The training here was intense for everyone. There was a track set up in the rocks in the side of the mountain, and a small cart on which a target was mounted was run on this track. An airplane gun turret with two fifty caliber machine guns in it was mounted several hundred yards away and the enlisted men practiced gunnery here, shooting at the target as it appeared and disappeared among the rocks. Occasionally the officers would have to practice on this also.

We were up there one hot, humid afternoon. There were several crews of us and it got to be a lengthy session and tempers were a little short and everyone was tired of it, so when our crew's turn came to fire individually, Sgt. George Morgan asked me if I was sick of it yet. | nodded my head, he smiled, crawled up in the turret, aimed and fired those twin 50s and shot that little cart right off the track, demolishing it. As he walked away he said, “Well, let's go home!” See, you didn’t need to be in actual combat to be a hero, just simulated combat would do it!

We flew air to air and air to ground gunnery missions. The air to air missions were held over a designated firing range and B-26 Maruaders would fly by us at various angles and distances pulling target sleeves so our gunners could fire at these targets. When the exercise was done, the B-26 would retrieve the sleeve and count the holes in it. Of course, we never knew which of the then 50’s had scored the hits but the total number of holes were always applied to the charts and this determined the degree of proficiency of our gunners.

The air to ground gunnery was generally accomplished around Saddle Mountain. This was a natural pile of rocks which stood up out of the desert floor and was shaped at the top like the seat of a saddle. We would fly around it at low altitude, clockwise for several times and all the gunners except the left waist gun could fire at the square targets around the base of the mountain. THe was great because this allowed the copilot to show off his flying ability, but after several turns around we would fly out, come back and fly counter clockwise so the left waist gunner could get in his required practice.

On e day after doing this air to ground gunnery, we flew over to the Snake River and flew down inside the canyon. Hey, this was great stuff as it was plenty wide enough for us to buzz along several hundred feet down inside and as we did, seagulls would fly up ahead and the gunners would shoot at them. This made the practice much more fun because it was strictly prohibited.
As we came up to the level of the top of the canyon the guys were still firing the guns which were shooting live ammunition with every tenth one a tracer, and the tracers went in the dry grass and started a range fire. When we saw this we got the hell out of there and back to Saddle Mountain, then back to base. When the ranchers reported that several hundred acres of range land had burned over there was an official inquiry and we sweated out several days before they decided they couldn’t figure how it happened.