Howdy and welcome to Wise About Texas, your award-winning Texas history podcast. I'm your host Ken Wies. Thank you very much for

tuning in today for some Texas history. Now this episode is being recorded and released in July

2020 and we are in a time where history is more important than ever before.

There have been a lot of complaints through the years history is not being

taught, it's not being not being taught it's not being

correctly it's not being studied and appreciated I agree with that but much of the

chaos that we're seeing in the country in July 2020 is a product of that. These are difficult and unsettled times, but I

am more committed than ever to try and bring at least Texas history to the four.

But it's summer, so we're also going to keep our sense of humor and try to.

Though some episodes of this podcast are deep dives with some great lessons for all of us today,

we're going to talk about a story that's amusing

now because nobody got hurt but might not have been terribly funny at the time. It takes place

during World War II.

Now Texas played a large role in training pilots during World War II.

Still does play a large role in pilot training as a matter of fact.

And when you watch all those great World War II movies

and that feature the European theater and the bombing of the continent with the great B-17s and B-24s dropping hundreds of bombs on

targets you have to remember that they had to learn that somewhere and the Texas

Panhandle was perfect for it. So today we're going to travel up north, way up north, to Dalhart, Texas during

World War II to get wise about Texas. Back in early 1942 the good folks up in Dalhart wanted to contribute to the war effort. So they ended up

building an airfield just outside of town and the idea was that the airfield would

train glider pilots. Gliders were used extensively in World War II.

...