleans. I graduated from Jesuits High School in 1927, and I wanted to be an M&E engineer, and I went to Tulane in 1927-28. I graduated in 1927. I went to Tulane in 1927 and through the first semester of 1928. My father had always been military oriented; I never was and couldn't care less really. I wasn't even a good Boy Scout, but he was for it. It was a means for me to get a decent education, I think. He was not a man with a great deal of money. I was a Kappa Sigma and enjoying myself and having a ball.

I took the physical, figuring I would never get the appointment because the best that my father could get for me was a second alternate through Senator Bob Broussard (Robert F., D LA) whom I was named after. My middle name is Broussard.

AHMANN: I was going to ask you about that.

LANDRY: I was all he could have. In those days it wasn't as popular as it is now. They didn't take the exams they do now. In those days if you had been through a semester of an accredited college, you did not take a mental exam, which pleased my father. Knowing I never would get there because the principal and the first alternate couldn't possibly both

[10]

fail, I went ahead and tried to please him, and by God, he called me up, "We are having a big party at the Kappa Sigma house," to tell me he had great news for me.

I would report to the Military Academy on 2 July or something. I said, "That's impossible. What happened?" He said, "The principal failed in some subject," and he was in a military school like VMI [Virginia Military Institute], and the first alternate failed or didn't quality. So that left dear old yours truly. (laughter) It ruined my whole evening. Anyway, that is how I got there.

AHMANN: What was this interest your father had in the military? Had he been in the Army or anything at one time?

LANDRY: He was an honorary colonel on the governor's staff in Louisiana. The greatest picture he has got is in his uniform with his epaulets on. He just thought that was the greatest thing since sliced bread, being in the military. Plus the fact he thought it was a good education, and there was a lot of "scary" involved. He was a pretty smart little man.

AHMANN: What did he do for a living?

LANDRY: He was in the Government service, in the custom house in New Orleans. He also practiced law. He was a graduate of Georgetown University in law. Why he didn't go into law, I don't know. But he went into the Government service, and he handled--Landry is a big family. He did a lot of law; he worked for the family and for very little of nothing most of the time. He just liked it. But he stayed in the Government service.

[11]

AHMANN: Had the Landrys lived in New Orleans a long time?

LANDRY: Oh, yes. There is a book here on the old families in New Orleans. I'll show it to you, if you want to, sometime. I didn't know it existed. The Landry family is well written up in there. I won't spend a lot of time on it. I'll show you a thing on my great great grandfather who was a famous woodcarver. The original Landrys came from France.

The man that came from France developed this whole family, or created this whole family, went to Louisiana and apparently had money, had position. I rather think that my father, who studied the family background--what is the word?

AHMANN: Genealogy.

LANDRY: Genealogy. He was always digging into the family background. We have a crest, and we have a book out showing this, as I say. That's where he came from, and I think that is where he got this interest in the military.

AHMANN: Your mother, was she from New Orleans?

LANDRY: My mother? My father was all French, and my mother was all German. She came from Hamburg. Her father, my grandfather, was a broker in Hamburg. Of all things, a great, big, good-looking 6-foot-2-or 3-[inch] guy. He got bit by a tarantula spider and, somehow or the other, it affected--he was one of those people who couldn't take it and didn't have drugs. It killed him in 2 or 3 days I am told.

AHMANN: What was her maiden name, your mother?

[12]

LANDRY: Bessie Scharpe, S-c-h-a-r-p-e, and my father was Luke Valcua [phonetic] Landry. (laughter)

AHMANN: Did you have any brothers or sisters?

LANDRY: I had a brother. He did some time in the Army. He studied law. He is dead. I had a sister who married Gen Milton Summerfelt (Brig Gen Milton F.] who was in the Air Force, an all-time, all-American guard. He was captain of the football team, class of 1933. My sister died too, unfortunately.

AHMANN: What was your brother's and sister's names?

Landry: His name was Ernest Scharpe Landry, and my sister's name was Val Louise. Val for my father, and Louise for somebody in my family.

Ahmann: When did your father die, General?

Landry: I don't remember the year now, but he died when he was 86. His father died when he was 94, and his mother died when she was 96. My mother died when she was about 82. So we have a little longevity there, I guess.

Ahmann: You say you wanted to be an engineer. Was that what you went to . . . . . . . . . .

LANDRY: My father then thought I might be a lawyer, and I liked the law. I could have been great in law I think, and I would have been good in engineering because I am kind of a half ass cabinetmaker. I have a tool shop and all that sort of thing. But here I was in the goddamn Army, knowing nothing about it and caring less. I wasn't a very good cadet for 2 years.

[13]

AHMANN: Did you have to walk off a lot of demerits?

LANDRY: Every month. I lived with a fellow named Robert Lee Scott, Jr. (Brig Gen). You have heard of him?

AHMANN: The famous fighter pilot?

LANDRY: Yes. He is something else, and he is alive.

AHMANN: He lives around here somewhere.

LANDRY: He lives in Sun City. But there is a guy like this fellow you talked about that did all these things and knew all of these things in Pearl Harbor days. There are some people who imagine things, talk about it often enough, and they know darn well they did it.

AHMANN: It becomes a part of them.

LANDRY: It becomes a part of their life, and there is no question in their minds. Well, I lived with him for 2 years, and he was wild, from Rome, Georgia. I think between the two of us we got more demerits than the whole goddamn bunch of plebes that first year, with the result that every month we had to report up to "Nellie" Richardson [Lt Gen Robert C. ] , General Richardson, the Commandant of Cadets and, "Sir, Cadet Landry reporting for excess demerits." Gee, it was terrible. (laughter)

Finally he said, "I don't know why we have people like you here in the first place," and we couldn't say anything about that. Anyway after 2 years and being turned out for English

[14]

AHMANN: For English?

LANDRY: Down in the South we had a lot of idiomatic expressions, and we split infinitives down there like there was nothing to it. We just had a nice, easy language. I had a "P" in English. If you split an infinitive, that was like was some great catastrophe. Now they do it all the time for emphasis.

AHMANN: Had you been a good student? You say you went to a Jesuit school there in New Orleans.

LANDRY: I had been a pretty good student. Yes. I played football and baseball and basketball and tennis. Yes, I had been a very good student. I just was blasé, I think, at the Academy because, first of all, I didn't understand the military, and secondly, I was influenced by my friend Scott, who was always causing some problem. And this wouldn't put you out, but I just hadn't gotten a hold on it. Everybody has a sense of pride, and I suppose when you begin to think you have got to go back home because I couldn't hack it, I said, "Jesus, I have got to do something. What the hell can I do with these split infinitives?"

Anyway, I got turned out. That would be four times in 2 years, every 6 months, and always in English. I could do the math, and the drawing, I was always--everything inclined towards M&E or engineering, civil or whatever, I did all right. But that goddamn guy turned me out every goddarn year. If you get turned out and fail in one subject by one-tenth of a point on a 3.0 system, out you go. Well, I took the test, and it wasn't much different than what I had been doing, but they let me have a 2.0. That meant I just passed. I don't know whether it was getting even with me or

[15]

hazing me, but it scared the hell out of me. So I got out of Company B where I was and went over to another company and got some more roommates and settled down a little bit, and
everything got all right. (laughter)

AHMANN: Normally, in talking to people who had been at the Military Academy, it was invariably the way people were found, who was in math or a foreign language, it seemed like.

LANDRY: I could do the languages. The way they taught it then it was just memory courses. But math was difficult. You get into high algebra and then calculus, but if you study it, it shouldn't be a problem. Some people just don't understand math, I guess, but I wasn't that bad in English. It was just the fact that, to some of the instructors, there were certain things that were pets with them. They were good instructors. They called math philosophy. They had great names for all that stuff.

