Transcription of document hand written by Grafton W Stull, 12 June 1943. Original document in possession of Darwin Stull, son of Grafton W Stull. Original document scanned into digital format and included as a “document” in Familysearch.org attached as a memory to Grafton W Stull’s information, ID: KHM4-GJS. Notes in square brackets are from transcriber. Times mentioned in this document are “military” or in 24 hour notation.
Transcribed by Darwin Stull 4 January 2019
Since I want to remember my trip from the United States it is about time I wrote down a few things that were of scenic and novel interest from there to Port Lyautey, North Africa.
We took off from Langley Field Virginia on May 18, 1943 at 1530 with no definite destination except Morrison Field at West Palm Beach, Florida. We took along the rumor that we were going to Africa which happened to be very true. Our load on the B-24, serial number 41-4245, and named from my impulse, “Sub-Mission” consisted of complete equipment for anti submarine warfare with every man trained in that work. We took clothing suitable to every climate in the world. We had a total of 12 men on board – our complete combat crew of 10 men plus our crew chief and F/O [flight officer] Houp who was a member of my class in flying school. He was scheduled to go to Africa as an extra copilot & get on a crew there.
We left our wives in front of 18th A.S. Operations, waving as we taxied out to take off. In a way it seemed like most any other flight since it took some time to actually realize that I wouldn’t see Nita for a long time.
We ran into some bad weather on our way to Morrison Field and since we only had one inverter fuse left we landed at Jacksonville, Florida. We stayed there for two days then went to Morrison Field and landed at 1330 the 20th of May.
At Morrison we got our shortages of equipment, had a final check on our plane and cleared for Waller Field, Trinidad the 25th of May at 0136. [?] Our flight was uneventful and monotonous taking us 10 hours. Trinidad has my vote for the worst food I ever had the displeasure of eating. We remained there over night and took off for Belem Brazil at 0512 the 26th. We landed at Belem at 1248 the same day with practically the same accomodations [sic] as at Trinidad. We left there at 0900, May 27th and landed at Natal Brazil the same day at 1500.
At Belem and Natal I saw my first JU52 and Focke [sic] Wulfe German airplanes. At Natal I saw a tri motored Italian plane.
I bought a few little trinkets to remember Natal by. Bought 2 pair of boots, 2 knives and 2 pair of so-called silk stockings for Nita. I also sent dad a large box of cigars.
We had some trouble with our ship at Natal. No 1 engine insisted at torching at takeoff so we got a new carbeuretor [sic] on it there. Of course that did no good! We finally took off from there to Dakar, Africa at 2200 the 4th of June and landed at Dakar at 0930 the 5th of June after some very rough weather and plenty of instrument flying. How we got off the ground at Natal will always be a miracle to me. We had no wind to aid us; forgot to put down any flaps and left the instruments caged at night. Just lucky I guess.
We took off from Dakar at 0818, June 6 and landed at Marrakech, French Morocco at 1748 the 6th. We stayed there overnight and took off the next afternoon at 1330 for Port Lyautey and landed at 1500 June 7, 1943.
After 20 days we finally reached our destination
Today June 12th we flew our first patrol which was 9 hours of ride!