of used car sales, and this guaranteed

him a steady income from which he could

divert funds to flight training. He dove in

at an airfield not far from the town of San

Luis Obispo, and he also flew out of the

nearby Hancock Field at Santa Maria. And

flying invigorated him. “He loved flying

more than anything else, even more than

hunting” his sister Doris would recount

later1). In the summer of 1939, he got his

private pilot license and took advantage

of every opportunity to fly. It was clear to

him that this would not, however, provide

him with enough hours to make him a professional airline pilot. He also knew that

another possibility lay with the military, at

the time the United States Army Air Corps

(USAAC). That meant four years of university level study. For Elwyn, that would

have meant another two years of school,

for which he did not have the funds. It looked as though he would have to abandon

his dream of being a pilot, when a major

twist of fate came along. The developing

political climate forced the Army to lower

its requirements for pilot acceptance to

just two years of university level education, provided they pass entry exams. And

Elwyn passed!

His family had hoped for his return to the

farm, and eventual partial inheritance of

it, but Elwyn, to the contrary, was happy

to be able to separate himself from it altogether. According to his brother Ernie,

he wanted nothing to do with farming. His

head was in the clouds …

Into the Army!

At the beginning of December, 1939, Elwyn

Righetti recorded in his log: “Mr. Prescott

told me today that if I continue to go as

I have been, I’ll be at the top of my class

when I get out of here.”1) It can be said that

Righetti himself was satisfied with his progress.

Bob Prescott was an instructor with Ryan

School of Aeronautics in San Diego, one

of nine civilian flight schools that trained

young cadets for the USAAC. There were

Photo: National Archives

HISTORY

BT-6 aircraft at Randolph Field in Texas, a training base.

Kaydet biplane and then the low wing BT-9.

He fell in love with the latter. The almost

two tons beast with a 400hp engine was

something different than he had come in

contact with till then. His flying skills, once

again, served him well, including at night,

though his instructor did chastise his almost too frivolous attitude. But even that

wouldn’t stand in his way, and after his

post-forty hour flight test, he would write

home, boasting that “I did manage to get a

very good grade on my forty-hour check,

so I’m practically a cinch to graduate. It’s

figured here that once we get by that, we

are as good as through. I was the second

in the class to pass it, so out of two hundred men, that’s pretty good”.1)

From Student to Instructor

In April, 1940, Righetti completed his basic

training and was assigned to Kelly Field,

where advanced training awaited on the

At-6 Texan. Again, he was among the best

in his class, which foreshadowed his future. Plans for any significant expansion

would not be viable without thousands of

new instructors, who would, in turn, turn

out tens of thousands new pilots. It was

logical to select the best of the best from

“He loved flying more than anything else, even more than hunting”

(Doris Righetti)

some three thousand of these in the world,

and Major General Henry Arnold, Chief of

the Air Corps, wanted many more than

that, in the light of the German invasion

of Poland and it’s division with Germany’s

ally, the Soviet Union. Righetti, along with

his thirty-six classmates, were among the

first of almost half a million men trained

during the course of the war.

After basic training and with high praise

from his superiors, Righetti was sent to

Randolph Field in Texas in February, 1940.

There, he would further train on the PT-13

8

INFO Eduard

each discipline to become instructors.

Group 40D, to which Righetti belonged,

completed its training on July 26, 1940.

Two hundred graduates received their

wings and were elevated to Officer status.

Righetti was pleased to learn he would be

a flight instructor.

He was assigned his first group of cadets

for training on BT-145s in mid-August,

1940, and he described them in a letter

home thus: “I now have a full-fledged

class of cadets: Cobeaga, Hayes, Stockett

and Pound—two of them poor, and two of

them worse. I had hoped for a little natural talent to start out with, but no such

luck. These mugs will give me something

to work on, however, and since my captain knows they’re punk, if I can do something with them, it will be very much to

my credit.”1)

Perhaps, they were not as bad as all that,

and later, Righetti wrote: ‘I soloed them all

yesterday and today, but I’m scared every

time they go out that someone will bring

me back a little, old, orange piece of aluminum and say, “Sorry sir, this was all we

could find.”1)

A Secret Wedding

While Righetti was settling into his role as

an instructor, the Battle of Britain was revving up. On January 18, 1941, he married

the small, dark-haired and intelligent

Edith Cathryn Davies. The two married

after a relatively short courtship, without

any external pressures that would be forced on them by, for example, a pregnancy. The two married without the presence

of family or with much fanfare. The name

Edith was never used much by the newlywed, but her middle name did spawn several nicknames. She was known as Kate,

Katie and Kakie, and also Katydid … At the

time, Elwyn likely had no idea that the

last of those would be the name he would

have applied to his Mustang, and that it

would be complemented by a rendering of

a grasshopper, the connection being that

the katydid is an insect that is related to

the grasshopper and cricket.

The young couple settled in the officer housing facility at Randolph, which

Cathryn gradually improved, but Righetti’s quiet and predictable life instructing

young cadets began to bore him. His

thoughts increasingly turned to the idea

of combat. “Two of my better friends left

yesterday for China with about 100 Air

Corps men who are under contract to

keep the Burma Road open. They’ll clear

February 2023