Former AEDC pilot reflects on a storied military career

  • Published
  • By Philip Lorenz III
  • AEDC/PA
ARNOLD AIR FORCE BASE, Tenn. --  As the number of surviving World War II veterans continues to decline, the opportunity to record their wartime experiences is slipping away.

One example is a former active duty Air Force AEDC employee named Hugh Killingsworth, who flew missions over "The Hump" during World War II as an Army Air Corps pilot.

"The Hump" is a name the pilots who flew the wartime resupply missions to China came up with because the route required flying approximately 650 miles at 15,500 feet from India to China over the Himalayan mountain range.

At 91, Hugh Killingsworth seems to have no trouble in recounting the highlights of his life, especially those from his military career, or finding the humor in many of those experiences.

His time at AEDC was short, from 1971 to 1972, where then Lt. Col. Killingsworth was the operations officer for Arnold's Convair T-29, the sole aircraft assigned to the base. One highlight of his brief time at AEDC was meeting a famous passenger who was flown to AEDC for a visit.

"Neil Armstrong, he came out to the base and my son was here from the academy," said Killingsworth, whose son wanted to meet the astronaut. "He (Armstrong) was a little shy and kind of shrugged off my introduction to my son."

Killingsworth is especially proud of the time he spent flying "The Hump" during World War II, and his service during the Vietnam War.

"I just think that I did my part [in] helping my country," he said. "It wasn't anything special - I didn't feel like it was - I was just doing my job."

He recalls that the Japanese were not the greatest obstacle to flying "the Hump."

"The weather was the big thing," said Killingsworth, who made 97 round trips to China during World War II. "We lost so many aircraft they called it the 'aluminum trail' from India to China. I got so used to [it] that I could look down and identify where I was."

While an Alabama Polytechnic University (now Auburn) senior studying agricultural science, with one semester short of graduating, the next chapter of Killingsworth's life began when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor resulting in the U.S. entering World War II.

"My draft board back in Sumter County [Alabama] had passed by me one day and said, 'you're going, whether you're in school or not,'" Killingsworth said. "So, I went over to Montgomery and took the cadet exam. I preferred flying to being in the ground troops."

While being processed through Berry Field in Nashville, prior to going overseas, Killingsworth had another life-changing experience.

"At Berry Field Hangar they had Saturday night dance, and I met this girl while I was there," he said.

After meeting, they corresponded off and on during Killingsworth's World War II duty. Ultimately, in Miami, Fla., he met and fell in love with the young lady's friend, Madelyn Holt who was from Estill Springs, Tenn.

After several delays, Killingsworth was ordered to report for duty with the Army Air Corps on March 17, 1942.

"They called me back, swore me in as a private, [at] $21 a month," he said.

Killingsworth's pre-flight training took place at Kelly Field in San Antonio, Texas and his primary flight training was conducted in Muskogee, Okla.

"I flew the PT-19 and basic BT-13 at Waco, Texas and after that I went to Foster Field, Victoria, Texas for advanced [training]," he said. "We had gunnery [training] and we'd fly to Matagorda Island off the coast in the gulf there for shooting at [towed] targets.

"It was great - half of our class was 'flying sergeants' and maybe 25 percent were out of West Point. We all graduated in January 1943."

The "flying sergeants" he referred to was a small cadre of senior enlisted Army Air Corps pilots similar to their enlisted counterparts in the U.S. Navy. Brought in to make up for the lack of qualified pilots, these enlisted service members made up only 1 percent of the total number of pilots who saw action during the war.

As a pilot, Killingsworth had found his calling and he was passionate about it.

"Yes, it was great flying," he said. "It was fun."

Killingsworth said, like his peers, he expected to report for combat duty and hadn't given it much thought.

"We were excited; we didn't know where we would be going," he said. "Rather than assigning me to a combat unit, I went to [the] Ferry Command at Long Beach, Calif.

"I flew mostly as a co-pilot and we'd go to the factory and pick up aircraft. We'd deliver it to either the port for overseas shipment or to a training school. I ended up flying either pilot or copilot on 23 different aircraft."

He qualified to fly the P-40, P-39, P-47 and the P-51 during one month of this assignment. Many of the P-39s Killingsworth and the other pilots ferried across the U.S and up to Canada were ultimately delivered to the Russians as part of the U.S.'s Lend-Lease Agreement with them and other allied countries.

During his flight training and throughout his World War II service, conditions were primitive. The pilot's primary training was conducted on grass fields. Later, when they ferried planes from a factory to port (Norfolk, Va.) before delivery overseas, Killingsworth said the pilots would live out of their briefcases.

During his time flying "the Hump," he said the pilots would often bunk in thatched huts between flights.

Killingsworth said the cargo he ferried aboard a C-46 Commando from India to China included gasoline, penicillin, bombs and other ammunition, shoes, spare parts and passengers.

"Our primary cargo was gasoline...going for the Flying Tigers," he said.

The weather was always the most challenging part of every flight.

Killingsworth said during the nights of January 6 and 7, 1945, they lost 17 planes due to the dangerous and unpredictable weather. However, he didn't fear flying those missions.
"But I did have a close call," he said. "One of my trips, I had a new co-pilot and it was his first trip over the hump. We were in the clouds, icing up and I asked him for carburetor heat and he gave me full carburetor heat.

"I lost both engines. I told the crew that if we didn't break out of the clouds at 10,000 feet, to prepare to leave the aircraft. We happened to break out right at 10,000 feet and the mountains were right off our wing tip and we were able to start our engines back. We were squawking IFF (identification friend or foe) emergency."

