[Al Flocke] Okay, we were entering on (inaudible)
when one sunny shining afternoon,
and only in extreme emergencies
did we break radio silence,
including self to land,
looked around, and nobody coming, he landed
and so we saw a couple of man in front of us,
another B-24, and he was ahead of us in traffic.
No sweat, we fell in behind
him on the downwind leg and he turned on his base leg,
headed out and behind him we turn on
our base leg and we were watching him.
Instead of turning on
the final approach at the end of the runway,
he passed in on the runway
and started his final approach,
and we said, oh my God,
he's going to land that thing in the lagoon.
He did but it was PB4Y-2.
Actually PB4Y the two had the single tail,
I was wrong about PB4Y
but it's the same configuration double swing,
twin tails and everything,
has to be 24,
and it looked like one of ours.
[Chuck Nichols] We kind of rambled here.
[Al Flocke] Yeah, we did.
[Chuck Nichols] Gotten along somewhere but we
got to keep picking and probing
and it brings back thanks to
the surface that you may not be able to.
[Al Flocke] Oh yes. He's brought back to the surface.
Yeah (inaudible) sometime.
[Chuck Nichols] That's good, and we want to get it
all of this down on tape.
We want to put it in our archives.
We want young people to be able to come here
and lookup situations and
pick out these tapes and be able to listen
to tales of World War II
from the people that participated.
[Al Flocke] I was there.
[Chuck Nichols] Our whole objective here is to setup archives.
We put about 14,000 school kids through here a year.
[Al Flocke] Great.
[Chuck Nichols] We've got to give them as
much transfusion about World War II as we
can because I don't think they exactly
learn too much in school anymore.
Have you been infused with much World War II?
[Al Flocke] About three weeks ago.
My granddaughter, his sister,
she's a senior in high school,
asked me to meet with her class,
and there were four of us.
World War II, and after and we
made talks to them and they
were very interested and
I was impressed with the students.
[Chuck Nichols] They are interested
and some of the groups that we get here
have had some World War II law ingested into
them before they get here
and they ask some pretty good questions,
and they're relatively knowledgeable.
They're like little sponges,
they soak up this stuff really well,
we just have to make sure
we get them dipped in the water
so they can soak it up.
[Al Flocke] Right.
[Chuck Nichols] Well Mr. Flocke,
if you can't think of anything else,
I think I've ran out of questions here.
We certainly appreciate you taking
the time and the effort to come here.
[Al Flocke] Well, I've enjoyed it.
[Chuck Nichols] Some of your World War II events,
and I think anytime
anybody starts talking to a World War II veteran,
they learn more and more.
Even in their own families,
they have a habit of not talking a lot.
I had a gentleman in here yesterday who told
me this was probably the first time that
he had ever really talked about things that
happened to him during World War II,
and I think he was a B-24 crew member also.
[Al Flocke] Well, Emma, my granddaughter, Steve, daughter.
After that little talk I gave at school,
she came up to me and she said grandpa,
and said, you said some things about you today
that I never knew.
I said, but you never asked.
[Chuck Nichols] I learn something every time we talk.
[Al Flocke] Yeah.
[Chuck Nichols] It's good that we keep talking.
Because our world War II veterans
are diminishing rather rapidly.
[Al Flocke] Rather rapidly.
That's right.
[Chuck Nichols] We got to honor them as often as we can,
as much as we can.
Well, sir, I think this winds it up and again,
I thank you for your time
and attention here on your tales.
[Al Flocke] If you didn't-