Bryce Jordan was born in November 1924 in Stanley, Wisconsin. He grew up on a dairy farm outside of Stanley and he says it was very cold and he never liked it. As soon as he was able, he worked in the garden, milked cows, cut hay, and performed other farm chores. He had one older brother and one younger brother. They all went to school in a one room rural school with one teacher teaching eight grades. There were 31 pupils in the whole school. Each grade got 15 to 30 minutes of instruction per day. The Depression was not too bad because of the farm. They always had milk and food. They made money selling milk too. It was a rough life, but his dad was a good provider. He remembers when he heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He was getting gas for his car and a student he knew came out told him. He had never heard of Pearl Harbor and it did not mean anything to anyone he knew. The next morning his dad explained it to him. He was 17 years old and did not know much about war. His father expected that the country would go to war with Germany and Italy right away and that it would change their lives completely. They only talked of serving in May 1942 when he graduated from high school. He wanted to become a pilot. His older brother was deaf in one ear and tried to enlist but was not accepted. His other brother was too young. His father did not like the idea of him going into the service but backed his choice. Jordan volunteered on 7 November 1942 on his 18th birthday. He took the tests for aviation school and was sworn into the US Army Air Forces on 10 December 1942. He was anxious and wanted to get going.

Bryce Jordan went on active duty in February 1943, and took a train from Chicago, Illinois to Sheppard Field, Texas [Annotator's Note: now Sheppard Air Force Base, Wichita County, Texas]. There were a lot of new aviation students arriving together for nine weeks of basic training. Following that, Jordan went to a College Training Detachment at Centenary College in Shreveport, Louisiana where he spent another nine weeks training in math, aviation, weather, and navigation. Orders came in for a small group to go to the Classification Center in San Antonio, Texas. He went and was fortunate to get assigned to pilot training. Jordan then had nine weeks of pre-flight which included ground school and physical education. Hicks Field [Annotator's Note: Hicks Field, Saginaw Texas], near Fort Worth, was for primary training in PT-19s [Annotator's Note: Fairchild PT-19 primary trainer aircraft]. Over 50 percent of Jordan's class washed out before soloing. Next up was Perrin Field [Annotator's Note: Perrin Field, now North Texas Regional Airport, Grayson County, Texas] near Ft. Worth and Dallas for BT-13 Vultee Vibrator [Annotator's Note: Consolidated Vultee BT-13 Valiant basic trainer aircraft, nicknamed the "Vibrator"] training. Next was Eagle Pass, Texas [Annotator's Note: Eagle Pass Army Airfield, Eagle Pass, Texas] for advanced training in the AT-6 Texan [Annotator's Note: North American T-6 Texan advanced trainer aircraft] and he thought it was fabulous and loved to fly it. Jordan graduated 12 March 1944. He received his wings and second lieutenant commission. He was made an instructor and stayed there for that training. After graduation he received his first class of six cadets. He loved it so much and says that is when he really learned to fly. He stayed there until the war ended in Europe. He was then sent to Aloe Field, Texas [Annotator's Note: Aloe Army Airfield, formerly Victoria Field #2, Victoria, Texas] for P-40 [Annotator's Note: Curtiss P-40 Warhawk fighter aircraft] fighter training and then gunnery school on Matagorda Island, Texas [Annotator's Note: Matagorda Island Air Force Base, Matagorda Island, Texas]. From there he went to Waco, Texas to a holding area to go into more fighter training. He taught basic flight training there in the AT-6. He was then pulled and sent to Tallahassee, Florida to train more. He was fortunate to go to Sarasota, Florida which he calls the most beautiful spot on the earth, to fly brand new P-51s [Annotator's Note: North American P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft] and he loved it. [Annotator's Note: Jordan gets emotional.] He spent four months there and then went back to Dale Mabry Field [Annotator's Note: Dale Mabry Army Airfield, Tallahassee, Florida]. He flew P-51s and P-40s there. He was due to be shipped to the South Pacific on 15 August 1945, but the war ended the day before. One squadron of 20 pilots did go to the South Pacific for occupation duty. Jordan was discharged at Camp McCoy [Annotator's Note: now Fort McCoy, Monroe County, Wisconsin] on 31 October 1945.

For Bryce Jordan, PT-19 training [Annotator's Note: Fairchild PT-19 primary trainer aircraft] was not his first trip in airplane. As a kid he had attended a county fair where there was a man working what he thinks was a Piper Cub [Annotator's Note: Piper J-3 Cub light observation aircraft]. Jordan spent four or five hours with the man while he was working on it. After the man finished, he took Jordan for a ride. [Annotator's Note: Jordan gets very emotional.] Jordan wanted the pilot to do a loop. The pilot obliged and Jordan was sold on flying right then. When World War 2 started, he knew immediately he wanted to be a fighter pilot. He loved the PT-19 and his first solo flight was fantastic. He had no fear at all and was in Seventh Heaven. [Annotator's Note: Jordan apologizes for breaking down emotionally.] Many training moments stand out for him. He was friends with a fellow pilot named Jung who had a couple thousand hours of flying. They would discuss acrobatics. The PT-19 could not handle them, but when Jordan was in the BT-13 [Annotator's Note: Consolidated Vultee BT-13 Valiant basic trainer aircraft, nicknamed the "Vibrator"], he would practice them. He had an instructor whose pilot skills were not very good, so Jordan taught him. Once he was in the T-6 [Annotator's Note: North American T-6 Texan advanced trainer aircraft], he would spend an hour or two in acrobatics. Doing this taught him that when he went into a new airplane, flying acrobatics for the full two hours would enable him to get fully familiar with the aircraft. He continued to teach all of his cadets acrobatics and they all became highly rated pilots on their own.

