Martin L. Suter was born in January 1921, in Rochester, New York. He had a brother and sister growing up, but he was the youngest. His father was a construction and maintenance man for the county. When Suter was older, he started working cutting lawns and a page boy in the town library. After he became a pilot, he returned home and met his future wife. They had gone to school together and she was working in the library he worked in before the war. After high school, Suter attended college. He liked airplanes despite never riding in one. During college, one of Suter's friends became a pilot and gave him his first ride in a plane. Suter wanted to join the Navy. Suter took exams to join the Navy as an engineering officer, but he was hospitalized with strep throat. He traveled to Buffalo [Annotator's Note: Buffalo, New York] and the recruiting officer told him he could not go into the Navy as an engineering officer, so Suter decided not to enlist. He was given a deferment because he was working in an industry. Suter got his pilot's license then joined the Navy.

Martin Suter was sent to Colgate University [Annotator's Note: in New York, New York], where he took part a pilot training program. He was frustrated because he had to take all of the basic courses again. He then went to Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He enjoyed it there because he played soccer in school before the war and he was able to play on the school's team. The schools he played did not offer much competition because the student athletes were all going into the military. By that time, he was finished with basic training. He then went to Pensacola, Florida, where he was taught how to fly the way the Navy wanted him to fly. In civilian flight school, Suter was taught by a World War 1 fighter pilot. The three planes available were Cubs [Annotator's Note: Piper J-3 Cub light observation aircraft], all with different engines. The Navy accepted Suter in late 1942, but he was not called up until June 1943. Before he left, he decided to fly one more time. It was snowing, so he had to fly with skis on his plane. The instructor yelled at him because of the way he landed. After Pensacola, Suter received his flight wings. He was then sent to another school where he was trained to fly actual naval planes. Suter learned to fly TBFs [Annotator's Note: Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bomber] in a torpedo bomber squadron in Fort Lauderdale [Annotator's Note: Fort Lauderdale, Florida]. The TBF was the biggest plane the Navy had. Suter then went to Glenview, near Chicago [Annotator's Note: Illinois]. There were two fake aircraft carriers there where Suter learned how to land on a ship. Afterwards, he became qualified for overseas duty. There are still planes being taken out of Lake Michigan that crashed during the test landings. There was always a party for the pilots in the area. Suter never had a problem landing his plane. The planes were not well made. The hardest part for Suter was finding the carrier because of the weather.

Martin Suter was sent to San Diego [Annotator's Note: San Diego, California], where he stayed for some time before boarding a LST [Annotator's Note: Landing Ship, Tank] and was shipped to Oahu, Hawaii. He did not get seasick, but many people did. When he was in the mess hall, he would look out a porthole and see the sky, and through another he would see the ocean. He was served with a wet towel on the table. When the water was rough, Suter was served sandwiches. He was given liberty [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] on Oahu. Eventually, he was assigned to a VT, torpedo bomber, squadron. Because the torpedo bombers fared poorly at the Battle of Midway, the squadrons were reorganized with more fighters. He was retrained as a fighter pilot on his second tour in Hawaii. Suter was in a carrier aircraft service unit, or CASU. Most of his time was as a replacement pilot, but he was not permanently assigned to a carrier air group, or CAG. As a torpedo plane pilot, he went from island to island in the South Pacific. He had 45 carrier landings and flew 23 squadron missions. In Korea, he flew helicopters. He landed on the Saratoga [Annotator's Note: USS Saratoga CV-3], but never flew a mission. He was assigned to SASU-13. When a damaged plane came in, it would be examined and if it was too badly damaged, they ditched it in the ocean. If not, it would get worked on. When the plane was fixed, Suter would test the plane and bring it back to the carrier. It could be a tricky job. Suter was an ensign, so he usually got bad jobs, including test flying planes he had never flown before. Logbooks were kept by individual pilots. He flew to many different islands delivering planes. Suter then did a short tour in a torpedo bomber squadron before being sent back to Hawaii, where he went through a fighter program. He practiced gunnery techniques in the school. He eventually transferred to VF-99 [Annotator's Note: Fighting Squadron 99 (VF-99)], a fighter squadron working through the Marianas [Annotator's Note: Mariana Islands]. He strafed and bombed locations thought to house enemy guns. He also flew SBDs [Annotator's Note: Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bomber] to bomb problem areas. On one sortie, he strafed a train. Suter was never shot badly during his sorties. He lived in nasty places and was even strafed by Japanese planes once.