AHMANN: What did they call physics in those--natural philosophy or something?

LANDRY: Yes. I was good in physics and chemistry. I had no problem. Drawing, I was an ace, passed it all the time.

AHMANN: I got the impression in talking to people in those days that profs really almost were just simply proctors. In other words, they didn't spend a lot of time in class explaining. There was a lot of recitation by the student, and it was a case of you almost picked it up, or it was just, like, too damn bad.

[16]

LANDRY: It was another form of discipline, I think, in those days, and I don't fault it at all. I was just blasé, no question about it. If I had gotten found, it was my own goddamn fault. But I did feel that this goddarn guy the fact that I didn't write English perfectly really was just incidental. I mean I was literate, my God. I was doing all right in my other grades. I thought it was the reason they didn't give me something less than 2.0, because I didn't change in a few days' time, taking a test in English.

AHMANN: Was he a young fellow just there?

LANDRY: I don't even remember who the b-----d was.

AHMANN: I was going to say, I'll have to go back and look at The Howitzer and see if I can pick out who it was. (laughter)

Of course you were there with "Bill" Dahl [Maj Gen Leo P.] and Hunter Harris [Gen Hunter, Jr.] and Thatcher [Lt Gen Herbert B.] and Wray [Maj Gen Stanley T. ]

LANDRY: I'll show you a lot of pictures of those people.

AHMANN: One thing I noticed in looking through The Howitzer, an autogyro landed there at West Point, I think the last year you were there. I found that fascinating that one of those things was flying around up there and where it came from.

LANDRY: Yes, the autogyro. I guess that was the forerunner of the----

AHMANN: The helicopter.

LANDRY: The eggbeater, the helicopter.

[17]

AHMANN: You also got your "A" in baseball then?

LANDRY: Yes. I had gotten my letter at Jesuits in football, baseball, basketball, and I was runner-up for the city championship in play. I played Bevo Sutter, one of the Sutter boys. Three of them had always been national and intercollegiate champs. Bevo ranked in the first five. So I had had a good athletic career. I loved competition. I played football, and I got my letter in the plebe year. But I was light; I weighed 135 pounds, between 135 and 155. I worked out in the gym to get it up, and I was just too--I am all busted up now with arthritis, but I made it. I was quarterback, and we had a pretty good plebe team. I got on the squad. I was too small to tell you the truth.

First of all, I still have the bad knee; I got my fingers all stepped on. I played on the B squad and got beat up more. Then towards the end of the season, we had "Gar" Davidson [Lt Gen Garrison H.] who was the coach of the plebe team. In those days we had "Biff" Jones (Col Lawrence M.) and Ralph Sasse [Col Ralph I.] as other coaches. They asked me if I would like to be a cadet coach. I was pretty good in punting among other things. So I said I would be delighted to do that; I was getting beat up enough. I coached for a couple of years under Gar Davidson as a plebe coach, and I enjoyed that. I was so fond of Gar Davidson. Such a fine guy, that fellow was, later Chief of Army Engineers and, of course, coach at West Point.

Basketball, I just wasn't good enough. I worked out in the gym to try to get my weight up. When I busted my knee, then I was finished in tennis. I was very competitive in tennis. But now I was not good enough for basketball; I have a bad

[18]

kneecap and can't play football. I remember playing in a lot on the side of a house in New Orleans. We used to play with that little light cotton ball and broomsticks. I could always get that ball and curve it like hell. I thought, "Gee, maybe I could be a pitcher," so I went out for pitching. "What did you ever do?" I told them, "I did a lot of pitching down in New Orleans." (laughter) I hadn't really done much. I forget what I played in the Jesuits. I think I was in the outfield.

AHMANN: You didn't pitch until you went to the Academy?

LANDRY: No. But I said to the guys, "This is the only thing left. I have got to do it. I have to stay on that training table," because that is where you get all the good food and that kind of stuff, cream, and that helped build me up. Plus the fact--well, later, that was the first year--but it was always good to be on that training table. Anyway, I went out for pitching, and I developed a pretty good ball. We beat the first team, the Academy team, every time we played them. The
last year I think we won something like 15 out of 17 games. We had a very good season. It was fun. So that was my athletic ability.

AHMANN: I notice, too, that the Giants and the Yankees were----

LANDRY: Every year we played them.

AHMANN: The Dodgers or somebody would come up and play.

LANDRY: No. The Yanks and the Giants, and always Lou Gehrig came up, but the "Babe" [Ruth] never showed.

[19]

AHMANN: While you were at West Point, did you envision yourself as staying the 4 years and getting your commission, serving your time and getting out? Were you thinking about a career?

LANDRY: I was there, and now having gotten the training--I never felt that I had to stay 5 years. I figured I was probably going to stay in the service, plus the fact that I had gotten myself sort of engaged in New Orleans. I graduated 10 June, I guess, 1932, and married in August, so I had to make a living. Even though I was drawing $115 base pay, I got $107 with the insurance taken out. During that year of graduation, you may remember that Mr. Roosevelt had a 15 percent pay cut across the board for all Federal employees, civilian and military. Plus the fact that having saved a little of our cadet money they gave us for a vacation, we were told that if we wanted to stay on leave right at the beginning of this period--June until we were supposed to report in September--we stayed on without pay.

I had my uniform; my wife had a trousseau. So we went on down to Camp Stephen D. Little and started being an Infantry officer.

AHMANN: Where was this at?

LANDRY: Camp Stephen D. Little in Nogales, Arizona.

AHMANN: I spent 2 years as an enlisted man in the Army down at Fort Huachuca in the 1950s.

[20]

LANDRY: All right. That was one of the battalions of the regiment at Fort Huachuca. There was a battalion at Douglas, a battalion at Fort Huachuca and regimental headquarters was there; then there was a battalio-- they were all Negroes--at Camp Stephen D. Little.

I ranked about the middle of my class. I didn't have a choice of going into anything. I wanted to go into the Air Force, which I will come back to in a minute, but I didn't. I was ordered to Camp Stephen D. Little. I suppose coming from the South and that sort of thing, and there was the Infantry; there I went.

I really wanted to go in the Air Force. I talked to my wife. In those days we had the airmail. Remember, the Air Force had taken over the airmail. It was one of the worst winters we had ever had for flying and practically none of our people knew anything about instrument flying, and they were killing pilots like mad. In those days we only had about 1,768 people in the Air Force, officers. I had said to my wife, "I would like to go in." She read about this stuff and about
getting killed and all. I thought, "It is a hell of a way to start a marriage out, having your wife not like it."

Then I had been told by some of my classmates who went on in down to Randolph--on the way to Fort Huachuca I dropped in to see them and talk to them. They said, "It is just as well you don't come unless your family is behind you, because if the instructors find out about that, your chances of being washed out are about 90 percent." Otherwise it is kind of hindrance to you. The guy gets up, and he can't relax.

[21]

I went on down there, and I took the Infantry as long as I could. We went down in August 1932. In December 1932 at Fort Huachuca one of the Negroes up there ran amuck and killed three officers and two wives. It scared everybody to death. At about the same time, the Government, because of saving money, cutting back, decided it was costing too much to pay the rent to Douglas, where they were paying for the grounds, paying for the water, utilities. So they moved those two battalions from Douglas and Nogales to Fort Huachuca, right after this guy did the killing.

