Interview of William Knott
Transcript Number 044

November 7, 2000

We are here today at the Barbee Branch Library in Oak Island, North Carolina. We are interviewing Private William Knott who served in the Western Training Command of the United States Army Air Force during World War II. The interviewer is Stephen Heffner and today is November 7, 2000.

INTERVIEWER: Mr. Knott, good afternoon. Would you please give us your date of birth. 

KNOTT: June 25, 1926.

INTERVIEWER: Where were you born?

KNOTT: In Lee County, North Carolina.

INTERVIEWER: And about the time of the outbreak of World War II, where and with whom were you living?

KNOTT: I was living with my parents in ______, North Carolina and I was in high school. I remember so well the exact, everything that happened. My parents had been out to see my grandmother and grandfather and when they returned home, they had just announced that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. Anyhow when they came in, I ran out to them to tell them that they had just declared war, that the war had just started. They were not aware of it. They had not had the radio on or anything.

INTERVIEWER: Where were you when you heard it?

KNOTT: I was in my room. I was studying and had my radio on.

INTERVIEWER: You were in high school at the time?

KNOTT: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: How old were you, do you remember?

KNOTT: I was probably 15.

INTERVIEWER: That was too young to enlist or anything at that time. Okay, so after you found out about the war, did you do anything about it or just stayed with the family and continued high school?

KNOTT: Oh we became quite active. I was in the Boy Scouts. We were working with them, we were having air raids and what not. My father was an air raid warden. The whole family got totally involved in helping out in various ways. I made model air planes to study by.

INTERVIEWER: Do you have any older brothers or sisters who were enlisted or drafted?

KNOTT: No, I had two sisters and they were not ...

INTERVIEWER: Okay so living at home, going to school at the time the war broke out and your family was active in patriotic kinds of things. What happened then?

KNOTT: Well the next year, 1943, I loved flying already. Just everything about an airplane was a wonderful thing to me. I started taking lessons flying and I got to where I could fly pretty good.

INTERVIEWER: Before the war broke out. What kind of planes?

KNOTT: The J3, small planes.

INTERVIEWER: Single engine propellor planes?

KNOTT: Right.

INTERVIEWER: Single wing?

KNOTT: Single wing. And then I was 16 at that point and so I wanted to hurry and get in the service so I volunteered for the Royal Canadian Air Force. They turned me down because the United States would not permit a citizen to go outside the country to join another armed forces.

INTERVIEWER: You couldn't join the U.S. Air Force because you were too young?

KNOTT: Well, that was my next step. I took the cadet examination, the Air Force cadet examination and passed. So then they sent me to Camp Butner and I took a physical there, passed that. Then they sent me to Durham and I was sworn in in Durham.

INTERVIEWER: Now sworn in as what?

KNOTT: As an Air Force cadet.

INTERVIEWER: Is that part of the military service?

KNOTT: It's the U.S. Army Air Force cadet.

INTERVIEWER: So you were an enlisted man?

KNOTT: I was an enlisted man as of then, but I did not go on active duty until they called me the following year.

INTERVIEWER: So now we're in to 1944.

KNOTT: 1944.

INTERVIEWER: Do you remember when?

KNOTT: I got my orders to report to Fort Bragg on December 18, 1944.

INTERVIEWER: Fort Bragg in North Carolina in Fayetteville.

KNOTT: Right. When I got there, there was about 54 other boys, all of us were born in the month of June and all of us were from North Carolina and South Carolina. And then they shipped us out to Keesler Field, Mississippi and there we went through basic training. They put us through an extensive amount of testing, physical as well as mental.

INTERVIEWER: In Mississippi?

KNOTT: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: Did you learn how to use firearms?

KNOTT: Yes we did. They put us on the firing range. We fired the M1 and the carbine and the 45 and I did well in all of them.

INTERVIEWER: How long did that basic training last?

KNOTT: Three months.

INTERVIEWER: In Keesler in Mississippi at the air force base.

KNOTT: Right.

INTERVIEWER: And you were uniformed of course.

KNOTT: Yes. 

INTERVIEWER: United States Army Air Force.

KNOTT: Right.

INTERVIEWER: And the rank at that time was cadet.

