If you want to go kill yourself, go ahead, I don't give a damn.' Then Mom just quietly said, 'Paul, if you want to go fly airplanes, you're going to be all right.' And that was that. My dad had been in the real estate business down there for years, and at that time he was retired. And I was going to school at Gainesville, Florida, but I had to leave after two years and go to Cincinnati because Florida had no medical school.
PT: I didn't think that, my father thought it. He said, 'You're going to be a doctor,' and I just nodded my head and that was it. And I started out that way but about a year before, I was able to get into an airplane, fly it - I soloed - and I knew then that I had to go fly airplanes.
When did you get word that you had a special assignment? ST: Now by 1944 you were a pilot - a test pilot on the programme to develop the B-29 bomber. PT: One day I'm running a test on a B-29, I land, a man meets me.