Bryce Jordan always wanted to be a flight instructor. He knew his advanced instructor could fly much better than him. He was an acrobatic whiz and they would fly together and try things and consequently, he felt very experienced to teach. He loved instructing and giving the young people what experience he had. He later became a school teacher. He kept in touch for a little while with some of his students, but he thinks he lost most of them in the war. He had one Brazilian cadet at Eagle Pass [Annotator's Note: Eagle Pass Army Airfield, Eagle Pass, Texas] who he kept up with. After the war, this pilot wanted Jordan to come to Brazil and be an airline pilot. He was always on top of what was happening in the war. He watched everything and says he read the most about the US Army and their battles and then the B-17s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] and B-24s [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber], but not much about the fighter planes. Once Americans started shooting down enemy bombers with the P-51s [Annotator's Note: North American P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft] you heard more. He has a current friend who was a B-17 bombardier who flew 38 missions. This friend said that the P-51s changed the nature of the missions for the bomber crews due being so protected by them. Jordan felt that we had to win the war and save peace for the world. When he first went into the Army, he was told he had to hate his enemy. Jordan feels that it is difficult to do that and never quite bought into it. He felt bad about the war and how many people were dying. He wanted it to be gotten over with. [Annotator's Note: Jordan gets emotional.] Training people well felt great to him. He wanted them to do a good job.

Bryce Jordan says that there were many accidents in pilot training. In basic training, they were assigned five people to a barracks, grouped by alphabet. A cadet named Gordon Johnson was flying night training. Jordan woke up in the morning and Johnson's bed was empty. He had been out with very little instrument training and was in the downwind part of the traffic pattern. He saw a light and thought it was another craft, so he dove to avoid it. He hit the ground and lost his landing gear. He was injured and hospitalized. He did finish his training ultimately. Planes would go down every now and then and usually at night. One night two were lost and the instructors had to go look for the wreckage. Jordan was still a student and was riding with an instructor when they found both of them. They never knew what happened. Often, crashes were due to not knowing how to read the instruments. One morning a flatbed truck pulled up with a wrecked airplane on it. Both pilots had died. They were close to death all the time. He had too many close calls himself to mention. He had no real difficulty in learning to fly. He had problems but not different from the rest of life. Jordan naturally took to being an instructor. It felt good to take his first student up. Every pilot feels completely different and each student is completely different at the controls. The instructor works with what they have. He had no lack of confidence in his abilities.

After he was discharged from the US Army Air Forces, Bryce Jordan went to the University of Wisconsin [Annotator's Note: University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison Wisconsin], in March 1946, to get a degree in math and teaching. In 1947 the Air National Guard was formed in Madison and they were looking for pilots. They were getting P-51s [Annotator's Note: North American P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft] and he was very glad to see them. He joined the Guard and flew T-6s [Annotator's Note: North American AT-6 Texan advanced trainer aircraft] for check-out flights. He was back in Seventh Heaven and of all of the airplanes he has flown, the P-51 was the greatest. He still gets very emotional. In February 1952 or 1953, the Guard was called to Active Duty for the Korean War. Jordan flew P-51s and was to receive the F-89 Scorpion [Annotator's Note: Northrop F-89 Scorpion interceptor aircraft]. They went to Florida for T-33 instrument training [Annotator's Note: Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star jet trainer aircraft] and then in F-84 [Annotator's Note: Republic F-84 Thunderjet] all-weather interceptors. There was a radar observer in the back seat who instructed the pilot how and where to fly. They would train at night with no lights. From there, Jordan went to Truax Field [Annotator's Note: Truax Field Air National Guard Base, Madison, Wisconsin] and then to Hamilton AFB [Annotator's Note: Hamilton Air Force Base, Novato, California] to check out in the F-89D fighter in February. He could not fly due to rain and then was sent back to Truax and flew F-89s there. He was discharged from active duty after 21 months.