KNOTT: Well yes, cadet. That's when they divided us up. Of those in my flight in squadron R and I believe my flight number was 171. We were a class, they made us up a class to go through. Of all these testings that they did, there was only 10 of us that passed so that we could continue our cadet training and go on to flight school. The rest of them were washed out and sent to gunnery school, mechanics and what not.

INTERVIEWER: How did they wash out? Physical or mental reasons?

KNOTT: Both. I mean it might have been one or the other, I don't know which. A lot of my very close friends though did not make it.

INTERVIEWER: And when you say didn't make it, didn't make it to the next stage which would be training to be a pilot. 

KNOTT: Right.

INTERVIEWER: On what kind of aircraft at that time?

KNOTT: Well, no particular aircraft. They then shipped us from Keesler Field, Mississippi to Marshall Field, Texas, about 100 miles south of El Paso, right on the Rio Grande River and we went there for what they call on line training. That was our first familiarity with airplanes. They assigned me as crew chief on four AT17's. That's a 20-engine airplane. This is what the senior cadets were flying there at this field. See we were just the little ones.

INTERVIEWER: Tell us about AT17, how many engines?

KNOTT: Two.

INTERVIEWER: Two engines. How many crew and pilots?

KNOTT: You had two, had a pilot and copilot.

INTERVIEWER: The plane was just big enough for the two of you?

KNOTT: No, it would carry four.

INTERVIEWER: Was it a transfer plane or a fighting plane?

KNOTT: It was a training plane.

INTERVIEWER: I understand that, but was it just meant for training?

KNOTT: Right.

INTERVIEWER: Oh, didn't have any bomb bays?

KNOTT: No.

INTERVIEWER: No machine guns?

KNOTT: No, this was for training for land takeoff and navigating andwhat-not.

INTERVIEWER: And did you train on that craft?

KNOTT: No. I've only had ground operations in it. Then they had a class there for the senior cadets and to go through a mechanical training and so they decided well gosh, while these junior cadets are here, we'll send them through. So I went through a complete mechanical school there while on the line in training. I even got a patch to go with it. See we had cadet patches on our arm with the wings of a cadet and then we added the mechanic patch along with it. We were quite proud of it.

INTERVIEWER: When you say mechanic, did you learn the internal organs of an aircraft, the engine, rotor, rudder, propellor.

KNOTT: Right. They decided they wanted all pilots to be able to know more than just how to fly an airplane. They wanted us to know the mechanics of an airplane. So that's why they had set up this school there at our cadet school.

INTERVIEWER: This was even before you had flight training.

KNOTT: That's right and after going through training there, then in I guess early June they shipped us out to Morale, Arizona - that's close to Tucson between Tucson and Phoenix and there we were at a basic training field with AT6's which is a powerful little plane. That's where you were trained basically to fly B47's, fighter planes.

INTERVIEWER: Was this an Air Force base?

KNOTT: Right.

INTERVIEWER: In the desert?

KNOTT: Right.

INTERVIEWER: Was this plane, the AT16...

KNOTT: AT6.

INTERVIEWER: AT6, was that a strip plane too or did that have fire power?

KNOTT: No fire power, no bombs, it was only for training purposes. And then there they would not let us fly them. They'd let us start them up in the mornings and move them around the airfield, but they would never let us take off in them.

INTERVIEWER: Why.

KNOTT: Because this was part of the training to get us familiar with an airplane, to get the touch of an airplane without flying.

INTERVIEWER: Well you knew how to fly anyway at this time, right?

KNOTT: Well I knew how to fly before I went in the service, but I did not know how to fly this particular plane. It's a very powerful airplane. And while I was there, I was put in CQ, Command of Quarters, and while I was in Command of Quarters that day, in fact that night, word came through that Germany had fallen, that they had surrendered.

INTERVIEWER: So this would be May of 1945 now.

KNOTT: That's right. Well anyhow, I got that a little bit wrong. That was, this was later on. When I was a CQ was when the Japanese surrendered.

INTERVIEWER: That was in September of 1945.

KNOTT: Right, that's correct.

INTERVIEWER: You were in Arizona at this Air Force base?

KNOTT: I was in Arizona, that's right.

INTERVIEWER: That's when the war ended. The war in the Pacific theater ended.

KNOTT: That's when the total war ended at that time.

INTERVIEWER: So did you ever get any flight training?