That wasn't an inviting place to go. Then the CCC [Civilian Conservation Corps] came in. God, everything happened. I had a captain of the company, and I was a lieutenant. The captain of the company was a very good man, but they pulled him for CCC. So now I had the company. The black soldiers were damn good soldiers, and I was very fond of them. They were good athletes. I played a little ball with them and coached. But hell, I was a company commander, supply officer, the mess officer, the adjutant, musketry officer, and then we had to go out and bivouac in the mud and the tents. I said, "Jesus, this is not for me." (laughter)

A man came over from March Field [CA], flew over to see a friend there whose name was Major White [Maj Gen Major S. ] , a flight surgeon, later became a major, and he was Maj Major White; then he became a major general, and he was Maj Gen Major White. (laughter) He was a flight surgeon. Anyway, the pilot came over, and he flew right down that line of houses at Fort Huachuca. I lived in one of those adobe houses. You come down through a horseshoe kind of thing. I heard that airplane, and I sat down in the office, and I wrote out a letter to Randolph Field and applied for training.

[22]

I mentioned about killing all the people. I got a letter back in 2 weeks ordering me in February, right like that. I came home, and I told my wife, "I am just sorry. This is not my cup of tea. I'm trying to be a good soldier." And I was a damn good lieutenant. My commanding officer thought I was great and told me I had great possibilities. He was an old colonel about 62 years old and white hair, a dedicated infantryman. You would have thought that anybody out of the Infantry was no good.

Anyway, I put in and got this thing. I went up to tell him goodbye. He said, "Lieutenant Landry, I don't know what got into you, but I don't think you are doing the right thing." He was about as cold as a cucumber. That's the way I left. Whereas before that he thought I was a great lieutenant. Those were the prejudices.

AHMANN: I have had other guys tell me that.

LANDRY: It was terrible.

AHMANN: As a matter of fact, Gen Blair Garland [Maj Gen Elmer Blair], Signal Corps and then later on ARCS [Army Airways Communication System], he said the fact that he transferred
over to the Air Force at the end of the war----

LANDRY: It was Blair Garland, I think--is he on that list? No, Blair is a tall, slender fellow. That's not the one.

AHMANN: The fact that he went into the Air Force after World War II, like you say, the Army guys even then thought----

LANDRY: Yes, there was a lot of prejudice.

[23]

AHMANN: What were you doing down at Douglas with a battalion of----

LANDRY: I wasn't there. I was just mentioning that that was one of the battalions of the 35th Infantry.

AHMANN: What were they supposed to be doing, patrolling the border?

LANDRY: No. They were in training like any Army battalion would be, getting ready to fight a war, going out and building tents and shooting guns, training in infantry.

AHMANN: Did you work a full 8-hour day in those days in the Infantry?

LANDRY: Yes.

AHMANN: I have heard stories that, oh, like somebody told me in Hawaii in the 1930s, everything was finished by 1 o'clock in the afternoon.

LANDRY: No. That's like when you were right down in Panama. I'll tell you about that. That's on account of the heat. There was no problem. It was hot down there, but it was cool up at Fort Huachuca. No, we worked the regular day, 7 till 4, whatever it was.

AHMANN: It was just like any peacetime army?

LANDRY: We had a training program every day; we would go out and shoot; we would drill. We would simulate some kind of a mission and pitch tents, the regular simulated attack or defense, whatever it was, the best you could.

AHMANN: Fort Huachuca really must have been isolated in those days?

[24]

LANDRY: It was the jumping off place of the world. (laughter) Literally! You were 75 miles from Nogales and 75 miles from Tucson.

AHMANN: What did you think of the Army, in general, at that time?

LANDRY: Lieutenants don't have much chance to think about anything. You get assigned to something and that's it. We had a nice group of people there. We had a nice club, played bridge and all that. I used to do some officiating around Bisbee and various places. I refereed football. We had athletics with the troops there. We played Douglas; we played Huachuca. This was still at Nogales, but up at Fort Huachuca. We played around the community up there. Those Negroes were damn good ball players.

AHMANN: Did they have Cavalry there at Fort Huachuca, too?

LANDRY: No. It was originally a Cavalry post, an Indian post.

AHMANN: But at the time you were there, did they have----

LANDRY: No, it was just the one battalion of Infantry.

AHMANN: That remained a black post then during World War II, didn't it?

LANDRY: I lost track of it. Now of course it is the Army’s big communications center.

AHMANN: Have you been down there lately?

[25]

LANDRY: Yes, I was down there. I have known all the generals down there and some of the people in the service but not recently. It was in connection with jobs when I first got here. They have had a big turnover all the time, and there are always new people. I have no reason to go there. I was there a number of times, guest of the commanding general, some friend that was in the Army.

AHMANN: You say you got a letter right back, saying come on down there?

LANDRY: In, I think, 2 or 3 weeks. Before that you were lucky to get one back in 6 months. There was a problem. The Air Force didn't know how long they were going to have to carry the mail. As small as we were, even with the Army Signal Corps, you will recall then, when you lose a few pilots that is a, with what we had--I remember at Barksdale [AFB LA) in 1935, when I first went----

AHMANN: You began flying training in March 1935.

LANDRY: Then I went to Panama. 1937, there were only 1,768 officers in the Air Force then.

AHMANN: Yes, that's hard to believe.

LANDRY: It really is hard to believe. And of course it was called the Army Air Corps not the Signal Corps.

AHMANN: Did you have any trouble learning to fly at all?

LANDRY: No, I didn't, no trouble at all. I don't know if you are interested in all this kind of----

[26]

AHMANN: Sure. There isn't much written about it. Unless a person has written their biography, this phase is gone----

LANDRY: I pretty well remember a lot of detail about my career because it has been, in a sense, very rewarding, very exciting.

Yes, I went on down there, and I have a picture I can show you later--not to do it now, at the break--showing my class. I went down between classes. Normally in graduation, the people who went to the flying school in 1932 started flying in September, and they went through primary, basic, and advanced, Randolph, Kelly [AFB TX], and--Randolph on primary, Kelly on basic, and then advanced over at Kelly. This was after Brooks [AFB TX].

I went there in February. That was right in between classes. My class had already graduated, 1932, but I was there with the class of 1933. I was one-half a year separated, so I was really with two classes. I didn't have any trouble flying. Like everybody, you have a fear of falling at first. I had a good instructor in primary, a fellow named Darr Alkire [Brig Gen Darr H.] who is dead now. He had been instructing for 6 or 7 years, and he was so goddamn fed up with it that he was a horse's ass, I'll tell you. He goddamn near convinced me that I couldn't fly, but he knew goddamn well that, technically, I was the best he had, and I knew it too.

Anyway, I got over the fear of flying because every time I was falling I would go into a spin right away, and that will convince you there is just nothing to it. He was a great instructor, very instructive. I could handle the

[27]

airplane pretty well and I learned basic. I had it primary and basic, both of them. He was really good, a little, short goddamn runt. He would get in that backseat, and he would take off, and he would cut the throttle on takeoff, all those things that you have to learn.

Do you know what he said to me? I got up, and I didn't think I could land straight ahead because I didn't think I could. I started to make a slight turn, which is the worst thing you can do; you just better go straight in because you begin to lose lift, and that is where a lot of people spin in. The natural tendency was to do it, but I knew I wasn't going to continue it. Just as soon as I would dip that thing, he said, "Who the hell do you think you are? Richthofen [Baron Manfred von]?" (laughter) Well, I never thought of turning on the takeoff or losing an engine. He was real good, but he was tough and mean. He wasn't a guy you could talk to.

Then I had a fellow by the name--oh, what was his name? I thought I had it last night in my mind, a very good, gentle instructor. He did a lot of good.

No, I was a good pilot. I went into fighters.

AHMANN: Your instructors, were they all Regular Army, or were they Reservists?

LANDRY: No, these were all Regular.

AHMANN: The reason I asked, there was a time in the late 1920s or 1930s I have heard where some of the instructors were Reservists, and they had a built-in bias against the West Point grads.