Bryce Jordan was discharged from active duty in the US Air Force in 1954 and returned to the Air National Guard. Weekend Warriors serve a lot more than weekends. He went back to the P-51s [Annotator's Note: North American P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft] at first, followed by F-86 Sabre [Annotator's Note: North American F-86 Sabre jet fighter aircraft], then the F-89 Scorpion [Annotator's Note: Northrop F-89 Scorpion jet interceptor aircraft]. They now fly the F-16 [Annotator’s Note: General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon super-sonic multi-role fighter aircraft] there. He had earlier graduated from college and he now taught math and coached football and wrestling at West High School in Madison, Wisconsin. He would teach and then go fly at night for a couple of hours very often. The Guard and Reserve were rather loose in those days so he could do that and also get paid to do it. He stayed in Madison and flew the T-33 trainer [Annotator's Note: Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star jet trainer aircraft] a lot. In 1962, he was in the Guard and moved out to Riverside, California. His rank was too high for Ontario [Annotator's Note: Ontario Air National Guard Station, Ontario, California; now deactivated] and he tried to get in the Reserve at March AFB [Annotator's Note: March Air Reserve Base, previously March Air Force Base, Riverside County, California]. One day he went out to the base and everyone was so happy to meet him that they brought him into the unit. This was during the Cuban crisis [Annotator's Note: The Cuban Missile Crisis, 16 to 28 October 1962; confrontation between United States and Soviet Union over ballistic missiles in Cuba]. The wing had an Operations Squadron and they needed a commander for it, so he got to fly. After re-organization, he was out of a job. A person who had checked his record in Wisconsin called him to fly the C-119 [Annotator's Note: Fairchild C-119 Flying Boxcar transport aircraft]. He really liked that aircraft and flew it from March for a long time. The unit transferred into another command, but his rank was too high for him to transfer. A squadron [Annotator's Note: 303d Air Rescue Squadron, March AFB, California; now 303rd Expeditionary Rescue Squadron, Camp Lemonier, Djibouti] nearby had the HC-97 Boeing Stratofreighter [Annotator's Note: Boeing C-97 Stratofreighter long range heavy cargo aircraft], the first civilian airplane that could make Hawaii, so he was able to join them. The aircraft was 328,000 pounds gross weight. He learned to love flying it. The extra engines are there for a purpose, they would cut power down on three and just fly on one. Jordan flew a training mission for the Air Defense Command to rescue fighter pilots who went into the ocean. On take-off at max gross weight, an engineer onboard handles the throttles for the pilot due to their size and weight. At about 100 feet in the air, engine one was backfiring, making the throttles bounce in his hand. Jordan told the engineer to pull power back and after a few more hundred feet, engine number two went out. They dumped fuel to be able to land. They landed and switched to another plane and were back in position only 15 minutes later. That convinced Jordan that more engines are better than one. He never felt afraid or tense as what is called an emergency is just another aspect of flying. [Annotator's Note: Jordan gets emotional talking of why he loves to fly.] Jordan was with the Rescue Squadron for close to two years. He retired in 1972 after 29 years. His last flight was in the Stratofreighter. There were navigators who had to take two overwater navigation training trips each quarter. They would fly to either Alaska or Hawaii on these. On his last weekend, he flew to Hawaii overnight and spent the weekend. He flew back on Sunday and it was an enjoyable trip. He did not make a very good landing. After flying ten hours or so you generally cannot land well. His copilot gave him a box of cigars for a gift. [Annotator's Note: Jordan gets emotional.]

In all of his flying, Bryce Jordan was generally some type of instructor pilot. When he started his university training as an engineer after the war, he realized he liked other things like mathematics better. Memory courses were hard, and he had to work too hard at it. He became a math teacher instead of an engineer. He loved sports and became a football coach. He inherited the wrestling coach job at West High School in Madison, Wisconsin. The University of Wisconsin coach knew him and taught him how to be a wrestling coach. He taught and coached for two years. He never lost a football game and one wrestler became state champion. [Annotator's Note: Jordan gets emotional.] Jordan does not have a most memorable experience, he has many. Close-calls while flying and more. He loves to fly so much, that all of it is great. He was fortunate not to have been in combat. He took substandard pilots and made good pilots out of them. He had decided to serve because at that particular time, about 100 per cent of the people were volunteers. Everyone expected it and he never had any doubt about it at all. He assumed he would be in combat as a fighter pilot if he could. Jordan feels that if not for World War 2 he would have been a farm boy all of his life. He feels it added immensely to his life. He met his future wife when they were 14 and they married at 18. For 73 years, she supported him in everything. She moved with him to the different bases and even traveled on troop trains with him. An ultra interesting life is what he lived, and he has no idea how he could have improved on it. World War 2 service for Jordan means he is a 92-year-old man who can't see or hear well but is a happy old man. He loves his life. The military gave him purpose and meaning. He feels that The National WWII Museum is really important. He happened to hear about some Honor Flights to Washington D.C. His younger brother was an Army veteran of the Vietnam War. They went on a flight in October 2016 with 35 other veterans and loved it. They toured the Capitol area and it was important to him. His son is his guardian and caretaker and he would have had a tough time without his son. Every time something is done with veterans so much is learned. He is so thankful that there are organizations such as The National WWII Museum doing things for veterans and keeping their histories. As a pilot, when he first walked into the museum and saw the C-47 [Annotator's Note: Douglas C-47 Skytrain cargo and transport aircraft] hanging from the ceiling, he was moved. [Annotator's Note: Jordan gets very emotional.]