KNOTT: Never got any flight training. I flew some with the other pilots there for the B25's. I flew with the AT17's, but that was because...we had auxiliary fields out from our main base and the cadets would fly over and land, practice landing and taking off from these other fields. And being a crew chief, something went wrong with them, they called on me to go take care of it, to fix it.

INTERVIEWER: So you did mechanical work?

KNOTT: Right and it was wonderful. I just loved the Air Force. I loved my training, everything about it. Every day was just a wonderful day to me in the Air Force. I can't say anything but good things about it.

INTERVIEWER: But you never did learn how to fly military aircraft.

KNOTT: Never did, no, because they gave me the option then. They told me you can continue your training as a cadet to become a pilot. And at that time, I was classified as a bomber pilot and fighter pilot both. My qualifications permitted that.

INTERVIEWER: Even though you'd never flown those planes?

KNOTT: That's right, but that meant that I was mentally and physically capable of being both. So anyhow they gave me the option of either signing up for 3 more years and completing my training or had to get out. Well I always wanted to be a civil engineer and I had been studying to be a civil engineer since I was in 8th grade so I decided I was going to get out and go to college. So then I told them I would not sign up. In fact no one in our flight signed up. They shipped us all back to Keesler Field.

INTERVIEWER: From Arizona to Mississippi.

KNOTT: From Arizona back to Mississippi and then they told us there we decided we're going to send you overseas for occupational duty. So they gave us our overseas shots and we were getting ready to go and one of the boys and cadets there with us, his uncle was a senator, a U.S. senator.

INTERVIEWER: Remember the name?

KNOTT: No I do not. Anyhow he contacted his uncle and told him that they...we had passed all of our examinations, we were all volunteers. Everyone of us were volunteers and that if they weren't going to let us continue our training after we'd passed everything that he felt like we should get out. So I don't know what the senator did, but the next thing we knew they notified us that we were being discharged from the Air Force, that they were honoring our contract as cadets and were going to dismiss us. So then I got orders to go to Seymour Johnson Field in North Carolina.

INTERVIEWER: Where's that?

KNOTT: That's in Goldsboro. So I went to Goldsboro at Seymour Johnson Field and they discharged me.

INTERVIEWER: When was this?

KNOTT: This was in October of 1945.

INTERVIEWER: With the rank of private cadet?

KNOTT: Still private, that's right. In fact, they called us Mister. See this was an unusual situation where cadets were called Mister, they didn't call us private.

INTERVIEWER: Sort of like a little higher than a civilian (laughter).

KNOTT: (Laughter) I guess so. It was very nice there. They had four of us sitting at a table, four cadets at a table. We had all the milk we could drink, we had all the fruit we could eat. It wasn't even like being in the Army.

INTERVIEWER: This was the Arizona base?

KNOTT: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: Is that where you spent the most time of your time in service, in the Arizona base or was it at Keesler, Mississippi?

KNOTT: Well I was stationed at Keesler at two different times. It was a beautiful Air Force base. I thought Keesler was absolutely the most prettiest places I've ever been. When I was at Keesler, it was depressing. That was in the winter months. We were up at 5:00 when it was still dark and then they would bring us different reports from the Battle of the Bulge and everything that was happening. There were a lot of boys that just broke down.

INTERVIEWER: Broke down from the...

KNOTT: From the mental pressure. See we were under a lot of pressure in training at that time, a lot of physical training. We were on the go. We'd get up early in the morning and would train until sometimes 9 and 10:00 at night, all kinds of training, putting us through various things.

INTERVIEWER: Bivouacking kind of training or training on the aircraft?

KNOTT: No, we were not on the aircraft, although we were around the aircraft. The squadron was right beside the runway there at Keesler Field. Anyhow these PBY's and B17's flying in and out. It's quite a large field.

INTERVIEWER: Is it still in existence?

KNOTT: It sure is. I flew over it this past year and I was flying I believe American Airlines and flew over it and it was, it really made my heart beat twice there.

INTERVIEWER: Did you continue your interest in flying after the war?

KNOTT: Oh I'm still flying now.

INTERVIEWER: You're a licensed pilot?

KNOTT: No, I'm not any longer. I had open heart surgery and I do not fly anymore except with someone else.

INTERVIEWER: But you did.

KNOTT: Oh yeah, I still fly them.

