Col Dodenhoff – Total Flight Hours 1943 Page – 19431226-450w.png

Subtitle: Still in training in Dec 43

Col Dodenhoff had done plenty of flying in September and October of 43, but only had one flight in November, at Naval Air Station, Pasco, Washington, closeing out the year with 3 flights at Naval Air Station, Corpus Christi.

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Just preceeding this time frame, the Marine Corps had just wrapped up the assault on Tarawa, one of the major battles of the Pacific, that defined the future of amphibious landing tactics and equipment.

Dode now has a total of 139.6 hours in the air, across 100 flights. Of that time, now 82.4 hours have been as a solo pilot, still in the standard basic primary trainer, the N2S-3.

On September 21st, 1943, the Colonel took to the skies by himself. A critical step in the process of learning to fly anywhere, he did so with a total of 12 recorded dual control fight time. He would have been sitting in the aft seat of the N2S-3 BuNo 07759. As a point of reference by today’s training, a civilian private pilot’s license first solo flight doesn’t have a set number of hours to have, but it is at the discretion of the flight instructor to allow the first individual journey into the sky. I would assume (not being an aviator), similar in the military training realm.

He was aloft for 1.5 hours over NAS Corpus Christi (again an assumption on the location). with no notes at all, so it had to be a normal flight. I can’t find anything specific regarding the syllabus for a solo flight during that period, but I’m sure in included a variety of skills to be practiced.

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Here’s some more historical video regarding Navy flight training, but not specific to the first solo flight.