Bud Loring retired from the Army as a lieutenant colonel. After World War 2 he joined a National Guard unit. He had a full time job, so he resigned his commission and became a Master Sergeant at Camp Edwards [Annotator's Note: Barnstable County, Massachusetts]. The Air Force had moved in in 1947. It was Otis Air Force Base [Annotator's Note: now Otis Air National Guard Base, Barnstable County, Massachusetts]. He watched them come in and asked them what the Air Force could do for him. They told him that within 30 days they could have him flying P-51s [Annotator's Note: North American P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft] in Korea. He had not flown in five years and decided to stay where he was. The next month, the National Guard was activated so he went on active duty. He got the rank of captain back. That is how he got into air defense. He went to Europe, to Germany, after going to Fort Sill, Oklahoma for training. He was assigned to a field artillery unit equipped with 105mm self propelled howitzer [Annotator's Note: M7 Priest]. He spent three years there. That allowed him to visit his helpers in France. He went back in 1954 to see the people. He went into Paris and saw the Eiffel Tower. It is different than looking at it from a fighter aircraft at 30,000 feet. He became an instructor in the artillery school. He was told he was going to a Hawk [Annotator's Note: Raytheon MIM-23 Hawk; medium-range surface-to-air missile] unit and go to school at Fort Bliss [Annotator's Note: Texas and New Mexico] and then Korea as the commander of a Hawk missile battery. He was located right on the DMZ [Annotator's Note: Demilitarized Zone] right at North Korea. He was there for 15 months. He spent ten years at Fort Sill and the rest of his time at Fort Bliss. [Annotator's Note: Loring and the interviewer discuss eating eels and getting his address.]

Bud Loring was born in Brockton, Massachusetts. His father was an automotive, boat, and heavy construction mechanic. During the war, he worked in Newfoundland. They were riding down the road on 7 December [Annotator's Note: 7 December 1941; the date of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii]. Loring said he wanted to be aircraft mechanic and his father told him to try to be a pilot. He was sworn into the Army Air Force on 20 May 1942. He went home and was called back nine months later. He had never been west of New York. He took a train from Fort Devens [Annotator's Note: Ayer and Shirley, Massachusetts] to Santa Ana, California. He wore the same clothes for ten days. At two o'clock in the morning, they started counting cadence on the way into the base. Lights came on in the barracks and someone said, "you'll be sorry". His life was hell down there. He had to have a companion with him for everything. They had to run everywhere. He caught pneumonia there and was in the hospital. He was set back a class. In December 1942 he became a second lieutenant.

Learning how to fly was quite a job for Bud Loring. He had never flown before in his life. They had civilian instructors. Mister Lapadoula [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling] took him up for his first flight of 20 minutes. About 18 of it was upside down. His nails were bleeding from hanging onto the seat. It was a PT-19 [Annotator's Note: Fairchild PT-19 primary trainer aircraft]. Lapadoula asked Loring if he did not like flying. Loring told him not like that, but he was willing to do it again. He had never been around an aircraft. He passed his 60 hour flight without touching the aircraft at all. Mister Lapadoula made it so that he would not fail. Loring then went into basic training in BT-13s [Annotator's Note: Consolidated Vultee BT-13 Valiant basic trainer aircraft, also known as the Vultee Vibrator] and AT-9s [Annotator’s Note: Curtiss-Wright AT-9 Jeep twin engine advanced trainer aircraft]. He flew the AT-6 [Annotator's Note: North American AT-6 Texan advanced trainer aircraft] for gunnery and then the RP-322 which is a P-38 [Annotator's Note: Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter aircraft] without superchargers. Nobody wanted them so they went to the flight schools. He thought he had died and gone to heaven. He graduated 5 December 1942 as a second lieutenant. He went to Santa Rosa [Annotator's Note: Santa Rosa Army Airfield, California] first and then to Santa Maria [Annotator’s Note: Santa Maria Army Airfield, Santa Barbara County, California] where he got a brand new P-38, the latest model. As a 20 year old kid, he could do anything he wanted in it. They had all kinds of training in the them. It was quite a change for him.