INTERVIEWER: As a passenger.

KNOTT: I still fly as a pilot, but with someone else's plane.

INTERVIEWER: Okay after the war, did you fly?

KNOTT: Oh I quit flying for a while because I went back to college, went to college. I had not been to college before going into the Air Force. I went into North Carolina State, went to engineering school, graduated as a civil engineer. Then I got married, started raising a family, started working and then I decided...my office wasn't too far from Smith Reynolds Airport in Winston-Salem. I loved flying so much I decided, gosh I'm going back to flying. So I did. I went out and started with the ground school, with the flight school and thoroughly enjoyed it. In fact, I was at the top of my class. I was so proud. There I was, one of the oldest ones in the class and at the top of my class. Especially in ground school where you had to learn so much and your navigation and everything. But I just kept on flying, you know, flying locally around there to Salsbury and just short flights. I never did really....

INTERVIEWER: What kind of aircraft?

KNOTT: I was flying a 140 Piper which is a single engine, low wing, nice little airplane, really nice plane.

INTERVIEWER: Had the war not ended while you were training, and you had gone on to flight school, where would you have ended up, serving some branch of the Air Force overseas?

KNOTT: Oh yeah, sure.

INTERVIEWER: What was the next stop after the Arizona base had you completed your flight training?

KNOTT: Oh when you graduate from there, you would, a lot of the pilots were sent overseas for occupational duty just, you know they still had to do a lot of flying there, a lot of observation.

INTERVIEWER: In Europe or in Asia?

KNOTT: Both. It would have been interesting and fascinating. I would have loved to have done it, but I had such a strong desire to be a civil engineer that I decided that I'd rather do that than to be a pilot in the Air Force.

INTERVIEWER: Any regrets in hindsight?

KNOTT: No, none at all. I've enjoyed being a civil engineer.

INTERVIEWER: Do you enjoy being a pilot too?

KNOTT: Yes, I got the best of both worlds and I still can fly and still enjoy my engineering life.

INTERVIEWER: Did you receive an honorable discharge when you left service just like any other veteran?

KNOTT: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: And you're entitled to all veterans' benefits, the GI Bill, VA Hospital treatment and things like that?

KNOTT: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: Did you avail yourself of any of that over the ensuing years?

KNOTT: I've never been to a VA Hospital. I did go to college on the GI Bill and after I got out of the Air Force of active duty, I signed up for the Air Force Reserve. I was in the Reserves for 5 years.

INTERVIEWER: Really? What unit was that and where was that?

KNOTT: Well that still was with the unit I signed up there - Seymour Johnson Field, but we were an inactive unit so we really didn't do any flying.

INTERVIEWER: Just met periodically?

KNOTT: No, no, we didn't even meet. We were totally inactive. One thing I didn't tell you about though was prior to going into the Air Force, I was a member of the Civil Air Patrol there. That was a nice unit. We had probably, oh I don't know, 35 to 40 members and we trained. Some of them were in flight training. They had the old private planes. We all had uniforms, we had good looking uniforms. We drilled just like most any army unit. I was very enthused about flying and very enthused about being in the service.

INTERVIEWER: When you were in the Reserves after the war, were you still a private then?

KNOTT: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: There was no increment in rank.

KNOTT: Right, if I had gone back in service, of course the Korean War broke out and my enlistment in the Reserves ended the week before the Korean War broke out so I was never called back in active duty. A lot of my friends that were in the Reserves were called back, but I guess you might say I was lucky cause I was married, I wasn't interested in going back to the service at that time.

INTERVIEWER: So the three states that you trained in were North Carolina, Mississippi and Arizona, is that true?

KNOTT: And Texas.

INTERVIEWER: And Texas, but most of the time was spent in Mississippi, two different intervals.

KNOTT: Right.

INTERVIEWER: How would you characterize the training that you received, was it high caliber. Were there defects in it as far as training to be a pilot eventually or even the mechanical aspect of it?

KNOTT: Oh I felt like we had great training. I really did. We had good leaders. I cannot say anything at all detrimental to the Air Force as far as their respecting us, respecting our rights, the treatment. They made it tough on us when we were going through basic training, but sure that's what they're supposed to do.

INTERVIEWER: Who did the training? Officers or enlisted men?

KNOTT: Officers, captains most of the time, some lieutenants.