[28]

LANDRY: That's right. That was true. Even then there were some people who were not Reservists. They just didn't come in through the Academy. They came in through some other, through ROTC or something.

My other instructor was Trenholm Meyer [Col Trenholm J.], and he was terrific, a hell of a pilot too. All these people in the school were excellent pilots.

AHMANN: Was the washout percentage pretty bad?

LANDRY: Yes, it was. They were washing them out for a number of things. We started--I'll show you the picture--nine people I was with; only three of us got through. I know one of them was marginal, and the other one was a fair pilot.

AHMANN: Do you think it was a case of there were only so many pilot slots, and they had a----

LANDRY: No. I just think it was a case that some people aren't good enough to be a military pilot. In those days we were very, very choosy. I think we always have been in flying because you don't make many mistakes in flying. But the washout rate was high. There may have been a little feeling that, "Here is a West Pointer being given training by a non-West Pointer." But I think those were the days when there were more West Pointers than there were others. The war changed all of that; 80 percent of the Eighth Air Force were Reservists.

AHMANN: Which is kind of a miracle in itself.

[29]

LANDRY: Yes. The whole goddamn Air Force, when it built up so quickly after 1939, had to be from--you couldn't graduate enough people.

AHMANN: Yes. To take all of those people literally off the street and make pilots out of them.

You say you wanted to get into fighters then from the onset?

LANDRY: Yep. I liked fighters. I didn't want those damn big old airplanes. So when we got to Kelly, then you had a choice. I mean, when you got out of basic--primary, basic--you could ask for what you wanted. You either went into fighters or bombers. I think maybe they had some people who went into observation.

AHMANN: Yes, they had attack, bombers, observation, and pursuit. There were four branches.

LANDRY: I asked for pursuit. We were flying, first, in P-12s and some old P-1s they had to take out of storage. They ran short of airplanes. I enjoyed fighters. I mean, you are up there by yourself.

AHMANN: You say the reason you hadn't applied coming out of West Point was your wife's--it wasn't the right----

LANDRY: Yes.

AHMANN: Had you ever even flown in an airplane before you went to West Point?

LANDRY: No. I used to build airplanes in my workshop, but I had never been up in the air.

[30]

AHMANN: Yet you wanted to be--of course your incentive was enough of this grubbing around in pup tents.

LANDRY: My incentive was, I just wasn't doing the thing I was going to do. You asked if I had any idea of staying in. I don't think I would have stayed in the Infantry. Not that I had anything against the Infantry. It just wasn't my goddamn job. Flying--in other words, my theory has always been that you have to enjoy work to do a good job. If you have to drive yourself to do a day's work every day, you are probably not going to come out very well. It was just a matter of what my original choice was, I guess.

AHMANN: You went to the Canal Zone then?

LANDRY: For 6 months I didn't get an assignment, and I don't know why. I guess it was a question of whether they needed somebody in pursuit aviation. So for 6 months I stayed there as an instructor, which I didn't particularly want. I wasn't a very good teacher. Football I loved, but flying an airplane? No. I would have been worse than Alkire.

Then I went down to Albrook Field [Balboa, Canal Zone] and got in that group down there. Great people like Frank Armstrong [Lt Gen Frank A. Jr.], Bill Hall [Lt Gen William E.] , DeRosier [Col Leo W.], Burt Hovey [Maj Gen Burton M., Jr.]. Col Charles [T.] Phillips was the group commander, a real hardnosed guy.

AHMANN: Was John Sessums [Maj Gen John W., Jr.] down there at that time?

[31]

LANDRY: Johnny Sessums, I think, was there. A great bunch of guys. We had a great bunch of guys. Robert Lee Scott was down there.

AHMANN: Did you do a lot of flying down there?

LANDRY: We flew every day, two missions. We would go up and dive and zoom. We had gunnery, went out to the gunnery camp. We really had some top people, I think, in the Air Force.

AHMANN: Was that a pretty idyllic life down there?

LANDRY: There was where we went to work at 6 o'clock and quit at 11.

AHMANN: That was due to the climate?

LANDRY: That was five hours of that climate, and that is about enough. Those of us who liked to play golf and get out and do things--I played golf every afternoon, practically, when I was there. I am trying to think of--Smith [Gen Frederic H., Jr.] was down there. He became Vice Chief of Staff under LeMay [Gen Curtis E.]. He was down there, a very good friend. He is dead now.

AHMANN: Was there a General Brown [Maj Gen Preston] down there in the Army at that time?

LANDRY: I forget who the Army commanders were. We were, of course, still under the Army. We stayed pretty much to ourselves there. I enjoyed the service. I was there 2 years.

AHMANN: Vice Chief in 1960, McKee [Gen William F., "Bozo"]. Was it before McKee?

[32]

LANDRY: After McKee. Freddie Smith. Freddie Smith was loaned to the Canal as the Air Representative there. He was there and a good friend. He married Admiral King's [Ernest J.) daughter We played golf a lot. We had a lot of golfers down there. "Ben" Schriever [Gen Bernard A.] was down there. I played a lot of golf with Bennie Schriever who-----

AHMANN: Who married General Brett's [Lt Gen George H.] daughter.

LANDRY: Yes. He was aide to Brett and what a hell of a golfer. People like that were down there. We really had a great bunch of people.

AHMANN: We had talked earlier about any cooperation between the Navy and the Army and the Army and the Air Corps. What was the attitude in those days down in the Canal Zone as far as defense plans?

LANDRY: I think there was a little closer working relationship. I was a lieutenant so I didn't get up much in that working level. I got to know the commanding officer very well because I liked baseball. I built a baseball field for them down there. I worked long hours on that, and he thought it was great that anybody would give all that extra time. As far as I knew, our relations were all right. The Navy came down there on an exercise, which is quite an interesting story--the thing that happened.

The Navy said they would like to have a couple of fighter pilots that would go on the Lexington--I have the book here--for a cruise, a 10-day cruise. I think they asked for volunteers and I believe I volunteered. I was told I could go, which pleased me a great deal. I was coming to the latter

[33]

part of the tour. They were down there having a big exercise. The exercise was about over. We didn't work very closely with them because they were all out to sea. We had these little fighters anyway.

We had the old Keystone bombers over at France Field. The greatest thrill of my life was flying one of those damn things. (laughter) The wings would go like this. I just went to get checked out because I thought it was exciting.

Anyway, they asked for people, and I was one of two that was assigned to--one to the Saratoga and one to the Lexington. I went on the Lexington. I believe that is the way it worked. Anyway I was on the Lexington. The Navy had decided—this was what I was told--that the exercise was almost over, but one of the traditions in the Navy is that if you are a polliwog, you have never crossed the Equator. The Admiral of the Fleet in those days--I don't know if King was—whoever was in charge of that operation hadn't, so they extended the operation and went on down across the Equator. I went from a polliwog, which is one who hadn't been, to a shellback.

I went through the royal dentist and the royal doctor and the royal everything, and the royal bath, and was accused of a very serious crime of overestimating the capability of the Air Force vis-a-vis the Navy, for which I was sentenced to climb the mainmast three times on the carrier. Well, I got up there one time, and the sea was pretty rough. I was going all the way up there. I think Captain Fitch [Adm. Aubrey W.), who was the captain of the ship, got a little bit concerned. He said, "That's enough. Come on down, boy." But I enjoyed

[34]

that. That was one of the highlights down there. That was good service down there, very fine people.

AHMANN: Did you fly off the carrier at all?

LANDRY: No. The one time I was going to take off on the carrier the weather was so bad, and a torpedo bomber had canceled the mission. I watched those fellows come in day and night, and I have nothing but respect for those guys. I want to tell you hitting that little goddamn postage stamp at night has got to be something to scare anybody. (laughter)

AHMANN: You almost have to question their mental attitude. They have, what is it? the second or third Lexington is down at Pensacola (FL), and they use it for training.

