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Oral History Interview with Lewis R. Hopkins, January 15, 2004 transcript

Oral History Interview with Lewis R. Hopkins, January 15, 2004

Interview with Lewis R. Hopkins, a pilot during World War II. He describes growing up on a farm in Georgia, going to college at Berry, and working for Sears, Roebuck, and the Royal Typewriter Company before joining the U. S. Navy. He tells an anecdote about joining the navy so he could go to New York to see the World's Fair, since he had heard the Atlanta Reserve would be making a trip to the Fair. He began flight training in Florida in December 1940, finished the next September, then drove cross-country to San Francisco after the Pearl Harbor attack. He eventually joined the USS Enterprise in April 1942 and saw the B-25 bombers in the Doolittle Raid take off. He was part of Bombing Squadron Six and trained under Commander Best to learn how to do scouting flights, navigation, and dive bombing. He then describes his participation in the Battle of Midway, the hours before take-off, his first view of the Japanese fleet, and his bombing mission. He was later assigned to the USS Hornet and had to fly off to a little island so that planes from the USS Wasp could land on the Hornet after their ship …
Date: January 15, 2004
Creator: Cox, Floyd & Hopkins, Lewis R.
Object Type: Sound
System: The Portal to Texas History
Oral History Interview with Richard Bennett, November 15, 2001 transcript

Oral History Interview with Richard Bennett, November 15, 2001

Interview with Richard (Dick) Bennett, a pilot during World War II. He discusses his enlistment in the Army Air Corps, basic training and flight school. He then went to a base in South Carolina to learn to fly B-25s. At Fort Myers, Florida he flew B-26 bombers and trained to fly them off of aircraft carriers so they could drop torpedos on the Japanese fleet during naval battles. He traveled across the Pacific to Brisbane only to be told that they didn't have B-26s for the crews; the colonel there knew nothing about the plan to launch B-26s from aircraft carriers, so they were sent to New Guinea to fly B-17s and supplement the crews for those bombers. From there they made bombing runs or "Washing Machine Charlie"-type runs to keep people awake at night on various Japanese targets in the islands, particularly the base at Rabaul. In fall of 1943, the Army grounded the B-17s due to the damage they had incurred and replaced them with B-24s. The men received manuals and were given only a few days to familiarize themselves with the new planes. They were then sent on bombing runs. He finished his tour of duty at …
Date: November 15, 2001
Creator: Cox, Floyd & Bennett, Richard
Object Type: Sound
System: The Portal to Texas History
Oral History Interview with Bertha Rosenzweig, November 15, 1979 (open access)

Oral History Interview with Bertha Rosenzweig, November 15, 1979

Interview with Bertha Rosenzweig, co-founder of Tex-Glass, Inc. in Decatur, Texas. The interview includes Rosenzweig's personal experiences about her education in New York, and having a teaching career. Rosenzweig talks about her family background, her knowledge of her husband's family background and his life in Europe during the Hitler era, his technical training, work in glass factories, starting his own glass factory in Vienna, fleeing Nazis and migrating to Greece, the Jewish underground in Central Europe, fleeing to Egypt, Palestine, and his migration to the U.S. Additionally, Rosenzweig talks about their meeting and marriage, work in Canada and Mexico, opening a glass factory in Athens, Texas, moving to Decatur, employee relations, products and the production process, the distribution system, financing methods, her managing the business, sale of the business, and reparations from the Austrian government.
Date: November 15, 1979
Creator: Jenkins, Floyd & Rosenzweig, Bertha
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library