FRANK MOORE
Age: 89
Born: July 23, 1921
Hometown: Stockton
Residence: La Quinta
Military branch: U.S. Army Air Corps
Years served: March 1942- May 1946
Rank: Captain
Family: Wife Sharon; two children, Geoffrey Moore of Orange County and Heidi Hensgen of Palm Desert; one grandchild.
About this series
Staff writer Denise Goolsby will profile desert veterans from World War II through the end of 2010 — the 65th anniversary of the end of the war. Contact her at (760) 778-4587 or via e-mail at denise.goolsby@thedesertsun.com
Coming Wednesday
U.S. Navy veteran William R. Lewis of Palm Desert.
LEARN MORE: Read about other Coachella Valley residents who served in World War II at mydesert.com/wwii.
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U.S. Army Air Corps pilot Frank Moore ferried military aircraft in the United States and flew the treacherous “Hump” over the Himalayan Mountains between India and China — piling up “about 2,500 hours of flight time for Uncle Sam,” during World War II.
By the time Moore was 20, he'd already racked up 200 hours of flight time through the Civilian Pilots Training Program.
He applied to be and was hired as a civilian pilot by the 6th Ferrying Command of the Army Air Corps to deliver combat planes manufactured in Southern California around the country.
“I checked out in a multitude of different Army planes — PT 22s to Flying Fortresses to P-38s, A-20s and C-54s to name a few — and by August of that year, I was a ‘seasoned pilot,'” Moore said.
In August, he participated in a nine-day officer's training school and then was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army Air Corps.
Moore, who was based between Long Beach (6th Ferrying Group) and Palm Springs (21st Ferrying Group), worked as an instrument flight instructor, then as a transition instructor, checking pilots out in aircraft including bombers and fighters.
“I met my first wife while I was based in Palm Springs,” Moore said. “Bonnie was a civilian working on base at headquarters.”
They met when she had just graduated from high school, and they remained a couple until her death in 2000. In Palm Springs, the conditions were semi-Spartan.
“We used to have a tent for operations on the runway,” Moore said.
After about two years, Moore, tiring of the same routine, asked for a new assignment.
Soon, he was assigned to overseas duty, where he ended up flying C-109s — four-engine, B-24 bombers converted to gasoline tankers — over the Hump, in the China Burma India area of operations.
“It gained the name of the Hump as ‘One-O Boom,' as so many of of them blew up either on takeoff or landing,” Moore said.
Four crews picked up four C-109s in New York and headed for India. Landing in Newfoundland, the men were briefed for an over-the-Atlantic flight to the Azores and then to Marrakesh, North Africa.
“We were in Newfoundland for three days — the weather was lousy, with the freezing level at sea level,” Moore said.
On the fourth day, the weather man thought it was clear enough to send three planes out as a test — and Moore was one of the pilots selected.
“It was night, the wind was howling and I remember as I left a half-dozen Pan Am ferry pilots were playing poker next to a hot stove — earning a thousand dollars a month as civilian pilots,” said Moore, who, as a first lieutenant, only pulled in $400 a month.
“And I was to check the weather for those guys? Plus, I was going on the worst assignment in the ATC (Air Transport Command), flying a gasoline tanker on the Hump!”
The crews made it safely out of Newfoundland, and on the way to their base at Tezgaon — located just outside Dacca (now Dhaka, Bangladesh) — two experiences broke up the monotony of flying, Moore said.
The weather cleared during the ocean crossing to the Azores, revealing a multitude of icebergs poking up from sea.
Moore took his plane down to get a better look, and when passing the first iceberg, “The noise of the plane caused a tremendous avalanche,” he said. “The sight was unbelievable! After that, I would head for the larger icebergs to see if I could make bigger and better splashes with cascading ice.”
Sometimes the water splashed as high as 100 feet in the air, he added.
Moore said another spectacular sight was spotted in the vicinity of Tunis, in the Sahara Desert — an area where the North African campaign was fought between German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and British Field Marshall Bernard “Monty” Montgomery.
“While I was based in Palm Springs, General (George) Patton had trained his desert troops in the area between Indio and Blythe for this battle,” Moore said.
Again, Moore flew down low to get a better look.
“In every direction, as far as the eye could see, there were burned-out, crashed airplanes, tanks,” vehicles of all types and other instruments of war.
He said they also came across a motor pool of about 100 vehicles, neatly parked, but not a person in sight.
“It had obviously been abandoned and most probably for lack of fuel.”
From their base in Tezgaon, Moore flew about 17 round trips to Chengtu, China.
The 20th Bomb Group's B-29s took off from airfields in Chengtu to bomb Japan.
Between the months of October 1944 to March 1945, Moore had only rare glimpses of the terrain they were flying over, “Because most of my flights were night takeoffs from India — and (bad) weather on the return trip from China.”
Moore pursued a legal career following his Army Air Corps days and began practicing law in 1957. He was appointed as a Riverside County Superior Court judge in 1970 by then-Governor Ronald Reagan.
Palm Springs didn't have a courthouse.
“We used to use City Hall and the El Mirador Hotel (now Desert Regional Medical Center),” Moore said. “I've actually had jury trials in their dining room. My judge's chamber was the kitchen,” he said, laughing.
