Robert Liles was born in 1920 in Webb City, Missouri and grew up in Jefferson City. When the depression began, his father was sick and unable to work so his mother supported the family by working in a leather factory. Once his father was able to work he got a job running the prison post office at the Missouri State Prison. Liles had a good life growing up. He had one older sister and one younger sister. They were a happy family. He went to junior college for two years, which he had to do in order to get into the air force. He joined the air force in November 1940. He had enlisted in the National Guard in 1938 and spent one year in the National Guard. When he was in college, he decided that he wanted to be a pilot. President Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: President Franklin D. Roosevelt] set up the Civilian Pilot Training Program [Annotator's Note: also referred to as the CPTP] because he could foresee that the United States would soon be in the war. For 35 dollars, college students could get a flight physical, ground training and 35 hours of flying, after which they could get their private pilot's license. Liles decided that he liked flying so well that he wanted to go into the Army Air Corps. Liles was in the first group of Civilian Pilot Training Program. Liles applied to both the Army and Navy for aviation training. The Army answered him first so that is who he went with. Liles was sent to California for primary training at a base near LA [Annotator's Note: Los Angeles]. From there, he went to Randolph Field then Kelly Field in Texas. Liles enjoyed his training. He was with a good group of guys. Quite a few of them had been in the Civilian Pilot Training Program. Liles wanted to be a fighter pilot from the beginning and that is what he did. Being in the CPTP was not required for aviation training but two years of college was. Liles had just turned 21 when he completed his flight training in July 1941. Pearl Harbor was attacked that December. The day Pearl Harbor was attacked, Liles was in a fighter group at Hamilton Field near San Francisco. Liles got there around noon and when he did the officer of the day told him about the attack. Liles did not know where Pearl Harbor was until one of the sergeants told him. The squadron Liles was with was supposed to go to Alaska and their planes were being winterized. That plan was soon changed and they were sent to the East Coast instead. After their arrival on the East Coast Liles was taken out of that unit and sent overseas.

Robert Liles went to Mitchell Field on Long Island, New York. He was with a group of pilots who were going to were going to fly P-40s [Annotator's Note: Curtiss P-40 Warhawk fighter aircraft] off of an aircraft carrier. There were 68 planes and pilots that were going to take off from the aircraft carrier and land on the west coast of Africa. From there they would fly to the Middle East then on to India, and finally, up to China. Liles was nervous taking off from the deck of an aircraft carrier. He was told that he would have 400 feet to get off the deck. It was raining the day they took off but they all made it off. It took several days to get to India. There, Liles joined the fighter squadron he remained with the entire two years he spent in China [Annotator's Note: the 16th Fighter Squadron, 51st Fighter Group]. His squadron was the first full strength Army squadron to go into China. Liles got to China on 3 July [Annotator's Note: 3 July 1942] and Claire Chennault's American Volunteer Group [Annotator's Note: also known as the AVG and the Flying Tigers] was disbanded on 4 July. Some of the AVG guys stayed on. One of the former AVG pilots had a squadron in the group Liles was in and another had a squadron in the 23rd Fighter Group. They had been in combat for six months already and knew what they were doing. They saved a lot of lives with the training they gave the new arrivals. One of those pilots was Tex Hill [Annotator's Note: later Brigadier General David Lee "Tex" Hill] and the other's name was Rector [Annotator's Note: later Colonel Edward F. Rector]. They were both former Navy pilots. Liles was first assigned to the 51st Fighter Group but his squadron was taken out of the 51st Fighter Group and sent to China because Chennault needed a fighter squadron immediately. Liles ended up flying a lot of his missions with the 23rd Fighter Group. The P-40 had six .50 caliber machine guns. It was a very rugged airplane which saved a lot of guys. Liles was hit in both wings by cannon fire one time and still made it back. The P-40 did not have a supercharger so it was not very good above 15,000 feet. The Japanese had the advantage there and were almost always up above them. When Liles started flying in China their aircraft carried the shark mouth paint job like the AVG planes did. The 23rd Fighter Group is still in existence and still paints the shark teeth on the airplanes. They are flying A-10s now. Liles goes to a lot of the reunions and talks to veterans of the Iraq War.

