Editor's Note: This is the next installment in a series of articles about local veterans of World War II. The series continues daily through Memorial Day.

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When Don Locke was a boy, living in hilly Switzerland County, his dreams were filled with visions of flying over the countryside.

Years later, when he took his first lessons in a PT-19 aircraft, head and shoulders sticking out of the cockpit, goggles plastered to his face, he knew his dreams were true.

Locke's family moved several times when he was a child, starting out on Warsaw's Lake Street, moving to Wakarusa, then to Nappanee. He grew up in Switzerland County. The one-room schoolhouse he attended in the county seat, Vevay, was the same one his father attended when he was a boy.

The family returned to Kosciusko County when Locke was a sophomore. They settled in Dutchtown, and Locke graduated from North Webster High School in 1939.

Wearing an open leather jacket and sporting a tie with a P-51 fighter aircraft illustration and a navy blue baseball cap with P-51 sewn with yellow letters, Locke talked about his experiences as a fighter pilot in the South Pacific for the Army Air Corps during World War II.

Although he had never flown before, after aviation mechanics school, Locke was told about an an examination to become a pilot while he was stationed at Wichita Falls, Texas.

"There were 150 questions on the test and I answered about 100 of them. So help me, I passed. Then I had to go to the dentist. They get you in real good health to get ready to kill you, you know," Locke said with a grin on his face.

But he wasn't kidding. The chances of a pilot making it back from a mission in North Africa were about 50-50. When a psychiatrist advised him of his chances, he said, "Well, one of them's living, and that's me."

"I learned in a 'Snoopy' PT-19 aircraft where both pilots stuck out the top and wore goggles. My instructor did (kick) out a lot of guys, but I managed to get through it."

The initial lessons were followed by basic training as a pilot, flying in the closed cockpit of a BT-13 in Greenville, Texas. He was then transferred to Eagle Pass, Texas, flying AT-6s, a North American-built airplane. He graduated a second lieutenant with the January 1944 class.

After a brief leave, he was stationed at Randolph field Air Base in San Antonio, Texas, as a flight instructor.

"And I said, 'Oh, this is terrible. I'm going to get stuck in the states training other people now.' But that turned out to be a finishing school. I had a pilot trainer that asked for everything to be exact. If you leveled out at 4,000 feet, he meant exactly 4,000 feet. If he said a one-needle turn, he meant exactly a one-needle turn. So I did learn to fly better than before."

His next assignment was for gunnery training at Madagorda Island, Texas. This meant shooting from his AT-6 at a target sleeve hauled on the back of another plane.

"They'd hang sleeves on the back of a plane by a long cable. It had little wheels on the back to follow the plane during take off. The bullets of each plane were painted. My bullets were red. And when they came down they were supposed to see the red spots - that I had hit it.

"Usually they never found red spots. I'd missed it. 'Where's your red spots, Bob?' they would ask. 'I don't know.'

"I did learn to shoot better later. I used to pull the sleeves for other guys and hope they wouldn't hit me. The sleeve was about 14 feet long, a pretty big target. I was pretty good with a rifle and a shotgun. But on an airplane, Whew! I'm sure the other pilots said, 'Don't worry, here comes Locke!

"Well, the Japanese didn't say that. They said, 'Get out of the way, here he comes.'"

As soon as Locke got better at target practice, he was sent to Richmond, Va., and assigned to a squadron in North Carolina, training in a P-47, a single-engine fighter plane. One time he took the aircraft up to 42,000 feet and could see all the way to Florida.

From there he was stationed in Hawaii and attached to the 15th Fighter Group on Bellows Field, Oahu.

"I thought I was a pretty good pilot until I got to Hawaii. Boy, they wrung us out until I couldn't believe it. We flew harder than I'd ever flown. If your flight suit wasn't wet with perspiration after an exercise, they took you back up.

"We flew close, hard formation," Locke said, his hands side by side swooping and overlapping each other by way of illustration. "Your prop was almost under the other guy's tail. If he did a loop, you did a loop. If he did a roll, you did a roll. That's how close we flew. And we flew mutual protection so we protected one another when we got to war."

He trained in Hawaii from August 1944 until January 1945, ending with five hours in a new aircraft - the P-51, also made by North American. Calling it one of the finest planes of the war, they had a longer range and were more maneuverable than anything he'd ever flown.

The 15th took their P-51s to Tinian Island in the Marinaras Chain after it had been secured.

"There were B-29s on all three of those islands (Guam, Tinian and Saipan). They took off all day long and came back all night long."

On Feb. 25, the Marines charged onto Iwo Jima.

"They thought they'd take it right away because they'd been bombing so heavily. But what happened was the Japanese were living in caves. They had an underground city. So the Japanese went underground until they got done bombing. Everything on top of the island had been blown off.

"We waited until March 6, 1945, my birthday, and we landed on Iwo Jima. We had to make holes to live. Four other fellows and I put poles in a bank and set up sandbags, one-quarter mile from Mt. Suribachi, where the Marines brought the flag up on top. We sat and looked at that thing every day.

"We got a machine gun and set it up at the entrance of our little spot and took turns all night long, watching."

The island was five miles long and 2-1/2 miles wide. The Japanese came down the beach at night to ambush Marines. The Marines had lost their commissioned officers and their platoons were run by non-commissioned officers.

"Five miles isn't very far for people to come up, shoot at you and go back. If we had an early flight, we had to be careful we didn't get shot (by friendly fire) going to our airplanes. The Marines were very sensitive to that movement, and you can't blame them.