LANDRY: The Lexington that was out in the Pacific at that time was the ship that later was sunk in the Pacific.

AHMANN: That's the one you were on that was sunk later?

LANDRY: Yes. I got my certificate and my sentence. It might be of interest. I'll show it to you later.

AHMANN: Was it pretty common, though, that a couple of Air Force people would go with the Navy like that.

LANDRY: It wasn't very often that the Navy had a big exercise, and this was a big one. The sun sets over the Pacific, over the Atlantic--everything is different on the isthmus down there.

AHMANN: It actually runs north and south.

[35]

AHMANN: Would the alert go on, and then you would go out and fly intercepts and that kind of thing, or was it maneuvers or anything like that? I'm just trying to get the picture.

LANDRY: I think in those days most of our thing was just basic training, skill work--gunnery and skill work, and we would have some simulated attack on each other, maneuvers and things like that. We had no alert system, no running out and getting in that I recall there. It was just basic training.

That was a peaceful time, I think, in 1935-37. We had no early warning or anything that I knew of down there at all.

AHMANN: Did you ever have an airplane accident in your career? I didn't find in the record that you did.

LANDRY: No.

AHMANN: Never got one chewed up?

LANDRY: No, thank goodness.

AHMANN: You went from Panama to Barksdale [AFB LA] then. Is that right?

L: I went to Barksdale. That was when I was in the 20th Pursuit Group. We flew the Boeing P-26. I was in--let's see, we had

[36]

the 55th, 77th, 79th. I was in the, oh, I don't know, 74th Squadron. That was a great little airplane. It was a good aerobatic airplane.

AHMANN: Have you ever been in the National Aviation and Space Museum in Washington, General?

LANDRY: Yes.

AHMANN: They have a P-26 in there, and it is a beautiful little machine.

Apparently, as I understand it, it was at Barksdale that originally someone tipped over and broke their neck, and that they eventually put that big----

LANDRY: They put that big thing in the back. It had a tendency to put on the brakes. You could go over. Or if you hit like--for example, if you landed on the field with a lot of mud, when you went down it might just go over.

AHMANN: Of course you had finished West Point at the time the economic depression was probably at its peak.

LANDRY: Yes.

AHMANN: You were put on, in effect, a month furlough without pay or the equivalent or something like that. Being in the military though, were you relatively free of the consequences of the depression like that?

LANDRY: I think we were. Here are a lot of pictures when I was down there. They are all of down there. I forgot I had those.

[37]

AHMANN: Beautiful.

LANDRY: We were not oblivious to it, believe you me, because when I was at Fort Huachuca and not on flying pay, which was another reason for going into the flying business, I want to tell you--my take-home pay, living at Fort Huachuca, was I think $107 a month. In those days they allowed you to have what was called an attendant or striker, and we had a live in colored maid. We didn't have many frills.

AHMANN: It was a good thing you lived in the middle of nowhere.

LANDRY: It was a good place to have been in those days. I think we stayed more to ourselves, and I think that one of the sad things about the military is that brought about staying to yourself.

AHMANN: Who are these people here?

LANDRY: Here is my squadron commander. I should have put names on here. There is Olds [Maj Gen Robert]; he was group commander finally. There is "Nellie" Nelson [unable to verify]. These two I forget. That is Hawaii. Here is a powwow with a squadron commander. Here we are in formation. Here is another picture. Those are the -26s. Here is probably some flying down--this is the flying school I think. That is flying down in Panama. Here is an exercise in Panama where we went out in the field. We flew all over Central America to show the strength of the Army Air Corps. We would take a DC-3 with 55-gallon tanks and land in some field, and the people would come out.

Those are pictures of the -26s. That was a great tour there, too.

[38]

AHMANN: Is that Barksdale here, General?

LANDRY: Yes.

AHMANN: That is in the middle of nowhere, too, isn't it?

LANDRY: No, it is outside Shreveport. That's just a formation we flew, and there is another one. These are all Barksdale Field pictures. These are all the people around there. The mistake I made was not putting all their names on there. I should have done that.

AHMANN: Is this guy a flyer there with the glasses on?

LANDRY: Yes. We had some old people there. Monk Hunter was our group commander.

AHMANN: Yes, he just died last year.

LANDRY: Yes. Monk was our group commander.

AHMANN: Balloon activity in the Air Corps petered out in the 1930s. I have read where some of those guys, then, tried to come in and get in heavier than air.

LANDRY: They did. A lot of them got in, and they gave them what they called a very quick course to learn to fly, and they stayed in. I am just looking at some pictures as we go along here.

AHMANN: I have heard that these guys were a threat not only to the people around them but to themselves. Some of them really thought they could fly. Did that happen?

[39]

LANDRY: That is true. A lot of them were turned lose and given wings, but I think most of them, if I remember correctly, were smart enough to realize that they weren't really good enough, to the extent that they could go on a two-seater airplane or something like that. But there were some people who just thought they were good. We all kind of expected—I mean, I knew of a few that were just going to go up and kill themselves.

AHMANN: And they went out and killed themselves. I talked to somebody who was an instructor down there--I forget who it was--he said, "I knew some of these people were just going to go out and do it to themselves." That's too bad.

LANDRY: That is just it. It is like a lot of other things; you can't control them.

AHMANN: You have a nice collection of photographs here.

LANDRY: I have a whole bunch of stuff. I should have gotten this in some kind of chronological order for you. I just want to catch a few here. We have been talking about a few things I could have shown you.

Anyway, that was great service. We had the 3d Attack Group there.

AHMANN: Yes. They had moved from Fort Crockett [TX].

LANDRY: We had the, I think, 20th Fighter Group, or was it the 16th? Whatever it was. There again, we had some of the top people in pursuit and some of the top people in what was low-level attack, the A-3 and A-3A. All of those groups, at least four

[40]

to a half dozen cadres for other groups were formed out of those groups when we really had to go, when the buildup came along. All of those people were top people and really went farther upwards, did good jobs.

Here is a book on the royal works. That's fun. You can see my charges in there.

AHMANN: "Subpoena and summons extraordinary." (laughter) Falsehoods.

LANDRY: Oh, was it falsehood I was charged with?

AHMANN: Yes, that's what they have down here. I imagine that dealt with the--yes, here it is, "Neptunis erectus." (laughter) You wonder if they have that much fun today. I hope they do. "Regular assigned duty, fabricating lies, exaggerating falsely, expounding on the doings and operations." They had good writers. They were going to have you climb this mast?

LANDRY: Oh, yes. I did climb that bloody mast.

There is General Martin at Barksdale Field, and since we are talking about it.

AHMANN: Was he there when you were there?

LANDRY: Yes, he was one of the three brigadier generals working under Frank Andrews when the Air Force got its own GHQ Headquarters at Langley Field.

AHMANN: Then the third wing was out at March [AFB CA] I think.

[41]

LANDRY: That's right. I was in fighters, and as I said, a pretty good fighter pilot. The request came down from wing headquarters whether they would be willing to release me to be aide to the commanding general.

Fred Martin was one of the finest men I ever met and a very good military man and really dedicated. He had hands as big as--twice like that. He loved to play golf, so we had a great time. I played golf, and he played golf. I built the golf course at Barksdale as a result of it.

I came down, and I had been there, I guess, about 6 months or 9 months, and so they released me, and I went up and became the assistant operations officer to Elmer Ropers [Lt Gen Elmer Joseph, Jr.], called "Blackie" Ropers. I was his flying aide.

AHMANN: This GHQ [General Headquarters] and Office of Air Corps. I have read where there was a conflict of who was really running the Air Force and all this problem. Did that ever appear at your level, General?