When Robert Liles arrived in China, he and the other pilots lived in hostels. They also had Chinese room boys that took care of them. The Chinese took care of security and cooked for the Americans. They also provided interpreters and had a warning net that consisted of people spread out from different cities and air bases who would radio in when enemy aircraft were approaching. It was great when it worked. Liles was caught on the ground a couple times when the Japanese attacked the base he was at. Everything they needed had to come in by air. Gasoline had to be flown in. There were times when they ran low on gas and had to wait for fuel to come in so they could fly missions. The Chinese people were wonderful. Liles liked the peasants but he did not like the communists. Liles had only been in China for a couple weeks when he had his first encounter with the Japanese. He was at a place called Hengyang. They had about ten or 12 airplanes there, six belonging to Liles' squadron and the others belonging to the 75th Fighter Squadron. The Japanese sent in about 40 airplanes on a fighter sweep around the chain of American airfields in east China. When they got to Hengyang, Liles' group was outnumbered. He spent most of the time trying not to get shot down. He did get a few hits in on a Japanese plane. He lined up on an enemy plane but before he could shoot, the Japanese pilot spun his plane around and began shooting at Liles. Liles managed to get away and got back to the airfield. Some of the AVG [Annotator's Note: American Volunteer Group, also known as the Flying Tigers] guys there managed to shoot down about five of the Japanese planes during that battle. Years later, Liles was stationed in Japan and went to a meeting one day and there was a Japanese general present. The Japanese officer saw the ribbons Liles was wearing and asked him where he had been stationed. When Liles mentioned Hengyang, the man replied that his squadron had destroyed the American Air Force at Hengyang. That was not true. After Liles told everyone what happened the Japanese officer lost face. Prior to that engagement, Liles had not had any formal gunnery training. When he joined his squadron it had just returned from gunnery training. Liles was able to go out over the ocean and would practice strafing aluminum powder that had been dropped on the water but that was not real gunnery training. His first real shots fired were at a Japanese Zero [Annotator's Note: Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter aircraft]. The first thing he did when he got back to the United States was go to gunnery school. During that first engagement, the Japanese sent in fighters to attack the airfields.

[Annotator's Note: Robert Liles served in the USAAF and flew Curtiss P-40 Warhawk fighter aircraft with the 16th Fighter Squadron, 51st Fighter Group and with the 23rd Fighter Group during his two year combat tour in China.] The Japanese airplane [Annotator's Note: the Mitsubishi A6M Zero] was a lot more maneuverable than the P-40 and could get much higher. It was quick and hard to hit. At this point in the war, many of the Japanese pilots had already been in combat for a while fighting the Chinese. Two of the guys that Liles shot down were majors. Intelligence patrols sent out to investigate the wreck sites looked at the uniforms of the pilots. General Chennault [Annotator's Note: Generl Claire Lee Chennault] taught his pilots how to fight against the Zero with the P-40. They were to get above and behind the Japanese planes. They flew in two ship elements in order to protect each other. In a head on attack the P-40 had the advantage. Chennault's training taught them to take a shot then break away. They were not to try to turn with the Zeros. The AVG [Annotator's Note: American Volunteer Group, also known as the Flying Tigers] men had taught them that. Liles' squadron commander, Tex Hill [Annotator's Note: later Brigadier General David Lee "Tex" Hill], helped him a lot. The Americans were always outnumbered but their aircraft were sturdy and could take a beating. Chennault was a brilliant leader. He could anticipate what the Japanese would do. One day, Liles flew in to a new airbase that was not yet finished. They went in with eight airplanes. When they got on the ground Liles saw hundreds of Chinese people working on the air field. He walked to the door to watch and noticed a formation of Japanese bombers at 20,000 feet that had not been sighted. By the time Liles saw them they had already dropped their bombs. Liles jumped into a slit trench. The bombs killed hundreds of Chinese. Part of the bombing had taken place at the other end of the field where the Chinese had set up dummy planes. Chennault told the American pilots that the Japanese would do the same thing the following day and ordered planes to be up all day. The next day, they spotted the Japanese formation coming in. Liles and his group went after the enemy formation with 17 airplanes. Liles' buddy, Bob Mooney, went after an airplane going left and Liles went after one going right. They shot down a lot of Japanese planes that day. When Liles got back on the ground he was told that Mooney had been shot down and was given the approximate location. He took a jeep and drove to the spot and saw a procession of about 30 Chinese people walking toward him carrying someone on a door. It was Mooney. Mooney was just wearing his undershorts. His clothes and pistol had been taken by someone. He was taken to a Chinese doctor where Liles noticed a large bruise behind Mooney's ear and believes it was caused by someone hitting him on the head. The doctor asked Liles for permission to give Mooney a shot. The group's doctor was at another location tending to another pilot who had been shot down. Mooney died about two hours after Liles got him to the Chinese doctor. Mooney had attacked a Japanese fighter head on and they each shot each other down. Mooney bailed out but when he hit the ground, a Chinese bandit hit him on the head and took his pistol. Six months after this happened Liles was invited to a ceremony. The Chinese had taken up a collection to build a monument to Mooney and placed it alongside the road. The monument remained there for years before the Chinese communists came in. They tore the monument down and built a bigger one. This action was the one during which Liles got his first confirmed kill. Liles picked out a target and went after it. He fired on the enemy aircraft but had to pull off when other Japanese planes attacked him. He later flew over the area where he believed the enemy plane went down and saw burning wreckage on the ground. The kill was confirmed.

