Actor William Conrad was a fighter pilot in WWII. It appears he served in the Pacific. What kind of plane did he fly? I know the USAAF flew P-38s and P-51s, but they may still pave been flying P-40s too.
Single-engine, so not a P-38. His last MOS was M 1055-Pilot, Single-Engine Fighter. Most of his actual service time seems to have been on the radio, though.
I see a picture of a P-39 on that site. Seems reasonable if he was flying in 1943.
At the risk of disparaging his record, something doesn’t smell right here.
His service is listed from 1943 to 1946, with his Armed Forces Radio and Television/Armed Forces Network (AFRTS/AFN) time from 1944-1946.
The shortest training track that I could find for US fighter pilots in WWII was 7 months. And that was because there was such a need for pilots. It’s hard to believe that they would have trained Conrad to become a pilot, and then immediately cut him loose to become a radio jockey.
I will remain skeptical until I see more proof.
A subscription military records site has his induction in April 1943. His draft card from ca. 1941-2 says he already worked at a radio station in Los Angeles then. I find it pretty plausible he got flight training in 1943-4 but then was diverted to Armed Forces Radio during 1944. There was no shortage of USAAF pilots by then. It’s also conceivable he didn’t do that well, though seems to have made it to being commissioned as a pilot at Luke Field, where the training unit mentioned in link above had an advanced training unit using P-39’s among other then obsolescent types (there were only a few front line USAAF fighter groups, though lots of Soviet AF ones, still flying P-39’s by 1944).
He definitely had a voice for radio.
The joke is, ‘He definitely had a face for radio.’ 
No, in his case, the voice.
I’m not familiar with this plane. It’s listed as his last aircraft.
M 1055-Pilot, Single-Engine Fighter
It’s listed as his last primary AFSC: Air Force Service Code. So actually a job category or qualification level.
He narrated Rocky and Bullwinkle!
“But the plucky little squirrel…”
IF he actually flew a fighter in the Pacific in the later part of the war, the most likely would be the F4F Wildcat, F6F Hellcat, or the F4U Corsair. Those, along with the twin-engined P-38 make up the bulk of single engine fighters that operated in the Pacific. There might have been a handful of P-39’s or P-40 Warhawks around, but by 1943 they were largely obsolete.
It wouldn’t have been any of those. Those are all Navy/Marine types, and Conrad was USAAF.
In the trivia section of his IMDB bio, it says:
Between that, and the photo in **ElvisL1ves **post, I’d say P-39 is pretty definite.
That does sound like the definitive answer. Thanks.
Oh, I missed that. So I guess we’d be down to the P-39 and its variants, maybe the P-40 Warhawk, and later the P-51 Mustang. Those are the only Army Air Corps fighters I can think of in the Pacific theater, aside from the P-38. Only the Mustang was really a competitive single engined figter airplane by 1943, though.
P-39 definitely most likely given the evidence.
The bridge thing I’m a little skeptical of, though I have no proof to the contrary. The only unit Conrad is known to be identified with was a training unit, 37th Training Wing, see above, which was based in the US Southwest. As I noted in post above, that unit included an advanced training unit equipped with P-39’s among other then obsolescent types.
That’s how it worked in both the USAAF and naval services. After pilot cadets trained in various two seat training a/c, and if selected as fighter (as opposed to bomber, transport etc) pilots, they’d fly in advanced training units with obsolescent single engine fighters before being assigned to operational fighter units. By 1944 the P-39 was one of those types; only a handful of front line USAAF units still used them.
And there’s no evidence Conrad was assigned to an operational fighter unit before transferring to Armed Forces Radio. So the comments about which fighters the USAAF ‘used in the Pacific’, as in front line combat units, probably isn’t relevant to Conrad.
The answer there though is that by 1944 only some elements of the 15th Fighter Group based in the Marshall Islands, flying short range missions v bypassed Japanese islands in the area, still used P-39’s in the Pacific. The 5th Air Force units in SW Pacific which extensively used the P-39 in 1942-3 had converted to P-40’s, P-47’s and P-38’s. P-51’s entered service in the USAAF in the Pacific later in 1944 (having previously been prioritized for the European Theater).
The P-39 and P-40 had similar performance on paper, most versions of P-40 used the same engine as P-39. But in the USAAF the P-39 acquired a generally bad reputation as a combat a/c based on various particular circumstances. For example the 5th AF P-39 units in New Guinea in spring-summer 1942 suffered heavily at the hands of more experienced Japanese Naval Air Force Zero units there. And a single very bad outing by the 81st Fighter Group against Bf109’s of II./JG77 over Tunisia in early 1943 seems to have had a disproportionate impact on the plane’s reputation there. Whereas P-40’s in China in the hands of the American Volunteer Group and later USAAF were considerably more successful in fighter combat in 1942, albeit against less formidable opposition of the Japanese Army Air Force. And the 325th Fighter Group had reasonable success in fighter combat with P-40’s in the Mediterranean in 1943, against a mix of Italian and German fighter opposition. This seems to been a reason the P-40 hung on in so long in front line service w/ USAAF particularly in China, with regular USAAF units till early 1945, and in joint US/Chinese manned ‘Composite’ units to summer 1945, while the P-39 dropped out of front line US service much earlier.
Also it had somewhat to do with particular quirks of the P-39, and bugs early on, but USAAF P-40E’s also had some serious bugs right at the beginning of the Pac War. IMO the difference in reputation traces mainly to particular situations where the P-39 ran into tougher opposition than the basically similar P-40. The Soviets received both P-39’s and P-40’s via Lend Lease and preferred the P-39 as an air combat a/c (not ground attack as is sometimes erroneously stated). They really weren’t very different a/c fundamentally.
F4F, F5F and F4Us are all Navy (and Marine) aircraft. It is highly unlikely an air Corps flier would be in those.