LANDRY: This was the result of a lot of the Billy Mitchell thing and all the fight that showed, the fight for the budget and the fact that we couldn't get any money for the airplanes we needed. I think this was a natural development in the development of the Air Force to become a separate service. It was slow. But the Army had to agree to something better than we had had after the Mitchell thing. It was so goddamn obvious that all these things--we couldn't hit anything when bombing the battleships and all that sort of thing. It was always a matter of fighting for money, for the budget. That was the whole goddamn thing.

[42]

The top people succeeded in getting its own GHQ Headquarters, and that was General Andrews, a great man, a great aviator, and a very fine officer. Then we got the wing setup, and we got a few generals, and General Martin was one of them.

AHMANN: At this time now at Barksdale, did you train with the ground army at all in the sense that----

LANDRY: Oh, yes. The Army used to have exercises, the National Guard encampments and things like that, down near Alexandria.

AHMANN: Fort Polk?

LANDRY: I forget the name of it. It is south of Shreveport, near Alexandria. There were exercises, especially with the attack aviation. And there were joint exercises in various parts of the country. We had, I remember, exercises in the fighters, and in the attack aviation. I can remember Les Maitland [Lt Col Lester J.] had one of the squadrons of the latest, fast, low-level attack airplanes. We were supposed to go out on an exercise and survive on the community. We would just go out with a duffel bag, our airplanes; they sent a distributing point officer, DPO, out to do that, to make the arrangements where we would be billeted. There would be an airport there of course.

Then this guy--me in this case--would go out and make arrangements for fuel, arrangements for anything else that was needed, mostly a place to bivouac and food and that sort of thing. So we had those kinds of exercises. We were trying to get into a little more realistic thing where the
Air Force was mobile

[43]

AHMANN: In a sense like that--I could see where you could take off and fly your airplane--what about the ground crew on that? Were they flown in, too?

LANDRY: They would be ferried in in DC-3s or something like that. You took your maintenance, but it was a very skeletonized thing because the theory was that you could operate for 30 days with a minimum crew and a minimum of everything.

AHMANN: They have that "bare base" concept in TAC [Tactical Air Command] or something like that.

LANDRY: That's the same sort of idea.

AHMANN: How did it work? How good were you in those days?

LANDRY: I did it one time. I remember it being in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I made arrangements through a colonel in the Air Reserve who was a medical man, a highly regarded man. You got in touch with your Reservists and those people, inactive, and we put them up in a hotel at his recommendation and got a rate. In other words they would fly all day on these various missions, come in at night, and go to the hotel.

Well, it turned out to be a good whorehouse. (laughter) Les Maitland was up in what was supposed to be a big suite, getting loaded as he could do. Jesus, he was a drinker. He chewed my ass out--and me a goddamn first lieutenant--accused me of putting all these people up in a goddamn whorehouse, which I didn't know anything about. So I went to see my colonel doctor friend, and I said, "My God, did you know what was going on there?" I mean, it was like Mr. Truman

[44]

[President Harry S.] used to say--accuse him of playing piano on the first floor while the whorehouse was being run upstairs. He said, "No, I sure didn't know." I said, "Les Maitland is about to get me court-martialed. These people come back here tired, and they want to have a few drinks and food and go to bed, and this is really a goddamn house of ill repute. I have to get them out of there." So we got them out of there and went out to the country club, right outside of New Hampshire. This is a true story.

He helped me get that, and we put bunks in the--there were a few things in the country club house where a squadron could stay. This was a squadron operation. The rest of them we put in the gymnasium or a big building there. No, I think we accommodated them all in the club there somehow or the other. It was kind of a dormitory thing. It was very nice. In fact they turned the club over to us. These guys would go out on a mission and come back, and there they were in a nice country club. I said, "Well, goddarn, that is pretty good."

I was in town taking care of some supplies. They were coming back about 4 o'clock or something like that. Anyway, I was driving, and I came over a hill and, Jesus, I saw this big billow of smoke come up right over the ledge of the hill. I said, "Holy smoke, there must have been a crash, but that is not where the airport is." I got up over the hill and, goddamn it, the country club had burned down. (laughter) That's living on the community.

That's a true story. My God, Les Maitland was fit to be tied. I got ahold of my colonel doctor friend again. There was a university there, a school, and we got the gymnasium, and we put everybody up. In the meantime, everybody had lost

[45]

their golf clubs they had with them, all their clothes. The only clothes they had were their flying suits. You talk about--that was my experience in living on the community.

AHMANN: Did they ever figure out how the fire started? I mean, it wasn't anything you guys did?

LANDRY: No, it wasn't anything we did. We were sorry about it.

AHMANN: Talking about Barksdale, last fall I interviewed Gen Archie Old [Lt Gen Archie J., Jr.], and he said he used to come down there and pull his Reserve time at Barksdale. Was that common for Reservists to come in and fly like that? How did that work in those days?

LANDRY: I'm sure it was, and I think he did do that. He later became the Commander of the Fifteenth Air Force. There is a story about that. He probably did because he came from around down there.

AHMANN: Yes, he was from northeast Texas, right in the corner.

Did you have Reserve units, or was it a case that the Reservists who would come in and fly----

LANDRY: I don't know just how it was done. The National Guard always took care of their own thing because they had an encampment. My memory is not good on that. But it seems to me there was some kind of program where Reservists who wanted to keep up their flying proficiency were allowed to come in and fly a certain number of hours every few months, and they went to the nearest base. They were always handled nicely because we were very much interested in the Reserves.

[46]

AHMANN: Do you have some movies?

LANDRY: I want to show you something. This is all doing with Barksdale. You asked me something about Barksdale, about the Reservists.

Yes, I think that happened. I think I met Archie Old who came there to fly.

AHMANN: He claimed he built up a horrendous amount of hours during the 1930s there, going down there to fly.

LANDRY: I don't think he flew fighters. He probably flew in the—we had some DC-3s. We had just DC-3s, and we finally got a B-18 for General Martin. But I used to fly around, as I said, in the A-17A, but he probably flew in the A-17s.

AHMANN: General Martin, would he have flown a lot down there at Barksdale?

LANDRY: General Martin led the first around-the-world flight. Don't you remember? He lost his airplane, the amphibian.

AHMANN: That Douglas--he and--let's see, who was on there? Leigh Wade [Maj Gen] was on there.

LANDRY: The first around-the-world flight, and he was the leader. Then they had an accident, and he had to fall out. That's the way he became famous.

AHMANN: Is he the one who crashed in Alaska?

[47]

LANDRY: I think so. That's Gen Fred Martin.

AHMANN: At the time, he was a brigadier general. Obviously 10 years had passed. Was he still flying?

LANDRY: No, he was no longer flying himself. These pictures I'll show you. I don't mean to brag about flying, but I loved fighters, and I guess I was pretty good because I was selected to go out at the request of the people at March Field to put on an aerobatic show. We heard these airplanes were so good. I didn't know anything about it.

This guy came from one squadron, and Brick Lessig [Lt Col] came from another squadron, and I was from my own squadron. I was told that I was to get together a three-man aerobatic team and go out to Riverside and put on a show, doing an Air Force--when they raise money? An open house thing.

It wasn't the Air Force Association. It was some kind of organization. I didn't even get to pick the people. They gave me this guy and this guy, and we had never flown together. I said, "I hope you guys know how to manage this airplane because we have to put on a show out there." On the way out we flew pretty good formation and tightened this and that, but when we got out there I reported to--who was the guy? Quite a famous, well-known man in the Air Force. He was in charge of operations out there. I don't know whether General Arnold [Henry H., "Hap"] was there or not at the time.

AHMANN: Arnold might have left by that time.