This action was the one during which Robert Liles got his first confirmed kill. It was a Zero [Annotator's Note: Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter aircraft]. Liles picked out a target and went after it. He fired on the enemy aircraft and hit it but had to break away when other Japanese planes attacked him. He later flew over the area where he believed the enemy plane went down and saw burning wreckage on the ground. The kill was confirmed. A little over a week later he was credited with numbers two and three. At this time, the warning net was still not working so Liles and his wingman, a guy named Aaron Lippy [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling], were out flying a patrol. The other American pilots were on the ground waiting to go. Liles saw what looked like a flock of geese. They were Japanese aircraft. Liles called it in. Liles and Lippy had been up for a while and were starting to run low on fuel. They decided to attack the enemy formation. In the ensuing fight, Liles shot down two of the enemy planes. He and Lippy had to sneak in to land because they were almost out of fuel. After landing, Liles could see the Japanese fighters tangling with the other planes from his group. As soon as Lippy touched down his engine quit. He was out of gas. Confirming a kill was done a couple different ways. If another pilot could verify the kill, that was one way. Another way was for people to go out and find the wreck site. Liles routinely conducted ground attack missions. During one, they caught Japanese troops crossing a lake and strafed them. They killed a lot of them. The dangerous part of strafing boats like that was, as they came in, all of the Japanese soldiers would stand up and shoot at the planes with their rifles. On other occasions, they would attack forts, trucks, trains and boats. They would carry 500 pound bombs sometimes to attack ships. Liles went after a ship one time. He strafed the deck of the ship while his wingman made a bombing run on it from the side. It looked like the wingman's bomb went right through the wooden vessel so Liles decided to make his bomb run on the ship long ways from behind it. He tried to put his bomb on the stern of the ship. The bomb hit on the stern and tore through the superstructure. Liles' wingman told him that he saw the bomb roll off the bow of the ship and detonate a few seconds later. The blast severely damaged the vessel which started drifting off. There were a lot of guys in the water but Liles decided not to try to kill them because he did not know if the ship had a Chinese crew that had been pressed into service. On another day they were flying out of Nanning and they caught a coastal steamer. The tried to skip bomb the vessel but were not sure if they got it so a second group was sent out to dive bomb the vessel. That group finished the ship off. There were a lot of soldiers on that ship. That night, Tokyo Rose claimed that the 16th Fighter Squadron had attacked a hospital ship carrying women and children which was a lie. Liles was hit by ground fire while strafing a fort. They shot the place up and dropped some bombs on it. Liles was hit. He had not flown over the fort so he believes there were men in the trees outside the fort that were shooting at them.

Robert Liles contracted amoebic dysentery in China and was sent to a hospital in India. He flew back to his base in a brand new P-40-K [Annotator's Note: Curtiss P-40 Warhawk fighter aircraft]. In the plane he was carrying whiskey and food. He had removed some of the ammunition in order to fit the food and booze. When the maintenance guys got to his airplane he heard the sound of metal on metal. Some of the bottles of booze had broken open and the maintenance guys were filling their canteen cups with what was pouring out of the plane. Liles had a great crew chief, Sergeant Brewer from Arkansas. The night Liles flew back from India, his crew chief showed up at his room at the hostel because he knew Liles had liquor. [Annotator's Note: the tape skips several times.] The whole time Liles was in China they were all flying P-40s except for one squadron which was equipped with P-51s Mustangs. Just before Liles left, another squadron was transitioned to P-51s. They did well with the P-51s. There were times that Liles could not get at the Japanese but could have had he been in a P-51. The P-51 could also attain a very high altitude and had long range due to its ability to carry drop tanks. They flew long missions in China. Some of them were 800 miles. If they ran low on gas they would look for another airfield or a place to crash land the plane. The terrain there was not well suited to crash landing.

