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Originally Posted by Slipdigit  Technically I am at Maxwell, but actually at the Gunter Annex of Maxwell. Gunter AFB was an old training base that closed sometime in the early 60's |
Used to be the Municipal Airport before they moved to Dannelly Field.
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Gunter trained a lot of foreign pilots and many are buried in a cemetery somewhere here in town (Montgomery, AL). There are maybe 50-60, mostly British and French pilots, with some Polish buried here who died during training accidents.
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I was not aware that so many British pilots trained there as most went through the Empire Training Scheme in Canada.
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42nd Air Base Wing: History: World War II Era
When the Lend-Lease Act became law on 11 March 1941, the British were struggling for their very survival. France had fallen to Nazi Germany in 1940, the British Expeditionary Force had retreated from Dunkirk at the same time, and a German surprise attack had not yet broken the Hitler-Stalin nonaggression pact of August 1939. Only the Royal Air Force, by denying air superiority to the Luftwaffe, had prevented an invasion of the British Isles by the German Wehrmacht. Isolated from its allies and facing a powerful and hostile opponent, the British turned to the Americans for assistance.
The United States responded by setting up several pilot training programs on American soil to train British pilots. The War Department chose the Southeast Air Corps Training Center to conduct training for 4,000 Britons per year at its schools in Florida, Georgia, and Alabama to qualify them for combat duty in the Royal Air Force. Between 7 June 1941 and 17 March 1943, 7,860 Britons entered the program, and 4,370 graduated. Maxwell Field began its foreign training program in the fall of 1941 when 750 British cadets arrived for school. The last class of British cadets graduated from Maxwell's preflight school on 26 February 1943.
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I follow college football (not soccer to y'all across the sea).
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A terminology for the members in the UK is "Across the Pond" (Atlantic)
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Everyone in Australia likes to drink beer, BBQ shrimp and go walkabouts, right?
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Wrong!
Good to see that the Australian governments marketing $'s are working well in the US. Paul Hogan did a good job with that AD campaign.
A majority drink beer, (I like a good red), never cooked a shrimp (called prawns here) on my BBQ, and the only time I go walkabout in the bush is if I am pig shooting with my Win 44 mag or Rem.243.
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I do miss watching Australian Football. It used come on TV here couple of years ago for several seasons. It looked like an organized fight, except with nattily dressed men standing by the goals and waving flags and pointing their fingers. I loved it, wished it were still on here. Took me about 3 matches to figure out most of the rules.
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Cable? The AFL website has another fan from Tuscaloosa who loved watching it. Not you is it Jeff?