Grant Patton was born in Oklahoma in May 1915. He had three radio shops in Texas. He serviced jukeboxes, record players, and slot machines. He did a little bit of everything to earn money. During the Depression [Annotator's Note: Great Depression; a global economic depression that lasted through the 1930s], he had a lot of business because they were always selling radios. He knew there was a depression, but it was not hurting his pocketbook. He bought his mother a new house. They decided to buy a refrigerator. He knew how to service refrigerators.

Grant Patton had an amateur radio license. He joined the Naval Reserve Radio Network. He volunteered as a Navy radioman. The first airplane he was in was in Oklahoma. He flew some planes in Texas. He took a train to Austin [Annotator’s Note: Austin, Texas] and joined the Navy. All the branches of service were looking for young people. He reported for active duty in January 1940. His rating was radioman. He knew Morse code [Annotator’s Note: a method used in telecommunication to encode text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called dots and dashes, or dits and dahs] and could copy it with no strain. He was sent to Pensacola, Florida. The country was not yet at war. He was at an airfield where they were training pilots to take off and land planes. Patton got to fly a small airplane. Next, he went to Rhode Island. He was a seaman first class when he went to his squadron. They flew to Iceland.

Grant Patton would pick up the convoy off of Greenland [Annotator’s Note: he was stationed in Iceland] and they would lead them toward England. The shortest mission was 16 hours. They were short on pilots and radiomen. When they finished the mission, they would be fed. The one-man tents had kerosine heaters in the center. They mainly ate white beans and bologna. It was 1940 when they got up there. The war did not start until 1941. It was cold. They were in a strange time zone. It snowed every once in a while. The average temperature was about the same as in New York City [Annotator’s Note: New York City, New York]. They were issued sheepskin-lined shoes, flight pants, and flight jackets. The SeaBees [Annotator's Note: Members of US naval construction battalions] put in a runway. Only one plane would go on patrol at a time. There were no regular sleeping hours. He spent three years doing this duty.

Grant Patton would spot u-boats [Annotator's Note: German submarines] when they were on the surface. If they went into a dive, they could see the shadow of the submarine under the water. They would drop their bombs in a pattern over the right place. The u-boats had machine guns they could put out of the hatch. They could pattern their depth charges [Annotator's Note: also called a depth bomb; an anti-submarine explosive munition resembling a metal barrel or drum] to straddle the submarines. In the later part of the war, the Germans started equipping their submarines with anti-aircraft guns. He learned about radar. He had to service the radar and radio equipment. About 50 percent of the time they were attacking u-boats. They would set up a search pattern. They flew by compasses and watches. The radios on the convoy did not open up. It was radio silence.

Grant Patton remembers the convoy would not stop. One ship might stop to pick up survivors. While he was flying, they did not lose a single ship. Usually, they got the submarine before it got to the convoy. They did not have much trouble with the anti-aircraft guns on the u-boats [Annotator's Note: German submarine]. They ran 100-hour checks on the engines. [Annotator’s Note: Patton describes the care of the airplanes.] He spent three years in Iceland. They sent up new airplanes. Patton then took the new planes to Ireland and then on to England. They got to England two or three days before D-Day [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944]. They still had their depth charges [Annotator's Note: also called a depth bomb; an anti-submarine explosive munition resembling a metal barrel or drum] on the planes. They were told they would be taking off before daylight. They lined the planes up in a single file line. It was foggy that morning. They covered the ships that were making the landing in North Africa on D-Day. They had to gas up the airplanes with five-gallon cans.

Grant Patton remembers they had to use five-gallon cans to gas the airplanes up. His plane had depth charges [Annotator's Note: also called a depth bomb; an anti-submarine explosive munition resembling a metal barrel or drum] and they had to make sure they had plenty of gasoline. After about a month, they decided Patton had seen enough combat and he was sent back to the States [Annotator’s Note: United States]. He got back to the States after D-Day [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944]. They looked down on him for being a reserve. He was discharged in 1946.

Grant Patton does not think the war changed him. He was doing the same thing he was at home. The war changed the political mindsets of the world. They were also fighting a war in Japan. Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] was making the atomic bomb [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945]. When they dropped the bombs on Japan, it made a big difference. He thinks they should have told Russia they could not occupy the small countries on their border at the end of the war.