Robert Liles made captain in 1942. In 1943 he was given command of the 16th Fighter Squadron. Before taking over the squadron he was the squadron operations officer so his job did not change much. As operations officer, he helped work up the mission flights and who would be flying that day. During raids, he had to decide who would take off because they were often low on fuel and could not afford to waste it. The Japanese would regularly fly toward the base like they were going to attack it then they would turn and go somewhere else. After Liles became squadron commander he got to be more involved with dealing with some of the airmen. The ground crewmen were all Americans. Most of them were old timers who had not come into the squadron as fillers. They left the United States in January [Annotator's Note: January 1942] and landed in India. The 51st Fighter Group had to give up a lot of its airplanes on the way over because they were needed elsewhere. The losses were made up when Liles and his group flew off the Ranger [Annotator's Note: USS Ranger (CV-4)]. After that they were able to go into China with a full squadron. The ground crewmen were great. They worked constantly and were always exposed to the elements but still kept the airplanes in good condition. Liles only had to abort a mission one time and he knew beforehand that the plane's engine was in bad shape. They did not have enough airplanes for the mission so Liles decided to try it anyway. His crew chief had advised him not to do it but he did it anyway. He only made it part of the way to the target before he had to turn around and head back to base. After becoming squadron commander, many of the most experienced guys were taken away from Liles. He was forced to put pilots in charge of various ground jobs which they had no prior experience with. He ended up getting good men in the positions they were needed in. He got a 52 year old intelligence officer who was a World War 1 veteran. He insisted on flying a mission with the bombers to Hanoi so he could plot out the flak positions. The guy was quite a character.

[Annotator's Note: Robert Liles served in the USAAF and flew Curtiss P-40 Warhawk fighter aircraft with the 16th Fighter Squadron, 51st Fighter Group and later with the 23rd Fighter Group during his two year combat tour in China.] China was very mountainous. During the summer months the monsoons were a problem. One time while Liles was stationed at Yunnan Yi they went 17 days without flying a mission because the weather was so bad. Some of the bombers and cargo ships had the capability to fly in inclement weather but the fighters did not. A couple guys flew into mountains. They also did not do much nighttime flying. When they did, however, they usually had good results. His flight commander, John Alison [Annotator's Note: later Major General John R. "Johnny" Alison], shot down two airplanes and damaged another right over their base. His plane was shot up before he even fired a shot. Liles watched Alison shoot down these aircraft. Liles only flew one night mission and did not encounter any enemy planes during the flight. On another occasion, Alison and another guy shot down all four of the bombers the Japanese sent over. One of the downed Japanese aviators was a full colonel. He was captured by the Chinese. American intelligence officers went to interrogate him but when they got to the building he was being held in a pistol shot rang out. They ran to the door and saw the Japanese colonel on his back. He had been shot. The intelligence officer questioned the Japanese colonel and learned that he had graduated from the University of Southern California. When he was taken into the building the Chinese kept spitting on him so he grabbed a dagger from one of them and started stabbing Chinese soldiers until one of them shot him in the stomach. He gave the intelligence officer some information to send to the man's family back in Japan so they would know he was dead. Tex Hill [Annotator's Note: later Brigadier General David Lee "Tex" Hill] and John Alison figured out how to conduct night operations which worked pretty good if the weather was good.

