Editor’s Note: The Chestertown Spy has teamed up with the C.V. Starr Center for the American Experience at Washington College to share the stories of local residents who experienced World War II, either on the Home Front or as Veterans. Students and staff have already interviewed over a hundred people about their experiences during World War II. Each installment presented in The Spy includes an audio clip of an interview, along with the corresponding transcript. You can find more audio clips and interview transcripts at storyquestproject.com. If you have a story or artifact to share, please contact Deputy Director of Starr Center, Pat Nugent, at [email protected] or 410-810-7161.
Jim Murphy: Gunning Practice
I would take the guns out of the plane after they were dirty, like you took your guns home. You’d clean them, put them back in, load them up for the next mission. And they would use the guns to fire at tow targets – you ever see the tow targets down [at] the shore with ads behind the airplane going along, “Joe’s Dining Room” and all that business? They were towing those behind the plane, and then the pilots would shoot at them and fly around. And this was unique, the material was wire like screen but it had been somehow imbued with little felt stuff. And the shells, the bullets that came out of the guns had been dipped into wax. Yours were dipped in red wax, green wax, blue wax, whatever. And if you hit the target, of course you went right through, but it left little colors where the hole was. And they could count them and they would know who was hitting and who wasn’t hitting.
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