Bud Loring went from Santa Maria [Annotator's Note: Army Airfield, Santa Barbara County, California] to Colchester, England [Annotator's Note: Royal Air Force Station Wormingford] and flew some old P-38s [Annotator's Note: Lockheed P-38 Lightening fighter aircraft]. He was assigned to the 55th Fighter Group, 343rd Fighter Squadron [Annotator's Note: 343rd Fighter Squadron, 55th Fighter Group, 8th Air Force]. He had gone to Europe by ship, the USS General LeRoy Eltinge (AP-154). It was tough. It was modified to carry troops and in the hold there were black military men. Loring had 100 of them. When they would have fire drills, they were to have their gear with them. They would not fall out with their life vests, so Loring would take their shoes, give them 15 minutes to get back, or he would throw the shoes overboard. When they got to England, Loring's ship was the last unloaded. They were aboard for a week. He got assigned to his group and started flying missions. Their first was in June [Annotator's Note: June 1944], but they had just missed D-Day [Annotator's Note: Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944]. The group flew missions on D-day, but not Loring. He does not recall his first mission other than being scared. He expected a German behind every cloud. The aircraft were old P-38s and were buckets of bolts. On this fifth mission [Annotator's Note: on 30 June 1944], south of the Loire River [Annotator's Note: in France], he went down to bomb a bridge then started working his way back to do some strafing. He was hit strafing an airfield. The engine caught fire about 40 or 50 feet above the ground. He climbed up to bail out. The right engine and right wing fell off. Loring then fell out. He does not know how. The fire had come into the cockpit. He pulled his ripcord around 7,000 or 8,000 feet. He hit the ground and people ran up to him, took his chute off, and put him in a hedgerow. He was near Nevers, France. He was by himself and stayed there for two to three months. He was burned. He had been put into a house. A woman bathed his eyes open every day. His skin was gone on his left arm. He had a perfect disguise. He looked so horrible both the Germans and the French would look the other way. They would not let him have a mirror.

[Annotator's Note: Bud Loring was badly burned after being shot down over France. Locals had taken him into a house to care for him.] There was no bathroom in the house where Loring was. They kept him there and got him in touch with an underground member from England working as a spy. Loring would pedal a bicycle to power a generator for this man to transmit back. He came by once a week. Loring was in the attic all the time. The bed was slats with an air mattress. The mattress would only hold air for about two hours. His eyes were closed due to his burns and he would have to find the nozzle to blow up the mattress with burned lips. After six to eight weeks, they said they were moving him north of the Loire River. Loring stole a bicycle from a Frenchman who was handicapped. The bike had no left pedal. He could not outrace the Gestapo with only one pedal. His guide took off through a village. Loring saw a black Mercedes coming. The owner of the bike stopped the Mercedes and was talking to them. Loring had his escape kit on the back of the bike and was hiding it while they talked. He picked up the bicycle, threw it at them, and ran into the village. He ran into the woods and thought his breathing was so loud that they would find him. He looked around and realized he was in an ammo dump for the underground. He stayed there for four hours. He did not know where he was or where he was going. He heard a noise and his guide was looking for him. He could have kissed him. Neither one spoke the other's language. They got to the Loire River. They had to go through a house, they had stolen another bike, and cross the river. There was a bridge 50 feet away that had a German checkpoint. They crossed with their bicycles and nobody said anything. [Annotator’s Note: Loring crosses his arms and covers the microphone and cuts off the sound.]

[Annotator's Note: The audio was cut off and the tape restarts midsentence. When it does, Bud Loring is talking about being taken through France by the underground after recovering from burns when his plane was shot down.] They went to big home and then took him to the camp of the underground. There were 154 people in that forest [Annotator's Note: in the Fréteval Forest near Châteaudun, France; this was on 9 August 1944]. The British were on the other side of the forest. In the middle was a German ammunition dump. He was there for about a week. They asked him what type of aircraft he had flown. There was another P-38 [Annotator's Note: Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter aircraft] pilot there from his fighter group [Annotator's Note: 343rd Fighter Squadron, 55th Fighter Group, 8th Air Force]. Loring bristled. He had never seen him before. Loring asked him who his flight leader was and the man replied that it was Captain Buttke [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Captain Robert Buttke]. A captain [Annotator's Note: unintelligible] from Kansas City, Missouri heard about the forest and came down to see what was there. One of the guys jumped out in civilian clothes and was swearing. The captain said that only an American could swear like that. Some of the men had been in there for a year. They all decided to celebrate, got the people from the village and had a party. Loring got so drunk he could not walk. They went with them back through the front lines. They were all in civilian clothes and had not shaved. They had another party when they got into town. The next day they were really feeling bad.