On 20 September and 18 December [Annotator's Note: 1943] Robert Liles had very successful mission. They were moving from one side of China to another and stopped at Kunming to get some hamburgers. The bomber crews were able to bring meat in from India and Liles and the other fighter pilots would trade fresh eggs for meat. Liles was woken up and informed that Colonel Ed Goss [Annotator's Note: Edmund R. Goss] wanted him to go up and help take care of a Japanese flight that was heading toward them. Liles put his flight suit on over his pajamas and took off. They went up with seven airplanes. They located the Japanese formation which consisted of about 18 bombers and 30 fighters. Liles and his group hit the enemy formation head on. Two enemy fighters started heading straight for Liles. Liles fired at the guy to try to scare him and hit him. Liles fired again and hit the guy right behind the engine cowl. The Japanese fighter was smoking when it flew past Liles and another pilot told him that he had seen the plane go down and crash. The American pilots performed well that day. The seven planes Liles took up knocked down seven Japanese planes. One guy got two of them but he was shot down. He made it back to Kunming but his plane was trashed after that. Between Liles' group and the other squadron that went up that day they got 19 bombers. They later learned that the commander of the enemy fighter unit committed suicide the night after that mission. The airmen disbursed to different airfields. Liles' group was able to intercept another enemy formation. His group was at 26,000 feet and the enemy bombers were at 22,000 feet. The enemy fighters were up at 30,000 feet but were so far behind the bombers that Liles and his group were able to slip in behind the bombers. He and his wingman were making a run on an enemy bomber when shell bursts began going off all around them. Liles initially thought it was friendly flak so he and the others broke off their attack. He learned later that the fire had been coming from the bombers. They went after another group. Liles and his wingman got separated. Liles and another plane went after a bomber but every time they got close the Japanese fighters would come in and chase them off. They stayed with the Japanese formation for 150 miles. The Japanese bombed the base and after they made their turn, Liles and the others again tried to get at the bombers. Liles shot one of the bombers up but was not able to see how badly he had damaged it. After other unsuccessful attacks, Liles went after the leader of the fighter escort on the right side of the bomber formation. He got below it and pulled up behind the enemy plane. He got in real close and started shooting. The engine on the enemy plane froze and the propeller stopped spinning. Liles then broke away to try to shoot down the enemy leader's wingman. When Liles got behind him he heard gunfire. He looked back and saw a Zero [Annotator's Note: Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter aircraft] firing at him from about 75 yards away. The enemy plane ended up hitting the plane in front of Liles. Liles was able to get away from the Japanese planes then headed back to base. Liles and his wingman each got one Japanese plane that day. Liles scored his fifth kill and became an ace that day. It was a tough fight. Attacking bombers by themselves was not much of a problem. Some of the larger Japanese bombers had tail guns on them but others did not.

During the two years Robert Liles was in China the supply situation improved a little. They were able to get more airplanes in there. Everything had to be flown in over the Hump, much of the time through very bad weather. More men were killed doing that than flying combat. Liles was at one base and saw a plane come in through some rough weather. The pilot, a kid younger than Liles was, got out of the plane and started talking to Liles. The pilot's hands were shaking and Liles thought that he should not go back through that weather. He told the pilot's commander that he could not send the young pilot back out that day. Being the tactical commander at the base Liles was in charge. Liles is glad that he was not an Air Transport Command pilot. Liles fought against many different types of Japanese aircraft during his combat tour. The best plane the Japanese had was the Tojo [Annotator's Note: Nakajima Ki-44 Tojo fighter aircraft]. Liles did not tangle with any of these planes but his squadron did. The Tojo looked a lot like the American P-47 [Annotator's Note: Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fighter aircraft] but was faster and could turn better. Liles' guys got caught with them a couple times down on the ground. On one mission two of his guys, one of them was his best flight commander J.R. Brown, and a guy named Erkert [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling], were strafing boats and Japanese troops and had run out of ammunition when they were caught by Tojos. Brown was able to get away without being hit but Erkert was shot up pretty bad. Liles was called and flew off to try to help them. By the time he got to them the fight was over. Brown told Liles that the enemy pilot had pulled up on his wing and was smiling at him until Brown pulled his .45 caliber pistol and aimed it at him. The Japanese pilot then pulled away. He was out of ammunition too. Liles was in China from July 1942 until July 1944. As the war progressed, the quality of the Japanese planes increased when they got the Tojo. They also developed some big bombers but Liles never saw any of them. Twice, Liles' men were caught by Tojos. Brown got tangled up with one while escorting B-25s [Annotator's Note: North American B-25 Mitchell medium bomber]. He made a head on pass at the Tojo and shot it down. Brown's plane was shot up really bad during the fight but he was able to get back to Nanning. The first Japanese pilots Liles ran into were navy pilots who had a lot of experience. They did not have many air to air fights. In the two years he was over there, Liles was only in about seven dog fights.

