Theodore Robert Tanner was born in Portland, Oregon in December 1920. He had one younger sister, born two years after him. As a child his parents divorced, and Tanner attended many different grammar schools. His father struggled to find work all throughout the Great Depression [Annotator's Note: the Great Depression was a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1945]. Tanner graduated high school in 1940, but the attack on Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941] changed his plans for the future. Tanner and his friends could not wait to sign up for the war. The Navy would not take him because he did not have any college education. He did not consider the Marine Corps, although he wishes he had. The Army Air Force accepted cadets if they could pass a test equivalent to two years of college. He passed and was sworn in as an aviation cadet. Enlisting freed him from the possibility of being drafted. He went home and waited a long time for some sort of call. He realizes now that it was because they had no facilities, instructors, or resources to train new pilots with at the time. Tanner assumed that the Army Air Force would send him to California for training. When he finally reported to boot camp, it was a train ride to Tennessee instead. After boot camp, the Army Air Force gave him a choice between pilot and bombardier, Tanner chose pilot. He began his training flying single engine planes. Tanner started at a facility at Helena, Arkansas [Annotator's Note: Helena Aero Tech in Helena, Arkansas] with a civilian trainer in a PT-19 [Annotator's Note: Fairchild PT-19 primary trainer aircraft]. The trainer had five students when Tanner started. Two of these students were second lieutenants who requested pilot training even though they were from other branches. Those two dropped out within two weeks. This scared Tanner and he did absolutely what he could to stay on task. After five hours of training, the instructor allowed Tanner to fly solo. With 60 hours of training, Tanner was sent to basic training to fly BT-13's [Annotator's Note: Vultee BT-13 Valiant basic trainer aircraft; also known as the Vultee Vibrator]. In one exercise, while doing power stalls, the throttle locked while on full power. He called the tower, who in turn brought in an instructor to help Tanner land the plane. He coasted with the engine off for a while. When he turned the engine back on, it shook the plane so violently Tanner was not sure if the vehicle would remain in one piece. By the time the tower finally got the instructor on the phone with Tanner he had already landed the plane. He graduated from single engine training after flying the AT-6 [Annotator's Note: North American AT-6 Texan advanced trainer aircraft] in flight school in June 1943. From there, the Army Air Force sent him to Sarasota, Florida to learn how to fly the P-40 [Annotator's Note: Curtiss P-40 Warhawk fighter aircraft]. He had ten hours in the P-40 before he graduated. As a test, the pilots were put into the P-40 with a blindfold on and told to point to or reach for whatever instrument the instructor named. After passing P-40 school he went to gunnery school. When he graduated, he was moved to a group in Tallahassee [Annotator's Note: Tallahassee, Florida] that was ready to go overseas to be replacement pilots. A rumor reached the group that they were going to be transferred to B-24 Bombers [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber], which made them very unhappy as they were single-engine pilots.

While waiting for an assignment, Theodore Robert Tanner and the other pilots of his group were called to meetings twice a day in the city [Annotator's Note: Tallahassee, Florida]. Once the meetings let out, they spent their free time meeting girls and going to dance halls. One time, a girl he met drunkenly crashed her family car with him and some others in it. Luckily, no one was hurt. A day or two later, the Army Air Forces sent him to California to fly P-40s [Annotator's Note: Curtiss P-40 Warhawk fighter aircraft]. From California, he was to leave the United States in two weeks. He sailed out of San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California] in a Dutch vessel. The Army Air Forces was sending Tanner to join the 312th Bomb Group [Annotator's Note: 312th Bombardment Group], 5th Air Force as a replacement pilot. [Annotator's Note: Tanner talks to someone off screen.] Tanner had a new plane which had been delivered by ship, which he helped assemble. The pilots built the engines and aligned the guns themselves. The planes were then brought to northern Australia, where the desert terrain and heat made them want to refuel and get back in the air as soon as possible. The women of the Australian Red Cross wore grey uniforms and gave the pilots hot tea. While departing for the Coral Sea, they were warned that if they crashed into the shark infested water, help would be far away and quite possibly not coming at all. They departed and stopped along the way at Port Moresby, New Guinea to refuel. The next destination was a place called Gusap in New Guinea, a small makeshift airfield created by clearing the land and then putting down what is known as Marston matting [Annotator's Note: an interlocking perforated steel mat that serves as a quick solution to building a landing strip for aircraft].

