His body was just like a lobster.

[**The following takes place during US Air Force flight school in the midst of World War II.**] >It was at Coffeyville that [McGovern](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Director_of_Food_for_Peace_George_S._McGovern_with_Visitors_%2814170197096%29_%28cropped%29.jpg) saw his first pilot killed. The officer had pulled up too fast on takeoff and stalled into a nose drop. “He just hit the runway – just *bang*. I was standing not too far from there. The fire engines were out in what seemed to me to be nothing flat. But when they pulled him out of the plane his body was just like a lobster.” >Cadet Charles Watry wrote that an accidental death led to a cadet saying, “That is the hard way out of the program.” One of his classmates was practicing S turns along a road. A twin-engine plane was doing the same thing. They had a midair collision. One of the propellers of the twin-engine craft cut off the tail of the classmate’s plane, which crashed, killing him. In total, the AAF lost 439 lives in the primary flight schools during the war. In basic school there were 1,175 fatalities, while in advanced training – flying bigger, faster airplanes, with more complicated training – there were 1,888 deaths. ______________________________ **Source:** Ambrose, Stephen E. “Training.” *The Wild Blue: The Crews of the B-24*. Simon & Schuster, 2002. 68-9. Print. **Original Source Listed:** Watry, *Washout!*, 96-97. ______________________________ **Further Reading:** [George Stanley McGovern](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_McGovern)