Col. C.E. “Bud” Anderson to return to Minter Field in Shafter 
where he took basic training.

Col. C.E. “Bud” Anderson, a triple ace with 16 ¼ kills to his credit, will be a featured guest at the air show at Minter Field.  Anderson will return to the place where he took basic flight training in May and June of 1942 as a member of the 42-I class of cadets.  Anderson went on to fly P-51 Mustangs in Europe, and flew with Chuck Yeager in the skies over Germany.  

Gen Chuck Yeager describes Anderson as " a mongoose, .. the best fighter pilot I've ever seen". 

More details and pictures including a full bio of Col. Anderson may be found on his website www.cebudanderson.com/budanderson.htm

From Col. C.E. “Bud” Anderson, USAF Ret.  5/5/05-E-mail to MFAM

 You get a 1/4 of a victory when you share the kill with 3 others. My flight had been in a dogfight with some ME109 and I had spotted a HE111 sneaking along at low level. After we shot down 3 of the 4 ME109s' I got my flight of 4 Mustangs back together and chased after the twin engine bomber. It was probably being used as a transport at the time deep in Germany.   I let all of my flight members take a shot at him before he crashed in a field and in our combat report gave 1/4 credit to each of my flight members. The wing men greatly appreciated the opportunity to do some shooting as they seldom got to that.

I wrote briefly about Minter in my book To Fly & Fight. My primary flight training was at Ryan School of Aeronautics in San Diego CA. It was a civilian contract flying school. The big news at Minter was we were now on an Army base, had military instructors for the first time and were flying the BT-13A. There were about 230 cadets in my class. Must have been there in May & June 1942 The new things we learned were night, formation and instrument flying plus all the routine stuff. I recall the food being very very good and the mess hall was run by a civilian. Half of the time we were there we were confined to the base because of an outbreak of the 'mumps' so we didn't get to town much. The few times we did I recall that the folks in Bakersfield we very friendly towards the cadets and it was enjoyable.

(NOTE: We hope to have copies of Col Anderson’s book at the air show.)

TUSKEGEE AIRMEN SHARE HISTORY WITH THE CROWD!