[48]

LANDRY: He had left by then. This guy was one of the real oldtimers and a delightful guy, kind of tough, but the kind you liked. He said, "You have to put on a show here for 2 days." I said, "I have to have some time to practice because we haven't had a lot of time together in the air." We went on up and, Jesus, we did Immelmans and rolls, came down and did a slow roll and up like that.

By the time we put on that show the first day, we came down after a lot of stuff up in the sky--and they stayed in there real good with me. It was really just great fun. We came down, and I said, "We are going to do a roll; we are going to be about 25 feet off the ground. Can you do it?" They said, "Let's go." All I said was, "Just be goddamn sure and keep that nose above the horizon." I came down, and I did a roll right over the crowd, and then I pulled on up, and each one of them did. I thought, "Jesus, if anything happens, somebody is going to get killed."

I had no sooner gotten on the ground than I had to report to Major So-and-so. He said, "Lieutenant, what in the hell do you think you are doing? A roll like that down this close to the crowd and that close to the ground." I said, "You asked for an aerobatic demonstration, major, and that is what we did." I don't know whether he told me not to do it again, but we did it the next day.

AHMANN: You did have radios in your airplanes by this time?

LANDRY: We had some kind of intercom. I think we did, maybe we didn't.

AHMANN: That must have been pretty tough to try to fly acrobatics without plane-to-plane communications.

[49]

LANDRY: Maybe we didn't have it. I guess we didn't. I thought to myself maybe--anyway, we came down. They had the starlets there. Riverside, the people at March Field were always very close to the movie stars. That was a picture. These are P-26s here.

Oh, yes, I want to show you this. This is interesting if you are interested in human event things, how you pick people. We got a B-18 finally. General Martin wanted a bigger airplane, and we needed a bigger airplane for a command airplane. So I get to go and get checked out in a B-18, which is an easy airplane to fly and kind of fun. That's the same goddamn thing we had at Pearl Harbor, same airplane. I said to him--I want to show you a picture of Bill Yancey [Brig Gen William R.]. I said, "General, I have to get a copilot. Do you have any instructions on that?" He said, "Bob, no, I don't have any instructions on it. You just get a good man, but you just be dadgum sure he is a good golfer." (laughter) He was a good golfer, and he said, "Be sure he likes golf," because we played all the time.

So I picked a fellow named Bill Yancey who was in the 3d Attack Group. Where the devil is that Bill Yancey? He is in the picture here with Fred Martin. That was Bill Yancey who stayed with me as copilot and later had a B-29 wing at Castle Air Force Base [CA], retired, and during the process of looking for a job, somebody suggested he might work as Bob Hope's representative for the golf tournament that he puts on. So that`s the Bill Yancey who ran the Bob Hope golf tournament for years. He just retired from that.

AHMANN: At Palm Springs?

[50]

LANDRY: At Palm Springs. I don't know if that is of any interest, but that is what he did. I had that picture of Fred Martin. Didn't I show it to you? Well, that is Bill Yancey with me. Young Bill. It was down there at Barksdale, too, we had the old fellow who was a famous developer of instrument flying, the old fellow.

AHMANN: Crane [unable to verify] and Ocker [Lt Col Harry B.].

LANDRY: Ocker, Colonel Ocker was there. We had one of those basic training bi-wing planes with the fabric on it. He would go up there and fool around with his instruments. We all had a turn at flying that airplane doing weather reports. We would do them. Ocker was a great guy in promoting instrument flying, and we had him there.

AHMANN: Was he an enlisted man at one time?

LANDRY: I think he came up through the ranks and just began playing with compasses and gyros and figured it out.

AHMANN: Did you do any night flying or bad weather flying?

LANDRY: No, we all got checked out in instrument flying.

AHMANN: How good were you at that time. You are talking 1937, 1938.

LANDRY: Instrument flying, we had the Link trainer finally. But instrument flying is just as good as you practice it, just believe in your instruments. That is how it is. There is no reason why you shouldn't be just as good an instrument flyer as you are a VFR [visual flight rules] flyer.

[51]

AHMANN: Was there a great emphasis in the Air Force for IFR [instrument flight rules]?

LANDRY: Yes, particularly after the mail when I was telling you. These guys were flying into the goddamn mountains in snow, or they got into a snowstorm. You get disoriented in a cockpit; you get vertigo. You don't know what you are doing. You had better believe they emphasized it, really strongly. That was the beginning of the Link trainer where we would take a lot of training on the ground, that rough thing. Did you ever see it shake?

They were the first synthetic trainers, and they were kind of rough, but you learned confidence in your instruments. Now the sophistication is so you can simulate anything.

AHMANN: Did you ever think, during this time period, of getting out of the Air Corps at all? Here the airlines were building up, and you hear all of these stories of guys getting out and becoming rich and famous with the airlines.

LANDRY: I didn't because I loved the Air Force. I really did. I enjoyed the service, and I enjoyed the people. We had some great times at the club after missions or on Saturday nights, telling jokes. In between missions we would go over to the BX and have coffee and go back up and fly again. No, I really enjoyed it.

One thing that I will tell you about, though, that every young man goes through, and I am sure it is still the same. You said something about having some old people here in this aviation business, down in some of those pictures, and they were. Some of them, my God, they were just an accident going

[52]

someplace to happen. I'll tell you, some of us who were lieutenants, talking to these goddarn old f---s--we liked them. They were fine men, but Jesus, they just didn't belong in pursuit aviation and some of the stuff we had to put up with.

The only thing that disgusted me was the fact that, my God, if this guy can be a captain and a major, Jesus. It was taking us in those days 9 years to be a first lieutenant. If you were lucky, a captain in 12 to 15 years, a lieutenant colonel by 22, and then you were probably going to retire that way. Some of these guys were telling us how to run the Air Force. That was a little bit discouraging that we had to put up with that. Not that there was anything wrong with them, they just were not thinking.

AHMANN: Were you looked upon as second-class citizens within the Army, by the Infantry and the Cavalry?

LANDRY: I don't think we were ever looked upon as second-class citizens by the services, any of them. I think people didn't understand the capability of the airplane, even after World War I when they saw what it did towards the end there. They didn't want to understand it. They didn't fly; they didn't like to fly, and dadgum it, they didn't want to share the budget. As long as we were in the Army, it was a fight for survival. That was the whole damn story of the Air Force until September 1947 when we became a separate branch.

AHMANN: When you were at Barksdale, were you aware of the Air Corps Tactical School [ACTS] over at Maxwell in those days?

LANDRY: Yes.

[53]

AHMANN: Do you recall at that time what they thought of the Air Corps Tactical School?

LANDRY: Do you mean what the Army did?

AHMANN: No. What you as pilots thought?

LANDRY: I didn't go because my career didn't allow it.

AHMANN: You were too young.

LANDRY: Yes. But no, if you were selected to go to the Air Corps Tactical School, you were considered to be on your way up. I think it was a good thing.

LANDRY: It was tactical flying, but it was also tactics. I don't know how much strategy they got into, but I think less strategy but more of the tactical application of aviation, whether you were fighters or low-level attack groups or whether you were high-level bombers.

AHMANN: Did you know, at that time, of Claire Chennault [Lt Gen Claire L.] at all, and. how he had gone to China at this time?

LANDRY: No. His son was a classmate of mine at Kelly.

AHMANN: Claire had a very large family. I wonder where they all disappeared to.

LANDRY: I never did meet the great man.

[54]

AHMANN: He was from Waterproof, Louisiana.

LANDRY: That's right, come to think of it. I remember that now. No, I never did meet him, but I did know his son.