Theodore Robert Tanner flew six missions in a P-40 [Annotator's Note: Curtiss P-40 Warhawk fighter aircraft], but never saw anything to shoot at. Tanner had never sat in a plane different from his P-40, but the Army Air Forces told him that he was being put into an A-20 [Annotator's Note: Douglas A-20 Havoc medium bomber]. He had never even seen an A-20 before, much less flown one. Because of Tanner's interest in photography, he asked his CO [Annotator's Note: commanding officer] if they were allowed to have a photo squadron attached to their group. His group was given the authority for it and Tanner became photo officer in charge of all photography of the 312th Group [Annotator's Note: 386th Bombardment Squadron, 312th Bombardment Group, 5th Air Force]. Tanner was given a K-20 Fairchild camera [Annotator's Note: aerial photography camera, produced by Fairchild Camera and Instrument]. The spot in which they usually mounted the camera was in the wing near one of the engines. This left the cameras full of dirt and oil. Tanner devised a way to set up the camera near the crawl space that the gunner used, while allowing the gunner to retain complete mobility. He test flew a plane with the new camera positioning and the quality of the photos from the film were great. All of the planes in his group were outfitted with these new camera mounts, resulting in high quality pictures from all of the film developed, better than the photographs from other groups. Due to the pilots needing to operate the camera with additional controls, they also added a setting that allowed it to take photographs when the bomb bay doors were open. [Annotator's Note: Tanner still has some of the photos from combat and suggests looking at them to the interviewer.] When the war was winding down, Tanner's squadron was given the option of going home or staying for another tour. They were given the option of flying B-32s [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-32 Dominator heavy bomber] instead of their B-24s [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber], this was significant because the B-24s used two engines while the newer, bigger B-32 used four engines. Tanner always wanted to remain a single engine pilot, so he turned down the opportunity to fly the B-32. Several men who he served with stayed behind to fly the bigger bombers and were killed. The last man to be killed by Japan in World War 2 died in a B-32 on a photo mission [Annotator's Note: Army photographer Sergeant Anthony James Marchione, 12 August 1925 to 18 August 1945].

Theodore Robert Tanner was in the Philippines when the nuclear bombs [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on 6 August 1945 and Nagasaki, Japan on 9 August 1945] were dropped. His group [Annotator's Note: Tanner was a pilot in the 386th Bombardment Squadron, 312th Bombardment Group, 5th Air Force] was ready to start flying missions in their A-20s [Annotator's Note: Douglas A-20 Havoc medium bomber] from Leyte, Philippines to Japan. His group was offered the opportunity to fly B-32s [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-32 Dominator heavy bomber], but most of them saw the war was over and decided to return home instead. [Annotator's Note: Tanner's phone rings during the interview and the footage cuts until the interruption is over.] Tanner came back to the United States to Costa Mesa [Annotator's Note: Costa Mesa, California], to the Santa Ana Army Airbase. It was a cadet center where he thinks he should have gone for training instead of places such as Tennessee [Annotator's Note: earlier in the interview Tanner recounted his basic training in Tennessee]. Upon returning to the United States, some airmen gave up their pilot status and pay and could not get it back until the Berlin Airlift [Annotator's Note: Western Allies' operation to supply the blockaded city of West Berlin, 26 June 1948 to 30 September 1949] created the need. Tanner, instead, joined the reserves where he reunited with an officer from his group in the Pacific named Treadway [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to verify identity]. Treadway had enough pull that he was able to help Tanner get a job in Long Beach [Annotator's Note: Long Beach, California] flying single engine aircraft. People would buy B-17s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] filled with fuel, which was worth more than the aircraft at that point, and salvage everything onboard for profit. The instruments on the planes had gold that could be reclaimed, and other parts could be chopped and sold. Tanner stayed in the reserves and retired as a lieutenant colonel in 1967 after 24 years of service. As a civilian he worked for car dealers, as a machinist and as a mechanic. He opened his own shop in Costa Mesa that rebuilt and repaired engines. He regrets not using the G.I. Bill [Annotator's Note: the G.I. Bill, or Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, was enacted by the United States Congress to aid United States veterans of World War 2 in transitioning back to civilian life and included financial aid for education, mortgages, business starts and unemployment] to go to college but was too busy and too involved in his family's life for college. His most memorable experiences were flying combat missions in New Guinea and the Philippines. He was requested often to fly behind the leader in formation. A young man who was a representative from an engine company asked to be a passenger on a mission. They removed the life raft in the squadron leader's A-20 to allow the civilian to ride along. During this mission, a flock of birds flew into the formation, one hitting the leader's left engine causing him to crash, killing both him and the passenger. Tanner recalls the leader's name being Templeton [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Major Thomas Warren Templeton]. Tanner went on a few medium altitude missions, flying alongside a B-25 [Annotator's Note: North American B-25 Mitchell medium bomber]. They would fly in formation with the B-25, and when they started dropping their bombs, the smaller planes would then also drop their bombs. After Tanner dropped his bombs, he broke formation and was radioed that his plane was hit and losing fuel. He switched to the tank that was leaking, in order to use as much of the fuel as possible before it all escaped. When it got down to about a third of a tank, the tank had sealed itself. A live 40mm [Annotator's Note: Bofors 40mm antiaircraft automatic cannon] shell had pierced the bomb bay doors of his plane and then embedded itself in the fuel tank; he was lucky to be alive. It had to be removed from the plane and buried.

Theodore Robert Tanner thinks himself very fortunate that he never needed to target human beings, and instead dropped bombs on equipment and other strategic targets. He thinks that America needs to pull together and unite to become strong again. Tanner fought for his country because he did not want a foreign power to beat America and change the American way of life. He thinks the role of education for the present generation, such as that done by The National WWII Museum [Annotator's Note: in New Orleans, Louisiana], is extremely important. He goes to schools and gives presentations to students about his experiences in the war and why freedom is important.