INTERVIEWER: And they served overseas and been reassigned to the States or were they also stateside?

KNOTT: Some had, some had been overseas and had serviced their tour of duty and returned and were instructors.

INTERVIEWER: And how would you describe the morale of the men that you served with during the war stateside?

KNOTT: Oh I thought the morale was good. You've got to realize that we were all of us just finishing high school. We were the youngest in the service and here we were, all having the same birthday. In fact, this was probably one of the nicest groups of men you could have in service. It was just absolutely like being in college and the morale of our particular flight was really good. The only depressing time we had was those days at Biloxi, Mississippi at Keesler Field, that was, some of those days, I don't think they tried to make it that bad. It was just you were up training a lot of times when it was early and dark in the mornings, raining, and bad and you know how that is.

INTERVIEWER: You mean the weather was depressing?

KNOTT: Oh it was.

INTERVIEWER: Not the duty?

KNOTT: Oh Mississippi was a wet time for us.

INTERVIEWER: In the wintertime?

KNOTT: Yes. 

INTERVIEWER: Were most of your comrades southerners or from all over the country?

KNOTT: Well in our, we were in basic training, as I said all of us in my particular flight were from North Carolina and South Carolina. We didn't have quite enough to fill our flight so we had a bunch from Wisconsin and Chicago and Detroit that came. There must have been about 10 of them that joined our flight. Those were pretty smart boys. Some of them had already been to MIT and a lot of the colleges. They had one and two years of college and there I was - competing with them and I was pleased to be one of the selected ones. But a lot of them became my friends and I lost, a lot of my southern friends didn't make it that were with me when I was in Arizona and Texas.

INTERVIEWER: You mean they washed out in training in Mississippi?

KNOTT: That's right, yeah.

INTERVIEWER: You said for physical and mental reasons, either they couldn't hack the technical aspect of the training.

KNOTT: Yes, you never really know. You know they just told you whether you passed or continued as a cadet or whether you were going to gunnery school. They just took all of us one day before we knew what happened and shipped us out.

INTERVIEWER: Shipped you out to where?

KNOTT: Well from Keesler Field, they shipped us out to Marshall Field, Texas.

INTERVIEWER: Now did you maintain any friendships with your comrades back then to this day or is most everybody gone?

KNOTT: No I really do not have any contact with any of them at this point. I did for a long time though. I wished that some way we could have stayed together as a unit. You see they broke us up so many different times that we did not really develop a friendship for more than a month or two months and then you were gone and you were somewhere else. They'd break up the flights. They just kept breaking us up, adding others from other states in and really when I ended up, got to Seymour Johnson Field, there was none of my original flight with me.

INTERVIEWER: And were there any experiences that you experienced in any of the places that you served that stand out in your mind, either good or bad. Are there any incidents that are vivid in your memory lo these many years, either in basic training or in the technical training that you received. Anything bad happen, anything very good happen that you recall?

KNOTT: Well I just enjoyed flying.

INTERVIEWER: You never did get to fly (laughter).

KNOTT: Well yes I did. I got to fly with other people piloting the plane.

INTERVIEWER: Oh in the air, but not as a pilot.

KNOTT: Right and I just loved every bit of it. I got to fly a tail gunner and a B25 and we flew all down into Mexico and around. That was great, I just loved it. And I flew in the AT17 around Marshall Field, Texas.

INTERVIEWER: Did they train you a tail gunner and a navigator and all the other...

KNOTT: No, no. See we were in training to be pilots.

INTERVIEWER: I understand that.

KNOTT: And that's where they directed all of our training to. That was just, when I got flying in the tail gunner position, I was just lucky enough that it was the captain there at the field, saw him and asked him if he was going to fly sometime, I wanted to fly with him and he said "Great, I'm getting ready to fly now. I'm going to fly a B25, c'mon". So that's how I got to fly with him.

INTERVIEWER: B25, the big bombers, four engine?

KNOTT: Two engines, twin tail, that's what Doolittle flew over Tokyo and bombed Tokyo with was a B25, wonderful airplane. Probably one of the most versatile airplanes we have. 

INTERVIEWER: But later on they were bigger.

KNOTT: That's right.

INTERVIEWER: Four engines, big bombers Super fortresses,

KNOTT: Right.