Robert Liles was awarded a number of decorations. He was awarded the Silver Star for the mission during which he and his wingman chased after a flight of Japanese aircraft, each shooting down an enemy plane [Annotator's Note: see segment titled Fighter Planes and Fellow Pilots]. The award was presented personally by Chennault [Annotator's Note: USAAF Lieutenant General Claire Lee Chennault]. Chennault was the pitcher on the 14th Air Force softball team. Chennault had several relatives who were also combat pilots. Liles left China on 16 July 1944. Before he left, he went to see Chennault and asked him to ask for him to come back. Liles went on to state that he wanted to take some gunnery training and he wanted to attend the Command and General Staff College. He wanted to be home for at least six months. He returned to the United States and was assigned to the 3rd Fighter Command. There, he ran into a friend of his who had been a fellow squadron commander in China. Liles' friend learned that he was being assigned to Harris Neck, Georgia. He went to talk to the general and requested that he be sent somewhere else. Liles was instead sent to Bartow. He met his wife there. The people in Bartow are very good to the servicemen. When he met her she had just returned from New York. He had come down from flying and had gone to have a beer with his friends who had taken him out for his birthday. His wife went there with another officer, who retired as a general. When Liles saw June he ignored his date and went and talked to her. He got her phone number and took her out a few days later. After their first date neither of them went out with anyone else. She passed away on 3 July [Annotator's Note: 3 July 2010]. Liles had gotten to Bartow in mid August 1944 and stayed there for 15 months. He met June on his birthday in 1945. Liles spent a couple months living in a house owned by a doctor who was away at the time and rented the space out to him.

Robert Liles attributes his success as a fighter pilot to the leadership he had in China from the general [Annotator's Note: USAAF Lieutenant General Claire Lee Chennault] all the way dawn. Tex Hill [Annotator's Note: later Brigadier General David Lee "Tex" Hill], who had 18 and a half victories with the AVG [Annotator's Note: American Volunteer Group, also known as the Flying Tigers] and the Army, talked to Liles a lot about tactics. Hill was a great guy and a terrific leader. Bruce Holloway was another big influence on him. Additionally, the squadron Liles took over [Annotator's Note: the 16th Fighter Squadron, 51st Fighter Group] was the best one in the theater. He had good help all along the way. In China, they could have done a better job if they had been equipped with P-51 Mustangs. The P-51 was not as rugged as the P-40 [Annotator's Note: Curtiss P-40 Warhawk fighter aircraft] but it was faster, could go higher and had a longer range. Liles went to 3rd Fighter Command one day and bumped into his friend, the one who got him reassigned to Bartow. The man told Liles that the 14th Air Force was driving them crazy with requests for him to return. They turned them down because Liles had just returned from a long tour of duty over there. In July 1945 they got another request from the 14th Air Force but this time Liles declined it. He did not want to be stuck over in China after the war. Liles was listening to the radio in the house in Lake Howard that he rented along with two veterans of the war in Europe when they heard that the Japanese had surrendered. Harry S. Truman was president at the time. Liles and his buddies all had a drink then they went swimming for a while. Later, a neighbor invited them over to celebrate the end of the war. That is how Liles celebrated. Liles was concerned when he learned of the death of President Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: President Franklin D. Roosevelt]. Harry Truman was an unknown but it turned out that Truman had the guts to do the job. The biggest effect World War 2 had on Liles was that it put him in the situation in which he met his wife. The war also gave him the opportunity to become a military pilot. He met a lot of good friends and was able to see the world. Some areas of the world are nothing but sand. There were places where Liles could not see a tree for thousands of miles. He was glad to get to India even though there are a lot of deserts in India too. When he got to India, he saw the only green trees he saw the whole time he was overseas. There were a few trees in China but not many. Liles did not need to take advantage of the GI Bill. He stayed in the Air Force and was sent to Oklahoma A & M, now Oklahoma State, to get a degree in engineering. He had requested Cal Tech, Georgia Tech and a school in Michigan, but was turned down, even though they had been recommended by a general. Liles feels that it is important for there to be a National WWII Museum, provided it helps people understand what they accomplished and what they went through.