"We were within 100 yards of the big guns shooting up to the front when we were in the hole. The shooting lasted all night long. You learned to sleep with that noise. Every fifth shell was a magnesium flare with a parachute that lit up the line."

The Marines asked the pilots to help them dig in. Locke and his company would shoot from the air. As soon as one plane pulled off, another guy would be right behind him.

On April 26, the 21st Fighter Group was established on the island's second airstrip. A gang of pilots came to visit members of the 15th and made fun of them for living in holes.

"We said to them, 'The Marines have not yet secured these islands, there's still fighting going on. We are guarding the beach. Don't get into tents, get into holes'. The 21st Fighters pitched tents and that night one third of them got killed. The Japanese came in, pulled aside their tent flaps and pitched in grenades.

"The next night, the 21st were in holes, what was left of them."

The flight to Japan was 750 miles. The planes were tanked up with 496 gallons of gas for the 1,500-mile round trip. There were times when they returned with less than eight gallons of fuel. That meant they had less than eight minutes to land.

Locke flew 22 missions, earning two battle stars, an Air medal with three oak leaf clusters and a Distinguished Flying Cross.

Locke and his squadron escorted B-29 bombers to the southern tip of Japan, to Kyushu. The Japanese pilots tended to ram the big B-29s. He once saw a B-29 land on Iwo Jima that had the vertical tail section knocked off from such a collision. It landed and broke in two. The crew spilled out of it just before it caught fire.

"I'll never forget my first look Mt. Fujiama with its peak above the clouds. It was beautiful."

On one mission, he looked behind to see a blackened sky. It wasn't storm clouds coming in, the air was filled with exploding shells called "ak-ak."

"They (the Japanese) were shooting ak-ak. We never flew in a straight line. We'd skid to the left," he said his two hands centimeters apart swinging back and forth in unison, "and it would blow up where you'd been, skid to the right ... just a little behind. It would explode and there'd be a burst of fire and a black circle of shrapnel."

The Japanese fighters wouldn't come up to engage the Americans. Once Locke shot at a Japanese fighter craft, but four other guys had already delivered fatal hits. He watched the Japanese plane go down. shot at it and he saw it go down.

"And I thought to myself, 'You know, there was a guy in there that had a mother and a father. And he just got killed.' I had nothing against him except we were at war. I was to kill everyone I could at that time. I guess that's the reason I shot into places, to kill people or discourage them from shooting at us.

"We went up to harass. We never shot up populated areas or districts with homes. Trains, boats, those were our targets. We were low enough to be hit with machine guns. Tracers would go past and a lot of guys did get hit."

Two out of three South Pacific pilots survived the war.

"A friend of mine got shot down the first week in August. I'd said to him before we got to go, 'Are you going to wear that flight suit?' It was full of holes. 'If the Japanese shoot you down they'll think we're losing the war. Put on a clean flight suit.'

"I had been flying down a runway shooting into a hangar low onto the ground and saw balloons on the airfield hanging on wires. If I hit one it'd tear up my wing so I went straight up and over. And my cigarettes, I smoked at the time, my throat mike, my candy began to float in the air. I went down along the housetops. I could see flower boxes in windows, so you know I was down low. From there I went out over the ocean. I was alone.

"There was a big splash over to my right and I thought, 'My gosh, they're shooting cannons at us.' And I looked up, saw a P-51 with the nose dropping, feet wiggling out and a parachute. That was my friend, but I didn't know it at the time.

"Later, when we were together after the war, I asked what happened. He had been hit, his oil went out and he unbuckled his seatbelt. He thought he'd roll over and drop out and then his engine conked. His seatbelt was unfastened, he put his foot on the stick and the nose dropped. He just came out over the top, like he was walking.

The Japanese got him in two days, the pilots stayed with him and dropped a boat (called a Dumbo), water and food to him but the Japanese came out and strafed him, used him as target practice. They hit the boat, but not him. In two days he washed ashore.

"His captors beat him with a few sticks. He had kicked off his shoes. Everyone was laughing and jeering at him.

"A little Japanese lady came out and made everybody get back. She gave him a pair of sandals, a little bowl of rice and a bowl of water. Isn't that interesting?

"They took him into the Tokyo prison, where Pappy Boyington, the Marine ace, was in charge of the Americans. He was there a month. He lost 30 pounds."

Locke had some close shaves himself and once a flat tire saved his life.

"If anybody had trouble in the first 100 miles, they were to turn back and I was to take the first open wing position. My friend Don White that I'd lived with since Hawaii, he revving up his engine ready to go. The tower said I had a flat tail wheel and, since there weren't any other planes, I couldn't go.

"We had a new colonel directing our group. He was wild, not really the kind of man you enjoyed being around; he yelled, screamed and cursed. He took the men into a big storm with a B-29. My friend, Don White, had to take the first open wing position, right where I would have been. Someone above Don spun out and took him out.

"The question is, how is it I had a flat tail wheel and couldn't get off the ground and Don White took my place and died in my place?

"Years later, when I became a Christian, accepting Jesus Christ as my savior, I knew why I'd been spared."

Locke returned to the states with every intention of staying in the Air Force after the war, flying with the new jet engines. He didn't find the company at Fort Benjamin Harrison to his liking, however, and took the opportunity to resign his commission.

"For a year I didn't do anything but hunt, fish and carouse."

He attended Grace College and Seminary and moved to California for several years.

In 1964 he "got into the Shaklee business" and has never looked back.

"I've helped people stay healthy and helped myself stay healthy with Shaklee. My wife, Teresa, and I are both in the business."

He hasn't flown an airplane since the war.

"Flying is not that much of an interest to me. You get into a little airplane and what do you do? You just fly around." [[In-content Ad]]