The ground station monitoring their IFF signals finally contacted them.

"They called us and asked if we were all right," he said with a smile. "Well, would you please turn your IFF off?"

After the flight everyone felt lucky to have survived.

"They would give us combat whiskey," he said. "A jigger of whiskey after every trip and sometimes we'd save them up for a party after that, but on this trip, we were excited we came back. The co-pilot was all shook up for a week."

He spoke about how the pilots would try to make the best of their time overseas.

"When we could get beer, we'd leave it [in] back by the cargo door to get cold," he said. "Then we'd have the beer but [add] whiskey to have boilermakers. And the whiskey was old as Methuselah."

On Aug. 6, 1945, Killingsworth vividly recalls what he heard while flying a routine mission over "the Hump."

"When we dropped the bomb, I was in the air and the radio operator picked up the message that a bomb had [been] dropped on Hiroshima," he said. "We didn't know what kind of damage or what a nuclear weapon was, because it was secret."

After the war, Killingsworth picked up where he had left off at Auburn, graduated and in 1947, married Madelyn. Then he returned to his hometown and reconnected with his boss from the movie theater, whom Killingsworth had met up with during the war. True to his promise at the time, the man then hired Killingsworth to manage the business.

"They were looking over my shoulder while I was managing this theater and after 18 months of that I applied for recall, for the Berlin Air Lift," he said, but instead, he was transferred to the 3rd Air Division, at Sculthorpe AFB, England. This was where the Strategic Air Command aircraft and crews would deploy for 90 days TDY (temporary duty).

While in England, Killingsworth, his wife and their young daughter, had opportunities to tour Europe in a brand new red Studebaker they had shipped over from the U.S. He was also in charge of the mess hall there.

However, the highlight of that assignment was meeting royalty, literally, due to a friendship Killingsworth's wife established.

Killingsworth, his wife and a few other Army Air Corps officers were invited to England's Sandringham House, the favorite home of Queen Mary, and many of her successors, including Queen Elizabeth II.

"While I was in England she became friends with a Lady Downes who was a personal friend of Queen Mary," Killingsworth said. "That's how I got the invitation to come to Sandringham, their summer home there and so we went out [to] the service on Sunday. After [the] service, she came out and we all went through and greeted the queen. Now
when I went in front of the queen, I curtsied and saluted the queen."

Killingsworth's manner of greeting the queen left a lasting impression on one of those attending that event.

"A year later, I was at the Scottish Ball in London," he recalled. "The adjutant at the base had an apartment in London and one of his friends there said, 'Oh, you're the one who curtsied and saluted Queen Mary."

After three years in England, Killingsworth's next assignments were at Strategic Air Command (SAC) at MacDill AFB, Fla. There he flew C-47s on weekends, had a stint as operations officer and eventually managing 17 mess halls with 300 cooks.

Ironically, Killingsworth, who had been aloft over the Himalayas during World War II when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, would later pilot the B-52s carrying nuclear weapons when his command was on an "alert" status.

"I got back into flying [at] Fairchild [AFB], Spokane Wash., and back in SAC," he said. "I flew 17 24-hour missions [and] we pulled alert a week at a time.

"During the Middle East crisis, we put aircraft in the air 24 hours a day and we had six aircraft from Spokane in the air at all times during that crisis.

Killingsworth also flew the aircraft during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

"We refueled twice during the night, he said. "The first missions were to fly up over Canada, up to Alaska, out the Aleutian chain and back. We monitored SAC headquarters on the quarter hour and at three quarter hour, for go or no go messages."

Killingsworth spoke of the readiness required of what could have been a one-way trip.

"While on ground alert, we'd have five minutes to get in the airplane and get moving," he said. "We left the airplanes near the end of the runways in a cocked position and all we had to do is hit the starter button and it would go. We were already near the end of the runway where we could go - it was a one-way trip, if we had gone."

Later, Killingsworth flew from Naha AB during the Vietnam War, and then from either Vietnam or Thailand, he flew a C-130A Hercules on "Blind Bat" missions to locate targets for Navy fighter aircraft to strike.

"We would fly at 3,000 feet up and down the Ho Chi Minh trail and we had a night scope in the back of the aircraft to find trucks. Then we would drop out a marker, and we'd call in the Navy fighters. Then we would circle and direct their fire.

"I would fly in country, stay 30 days at Cam Ranh Bay and Tan San Nhut, the two places that we would fly into, and we'd be flying from Okinawa and right back," he said.

Like many couples, Killingsworh and his wife had started a family early in his career.
Killingsworth's daughter was born while he was briefly out of the Air Force, and his son was born in 1952.

"My wife was very supportive," Kilingsworth said. "All during my service, she [Madelyn] was up anytime during the night that I had to get up and go fly. She fixed my breakfast and she raised two wonderful children who turned out very well. My daughter was an aerospace engineer and [my] son graduated from the [Air Force] Academy and stayed in 12 years."

When he retired, Killingsworth devoted most of his time to his wife.

"[When] I retired, I fixed her breakfast every morning until she passed away," he said. "I was very appreciative and very much in love with her."

During his military career, Killingsworth flew 7,188 hours, including 714 combat hours, and earned a Distinguished Flying Cross with two Oak leaf Clusters, Air Force Air Commendation Medal, American Campaign Medal with five Oak leaf Clusters and a Vietnam Service Medal with Valor.

His final retirement came a few years after working at a small local company in Tullahoma. Now Killingsworth spends much of his time pursuing his long-time favorite pastime, playing golf.

"It's been a good life," he said.