After finishing Army Air Forces basic training in Miami Beach, Florida, William Ebersole was sent to Nashville, Tennessee for classification. He qualified [Annotator's Note: as an aviation cadet]. He had been active in sports in school, but he still made the National Honors Society. He was chosen to become a pilot, which he had been hoping for. He had 37 merit badges in the Boy Scouts. He left for CTD [Annotator's Note: College Training Detachment] at Clemson College [Annotator's Note: Clemson University, South Carolina] for basic ground school for three months. He was chosen to move ahead. He missed the first training in Piper Cubs [Annotator's Note: Piper J-3 Cub light observation aircraft], but it worked out for him. He returned to Nashville for more training and then Maxwell Field [Annotator's Note: now Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base, Montgomery, Alabama] for primary flight training. He was the only person sent to his hometown of Arcadia, Florida for his training. He flew a Stearman trainer [Annotator's Note: Stearman Boeing PT-17 Kaydet primary trainer aircraft] which can do acrobatics. He loved it. In advanced training, he got to do the acrobatics. After his first 20 hours, his instructor resigned. The Army came in and checked him out for his 40 hours. He was chosen to do a demonstration for the townspeople, including his parents. He then went to Gunter Field for another 60 hours of basic training in AT-6s [Annotator's Note: North American T-6 Texan advanced trainer aircraft]. He was offered a chance to go to West Point [Annotator's Note: United States Military Academy in West Point, New York] to train on twin-engine aircraft but he turned it down. His final phase was in Selma, Alabama practicing formation flying, navigation and cross country flying.

William Ebersole was born in September 1924 in Arcadia, Florida. He graduated from high school there in June 1942 then enrolled at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida in September 1942. He was the middle of three boys. A sister was born ten years after the youngest brother. His older brother was in field artillery and flew reconnaissance planes. He was shot down three times and spent some time in Walter Reed Hospital. Ebersole came in from Sunday school and his father was listening to the radio. He told them about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. All of Ebersole's friends were joining the military. He was hoping to get a couple of years of college education before enlisting. He did not want to be in a foxhole anywhere. He signed up for the Army Air Corps. He had never flown before but in October 1942 he signed up for the Reserves. Then, in January 1943, he heard the Air Corps had been called up. He called his father and asked if there was a letter there for him. There was, and it told him to report to Miami Beach, Florida on 24 February 1943. He packed his bags and hitchhiked to Arcadia. He spent a couple weeks at home and then went to the Blackstone Hotel in Miami Beach. Ebersole stayed there a month getting his uniforms and learning marching and close-order drill. Ebersole had been in the Boy Scouts so he was used to it. At the University of Florida there was a field artillery unit, and he took lessons there.

William Ebersole went to a staging area in Tallahassee, Florida for about a month after finishing his pilot training. He was then sent to P-51 [Annotator's Note: North American P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft] training in Bartow, Florida. He did gunnery training there. The nose of the bullets would be painted so that they could tell who hit the target. He and his roommate would get ahead of the tow plane to hit the target and they had the highest gunnery scores of the group. The same would apply for ground gunnery. They were moved over to Lakeland, Florida to go overseas with a group that had already finished gunnery training so he missed a month of his reconnaissance training. He was on the way overseas before the other men were finished with their training. He did some long flights so they could figure out how to conserve fuel. This all happened through Christmas of 1944. The group was sent overseas on two different ships. The aircraft went on a carrier to Guam and then Tinian. The group left from Seattle, Washington and went to Hawaii and then to Eniwetok Atoll, Saipan, and then finally to Iwo Jima. The Marine Corps had secured Iwo Jima in February 1945. Ebersole got there in early May 1945. While there, some Japanese that had been hiding came out and killed about ten pilots. Ebersole did get to go ashore some. They were waiting on the airstrips to be built so their planes could arrive. The Seabees [Annotator's Note: members of Naval Construction Battalions] were working day and night until they got it built.

William Ebersole flew his first mission in May 1945. It was a dive-bombing mission to Chichi Jima which is where George Bush [Annotator's Note: President George H. W. Bush] was shot down. He had two missions there dropping 500 pound bombs on a radio station. He had a couple of aborts at first due to weather. On one mission, they lost 28 planes and 27 pilots because they ran into each other [Annotator's Note: 1 June 1945; sometimes called Black Friday]. Bomber crews did not understand that the fighters cannot tolerate the weather. It tosses them all over. He recalls walking down the street in Selma, Alabama when a sergeant saluted him. The sergeant asked him how old he was, he was only 20. He had a LIFE magazine [Annotator's Note: an American general interest magazine known for the quality of its photography] photographer following him around, but the pictures never ran in the magazine. Ebersole lived in a tent at first on Iwo Jima and then got a Quonset hut. He started two long range escort missions but hit bad weather and had to turn back. He never had a mechanical abort, only weather. His longest mission was eight hours and 20 minutes flying top cover. He did get credit for destroying a bomber. The day before the atomic bomb was dropped [Annotator’s Note: the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on 6 August 1945], he was strafing an airfield north of Tokyo. His last mission was on 5 August 1945. His roommate and he had been eager, and they had more missions than the others.

William Ebersole was on Iwo Jima when the first atomic bomb was dropped on Japan [Annotator's Note: the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on 6 August 1945]. He found out about it a couple of days later. Nobody knew what that bomb was. They were told their tours were 12 missions, so he was close. He stayed on Iwo Jima until January 1946 due to the point system. Ebersole received Air Medals for his first, fourth, seventh, and tenth missions. He also received the Distinguished Flying Cross for the tenth. He thinks he might be the youngest person to receive one in combat. He joined the Reserves once he returned to the United States and flew out of MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida. He had his ten years of service in 1952 and did not want to go to the Korean War. He resigned just months before he would have been reactivated for that war. He used the G.I. Bill to finish his school. He found a girlfriend too. He had a job at a soda shop and a college cafeteria to pay for his meals. He worked as an usher at a theater at night. He then became a linotype operator for the Gainesville Sun Newspaper, spending 36 years there.

William Ebersole feels that The National WWII Museum, New Orleans, Louisiana is good tribute to the war and the people who served. He feels that some people do not understand that this was a war and that just getting a plane off the ground was worth an Air Medal. He got in a lot of trouble on missions but made it through it all. On his longest mission, he was flying top cover for 12 aircraft and was hit by antiaircraft fire. The Navy had a vessel staged every 200 miles from Iwo Jima to the Japanese mainland. They had a homing device called Uncle Dog so they could home in on a B-29 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber]. Ebersole maxed out the speed of his P-51 [Annotator's Note: North American P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft] diving on a carrier once. His fight leader should not have done that. He felt his plane starting to stall. He must have blacked out but made it out okay. On the Inland Sea [Annotator's Note: Seto Inland Sea, Japan], he shot a train. He went to a squadron [Annotator's Note: 462nd Fighter Squadron, 506th Fighter Group] reunion once that had a delegation from Japan present. They wanted to talk to someone who had strafed a train on 5 August 1945, a yellow tailed P-51 had strafed a passenger train. It was not Ebersole though.