Navigator Training at Warp Speed

Regarding Jonathan Kirsch’s review of “Old Man in a Baseball Cap,” by Fred Rochlin (“Sassy, Sad Tales Draw on Vivid Images of WWII,” Aug. 23). Kirsch says Rochlin enlisted in the Army Air Corps “and after only three weeks of training at Mather Field in Sacramento, he was assigned to an American air base in Italy as a navigator aboard a B-24 bomber.”

Since Rochlin was only 19 years old when he enlisted, he couldn’t have had much (if any) aircraft navigation training and experience beforehand. The Air Corps would not have assigned him overseas to an operational bomber group with only three weeks of navigation school. Those of us who were navigators during WWII got about 18 months of training, including navigation school and operational crew training before being assigned to operations.

This appears to be just another fictional book with its “short, sassy, spirited tales” that denigrate the military as inept and bumbling in describing what it was (supposedly) like to serve in “the good war.”

MORGAN M. BLAIR

Lomita