While Martin Suter was on Guam [Annotator's Note: Guam, Mariana Islands], there were still a lot of Japanese troops on the island. He was attached to MAG-1, Marine Air Group 1. The troops were allowed to watch movies at night. There were guards around the area to ward off Japanese attacks. Living there was primitive. One morning, Suter saw a flour sack outside of his tent from a Japanese raid. His equipment got messed up on Guam. He explored caves used by the Japanese during the invasion of the island. Saipan [Annotator's Note: Saipan, Mariana Islands] was a cleaner island. In his tent, he used mosquito net. They used a belly tank from an F6F [Annotator's Note: Grumman F6F Hellcat fighter aircraft] to make a shower head, but it was not cleaned right, so it exploded when it got to hot. He wrote home often. He wrote down where he was in his letters, even though he was not supposed to. He used coded words to tell his girlfriend where he was in the world. Letters were censored. Suter had to bribe photographers to develop his film. Suter enjoyed flying the Dauntless [Annotator's Note: Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bomber]. The AT-6 [Annotator's Note: North American AT-6 Texan advanced trainer aircraft] he trained on was a comfortable plane to fly. The Dauntless was an easy plane to fly and had no problems landing and taking off. The SB2C [Annotator's Note: Curtiss SB2C Helldiver dive bomber] was a tougher plane all around. The plane was not responsive and could be tricky when landing. He flew the SBD mostly for utility work. There were still Japanese on many of the islands, even after they were secured. He did not have any close calls, but one time he thought someone was on his tail, so he made an abrupt maneuver. One of his colleague's engine quit while flying near Saipan. Suter watched as he crashed into the ocean. He explored the suicide cliffs of Saipan [Annotator's Note: Marpi Point] and could still see shoes floating in the water. Suter did not see himself as a hero. One of his flight instructors did bombing runs against enemy ships. The Japanese pilots gained experience against the Chinese. Once the Americans developed better aircraft, the tide changed. Suter enjoyed a book called Flyboys [Annotator's Note: Flyboys: A True Story of Courage by James Bradley] about George H.W. Bush [Annotator's Note: then US Navy Lieutenant (j.g.) George H.W. Bush; later 41st President of the United States]. One time, Suter went on a beach after the Kamikaze attacks began.

Martin Suter was in New York City [Annotator's Note: New York, New York] when he heard about the atomic bomb strikes. After he finished his tour as a fighter pilot, he was sent back to the United States. Once he was on the west coast, he was given the option to go wherever he wanted to be discharged. He chose New York City because he had never been to the city. He flew around Long Island [Annotator's Note: Long Island, New York] in a rented plane. He was surprised how long the flight around the island was. Eventually Suter started seeing potato farms and turned back around. When the war finished, New York City went wild. He was not done flying for the Navy. He was discharged in March 1945. He married his girlfriend and went to university. He joined the reserves because he wanted to keep flying.

Martin Suter went to fighter school and was called back to go to Korea [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 1950 to 1953] in 1952. He went where the Marines and where the Army had fought. Suter thought the landings were probably terrible. He was flying around Niagara Falls in a fighter unit that flew Corsairs [Annotator's Note: Vought F4U Corsair fighter aircraft]. Many of the men that were recalled tried to get out of serving. Between World War 2 and Korea, there were many people that were flying that could not fly in active service. Suter thought that it was a waste. Two men he served with were waiting for their turn to fly. They were detail officers from Washington [Annotator's Note: Washington D.C.]. Suter talked to the two men about his life and how it would be difficult for him to go on active duty again. He earned a degree in engineering and thought that he would be more productive to the military in some sort of engineering position. One of the men got him into a helicopter unit working on anti-submarine patrols. He was sent to Weeksville, North Carolina to learn how to fly a helicopter. Suter liked flying the helicopters because they were new and there were not as many regulations. The pilots would land all over the place because they could still get away with it. Suter's family visited him when he was training. Suter enjoyed hunting and fishing. He was not allowed to have his family on base, so they bought a house in North Carolina. He enjoyed listening to radio programs. Suter did not have any problems readjusting to civilian life. He went to school and got a job in construction. In 1962, Suter bought the business he had been working for. He retired from the reserves in 1981, but actively flew until 1968. He was an officer in a PB4Y2 [Annotator's Note: Consolidated PB4Y2 Privateer patrol bomber] squadron. His unit was moved from Niagara Falls to Michigan. He met a man in the Air National Guard who would fly Suter to Niagara Falls for training. Eventually, the Navy started sending their own transports to pick them up. After the Michigan base closed, he was sent to a base in Pennsylvania. Because of his business and family life, it became too difficult to make the training sessions in Pennsylvania, so he was transferred to a different unit. He then retired with good health insurance because he was an officer.