AHMANN: Were you aware in this late 1930s time period of what was going on overseas as far as--the Spanish Civil War had started in 1936, and the Germans were using a lot of airpower, and of course the Japanese were fighting in China. Stories about how airplanes were being used, was that getting down to your level other than newspaper reports? Was there any kind of formal----

LANDRY: I'm sure there would have been in things like the schools, but I don't recall that we ever had any observers over there. I am sure we did. I think what I knew about what was going on, especially in the war in Spain, was mostly what you read in the papers. We pretty well knew--I think a lot of people in the Air Force, young, middle, and older, knew that airpower had to someday find its rightful place. It just took a long, hard fight and another war to prove it.

AHMANN: In this late 1930s time period, the heavy bomber people were gaining a lot of influence in the Air Corps, and the better part of the Air Corps budget was going to the B-17. Were you aware of it at that time? Did it mean anything to you that those----

LANDRY: Sure. That part. I'm glad you brought that up. At Barksdale, we had built towards that time. The Army had given us enough money to build a B-15. Howard--later General Howard, Mr. National Cash Register--Davidson brought the B-15 into Barksdale. I want to tell you, there was some commotion

[55]

then. I can remember just so vividly going up there, and of course, even the attack aviation people didn't think they needed fighters. But now the goddamn big bomber man comes in with this big monster, and he showed us the goddamn gun placements and the big engines and the big load.

Some of us fighter guys were out there talking to, I think it was Major Davidson in those days, but he was the project guy. He made some remark, and I don't know if he made it in jest or not, but he said, "Listen kids, you guys are just wasting your goddamn time. You are just wasting your time. We'll take care of ourselves. Look at the armament on this airplane. Look at the altitude we are going to get. Look at the load we are going to carry. You had better think about this if you want a future in the Air Force." (laughter) We all went to the bar and said, "That's just a lot of bulls--t." (laughter)

AHMANN: We interviewed General Davidson some years ago. Of course he is still alive and doing fine.

LANDRY: Somebody told me just yesterday, he is 94 years old or 96. He comes up later in our discussion.

AHMANN: General Kuter, of course, was a fair-haired boy down on the faculty of the Air Corps Tactical School, and in going through the records of the school, he had made similar statements about you can ignore flak; you can ignore this; you can ignore that. I said, "Well, when all this was proved wrong later, how did you feel?" He said, "Yes, those words did come back to haunt me."

[56]

LANDRY: It was some day when that B-15 landed. That was the biggest thing I ever saw. He put that right up against a P-26, and you kind of wondered what in the hell they could really do for us. They could shoot down enemy fighters. That's what it could do. (laughter)

AHMANN: Did you go to any kind of school outside of, once you finished the Academy and, of course, went to pilot school? Had you gone to any kind of schools at all during this 1930s time period?

LANDRY: Not during the 1930s, no.

AHMANN: There would have only been what? The Air Corps Tactical School, Infantry School, and Command and General Staff I suppose.

LANDRY: My assignments were all such--I guess timewise they didn't mesh. Then of course we went over in November 1940 to Hawaii. General Martin was assigned to go to Hawaii in November 1940 and form up the Twelfth Army Air Force--what did we call it? The United States Army Air Force. Yes--to form up the Twelfth United States Army Air Force. He said to me, "Bob, how would you like to go to Hawaii?" I said, "It sounds good. What do you mean?" He said, "I have just been ordered to go over there and do this job. Would you like to go as my aide and perhaps operations?" I said, "I would be delighted."

AHMANN: He invited you over then?

LANDRY: Yes, he asked if I would like to go with him. I was then, of course, his aide and one of his operations people.

[57]

AHMANN: While you were at Barksdale of course, the Air Corps was building up now. Did it look like more and more we were going to get into a war to you? Do you remember how you felt at the time?

LANDRY: I don't know that any of us really thought about a war. I think we thought if things got bad enough that was why we were in the service was to fight a war. But I don't think any of us really had a great deal of discussion of what, where, and when it would be. We could see a buildup coming, but I think most of us looked on the buildup as just a natural development of airpower.

AHMANN: Of course World War II had started in the fall of 1939.

LANDRY: In 1939 when things happened in Europe, that's when we saw the buildup begin because that's when this country finally realized it had to do something; we might get in. But I don't recall in those days--I was there from 1937 until 1940 at Barksdale--talking about a war. You talk about a war in the sense that if you had to get in, no matter where the hell it was, you wanted to have the best equipment, and you wanted to have the best training. You wanted to have an attitude to fight and win a war. That's about as far as we ever went, but as far as when, where, or how--I don't think we talked about anything of a sneak attack in those days.

When we got over to Hawaii and things got a little tough with the Japanese and some of the things they were doing out there in the Far East, there was a possibility of a war with Japan. We talked about that. That's about when we began to talk about war, especially when we were working on that plan of what we could do with the B-18 I was telling you about, or

[58]

what we couldn't do. We were very, very much concerned. That is when General Martin had to go around the Army and go right to the Air Force to General Andrews and get a study to him. Normally, that would have gone through the Army.

AHMANN: Do you know why Martin was selected to go out to Hawaii?

LANDRY: I think because of his reputation and his quiet leadership qualities and the fact of his seniority.

AHMANN: Was he a good friend of--of course he was very much the contemporary of Arnold and Spaatz [Gen Carl, "Tooey"] and that whole crew.

LANDRY: Yes. He was highly regarded by all of them. I just think it was based on his reputation and his ability. He was a very good officer and a very good gentleman and a very good man, and he was more the type that inspired rather than directed all the time.

AHMANN: What about Arnold? Of course you would have never had any occasion to deal with him at his level.

LANDRY: Ah ha! (laughter)

AHMANN: Oh, making a wrong assumption. Excuse me.

LANDRY: Somehow or the other, I had a lot of contact with important people. Now we have to go back to Fort Huachuca. Now there is the great man. Back at Fort Huachuca, I was still interested in aviation as I told you I had been. I am going to show you this in just a minute.

[59]

General Arnold was at March Field. This year, and I think it was done almost every year, Bisbee--the little town of Bisbee, a mining town there--was not so far away. The American Legion put on a big show every year. This year they had Arnold coming out with his P-12 fighters. They were coming out with a whole squadron led by Major Arnold. I represented the command and went down to Bisbee and went to the country club where they had a big dinner for him. I represented Fort Huachuca. I knew a lot of people in Bisbee because I had refereed football games and sports, so I was pretty well known. I was selected to go down and represent them, and I sat at the table with the general. I went up to talk to him. I told him of my interest in aviation, and I enjoyed his show and all. Really, I was very much impressed. General Arnold would say something to the effect, "You are certainly thinking right, son." (laughter) I said, "Well, maybe someday, General, we might meet."

He went on back. No, he was on his way to Washington. He said, "We will make a couple of stops, and the first thing you know, we will be in Washington, DC. Flying is great." Things like that. Later on--let's see now. This wasn't dated--in Washington, I think when I was on the way through to go to the Eighth Air Force to join General Spaatz, I ran into him. I was a colonel. I said, "General, .I want to refresh your memory. Remember when you said, 'One day I might run into you?' This little Air Force guy who watched your show in Bisbee in 1934 or 1935," whenever it was. "I have thought about you so often, and I would like to have a picture." So he gave me this. (Showing picture)

AHMANN: "To Col R. B. Landry. It is a long way back to Bisbee. My best wishes to you for the future. From one oldtime doughboy to another."

[60]

LANDRY: He had been in the Infantry, too, at the beginning somehow.

AHMANN: I don't remember, frankly.

LANDRY: I really don't, but I just assumed he had from what he said there.

AHMANN: He has on those old military aviation wings.

LANDRY: I told him, "You have been sort of like my hero ever since I saw that flight. It probably had a lot to do with me making up my mind."

AHMANN: There has just