Bud Loring ended up at a POW [Annotator's Note: prisoner of war] camp after making it back to the front lines. When they went through the front lines, there was an MP [Annotator’s Note: military police] at the crossroads. The MP recognized him – he had been a high school classmate. Eight weeks later that MP was dead. In the camp there were German prisoners. The men were divided up by the state they were from. They got food and bedding. They had been trying to stay away from POW camps and now they were in one, but in their favor. [Annotator's Note: Loring crosses his arms over the microphone and cuts off the sound then he restarts midsentence.] They scavenged things they could find like German helmets with swastikas. When they returned to England, they were taken into London and one man put a German helmet on, leaned out the window, and said "pigs" in German. The bus driver told him he was going to get him killed. They were just young kids. They were interrogated there, and it was horrible. He stayed in England for two or three weeks with the clothes he had on. They got new clothes. He went in as a bum, and came out as an officer. It was a difficult situation. Blackouts and sirens were tough on them. The V1s [Annotator's Note: V-1 rocket bomb] and V2s [Annotator’s Note: V-2 missile] were coming over and London was really taking a beating.

[Annotator's Note: Bud Loring was in London, England after being rescued in France.] Loring was asked where he wanted to go back in the United States for reassignment. He went to to Atlantic City [Annotator's Note: Atlantic City, New Jersey] and then went home for 30 days. He asked for Santa Rosa, California. He and his wife walked into the dining room and Captain Buttke [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Captain Robert Buttke] was there on his way back to England. The last time Buttke saw him, Loring was falling off shot. [Annotator's Note: Loring had been shot down over France on 30 June 1944]. Loring told him about another of the pilots that had survived. Loring had been shot down on his fifth mission. They normally had 16 P-38s [Annotator's Note: Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter aircraft] per squadron. It was all new to him. Up until this time it had been a game. He had been sent back to Santa Rosa. His instructor gave him one of the greatest thrills of his life. He had them fly four abreast under the Golden Gate Bridge [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California]. When Loring became an instructor, he took all of his students under the bridge. He just loved the P-38. It has four .50 calibers [Annotator's Note: Browning ANM2 .50 caliber machine guns] and one 20 millimeter cannon. You did not have to worry about the aircraft. It was a very stable platform. Good at bombing. The day he was shot down, he had dropped a 1,000 pound bomb on a bridge in France. The bombs can skip on the water, so you hope they hit the bridge and explode. Most of the time they did escort missions for bombers. He does not know how they did it. That takes guts. All he could do was try and stop the fighters. He could not do anything about the antiaircraft fire and that is what was knocking the hell out of them. [Annotator's Note: Knocking the hell out of the bombers. Loring gets emotional and has to stop.] One aircraft is ten or 11 people. A fighter aircraft is just one. He does not think he could ever be a bomber pilot. They would never pull out of formation. If someone dropped out, another took their spot. You might start with 100 aircraft and end with 40. That is ten people every time.

[Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Bud Loring how he got out of his burning aircraft over France.] He just climbed out of the plane. Loring was burned by the heat coming through. There were no fire extinguishers then. The people who hid him in the woods and then the attic were very nice. Loring was later stationed in Germany, and he returned to visit the people who had helped him. He had never had a doctor other than the very first one who had given him a shot. There was one window in the attic. He could see out if he needed to. If he heard a car coming, it scared him. Those people were on the line too. He was sitting around a table with them once and it was hot. The men were bare-chested. They cut bread by holding it under their armpits. By the time the bread reached him, he decided he did not eat bread. He had to change his whole outlook on life because he had to stay alive. He was married before he left for Europe. [Annotator's Note: Loring talks about losing his first wife and how he met his second.] When he got home from Europe, he got word to his wife. It was quite a lifetime. Loring was only 20 and was in the war. He is now 82 and it seems like it was yesterday.