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Walnut Ridge Army
Flying School Reunion On March 12th and 13th, 2005, The Walnut Ridge Army Flying School Museum held it 8th Annual Reunion. Many U.S. Army Air Corp Cadets who completed their Basic Pilot Training were in attendance. The BT-13, like the one pictured below, was the plane used to train them. |
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The following story was reported in THE JONESBORO SUN on Sunday, March 13, 2005. Airmen of World War II ReuniteBy Curt
Hodges
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WALNUT RIDGE - The yellow and silver BT-13 World War II era training plane hummed overhead, its wings glinting in the sun, as pilot Dave Johnson of Pine Bluff provided free rides Saturday - the first day of the Walnut Ridge Army Air Field Reunion.
The reunion is held each year to honor the airmen who trained at the base and went on to fly in combat in Europe and the Pacific during the war. Pilots who received training at Walnut Ridge flew many kinds of aircraft and many kinds of missions throughout the war.
During its heyday as an Army Air Corps training station during the war, hundreds of the basic trainers lined the aprons at the Walnut Ridge facility. Hundreds of pilots received their primary training at the field.
One of them was Martin K. Presswood of Texarkana, Ark., who went on to fly B-17 bombers with the 390th Bomb Group of the 8th Air Force out of England.
Presswood did part of his primary training at Thompson Robbins Field at West Helena, his basic flight training at Walnut Ridge and his advanced training in AT-10s at Stuttgart. He graduated from advanced training on March 12, 1944 - 60 years ago Saturday.
After that he was commissioned a second lieutenant and received his pilot's wings.
He went on to B-17 training at Hendrix Field near Sebring, Fla., and three months of crew training at McDill Airfield near Tampa, Fla. His crew was then assigned as a replacement crew with the 390th and sent to England.
The stories of Presswood and other veterans were being recorded Saturday for a documentary, "Wings of Honor."
"I was one of the lucky ones," Presswood said. He has no stories of nearly being shot out of the skies over Germany nor of returning to England on a wing, a prayer and an engine on its last gasp.
He and his crew flew their missions and received little damage. Their crew members shot several German fighters out of the air and dropped tons of bombs on important targets all across the nation.
It was men like Presswood - him and hundreds of others who came to Northeast Arkansas to train - who made valuable contributions to what many have said is the most important war that America has fought in and won. Besides the cadets, there were many others who worked and served at Walnut Ridge during the 1940s.
Their stories are being preserved for future generations by the work of a handful of people who have organized the WRAAF Base Museum at the facility, which is now known as the Walnut Ridge Regional Airport.
A museum has been established and is brimming with artifacts of all kinds. A new and larger museum building has been built and is expected to be completed later this year.
"The reunion celebrates this proud history and reunites those `Greatest Generation' members, military and civilian, who served so proudly and willingly," said Harold Johnson, president of the museum board of directors.
Navy veteran L. Clifton Curtis of Horseshoe Bend did not serve at Walnut Ridge but attended the reunion. He served on a destroyer and, as the front of his cap states, is a "Kamikaze Survivor."
Johnson said the doors of the museum buildings will be opened at 9 a.m. today. Museum tours and videos will be among the features.
Johnson said of the more than 100 who attended the reunion, 60 of them were connected to the former air base during its WWII service as either military or civilians.
