Everett Joe Taylor was 17 nearing the end of his first year of engineering at Kansas State and wanted to leave books behind and enlist in Naval Aviation with his parents consent. (Recruitment poster said 12 months after call to active duty you could have your wings and a commission) He enlisted in Kansas City on March 1, 1943. He received a letter from the Navy in May saying there had been fewer casualties than expected and he was directed to report for active duty on July 1, 1943 to the Navy V-12 (a) unit at Madison, Wisconsin to study engineering at the University for eight months and then on to aviation cadet training. August 1944 Decision time: If a cadet had 2 years college he could waive the cadet program and go direct to a 4 month midshipman school and get a commission, or stay in the cadet program where the next school would again not include flying and more than a year to get wings if you survived the current 50% wash out rate. He took the option to midshipman school. Started on November 1944 at Ft. Schuyler, New York and graduated in a class of 1450 at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on March 6, 1945. Big decision time: He could go back to flying direct to primary with the usual Navy Steerman Acrobatic planes and complete flight training or go to a 2 months Deck Officers school in Miami. At age 19 the thought of soon flying a fighter plane won out and he reported to Ottumwa, Iowa NAS mid March 1945. All the other officers in his unit were Academy men from the Pacific fleet, so he had to take ground school again with them and started to fly in early May. He got in a lot of flying, including passing both check rides in precision flying and landing, and also acrobatic flying that month. June, however, was substantially less flight time (Maybe V-E day figured into that). With little solid information as to when primary flight school could be completed and none about advanced flying, at Pensacola, he had realized that in late June of 1945 he had been on active duty nearly 2 years. Because Aviation was a special category he could ask for a transfer direct to the fleet if possible, and he did that. June 28, 1945 orders read to be released from flying at Naval Air Station Ottumwa and report to Deck Officers school Miami, Florida. July 10, 1945 he reported as required and during that training the war ended. After completing deck school in September 1945 he reported as directed to the PCS 1392, attached to the Sonar Training School in Key West, Florida. June 1946 he was released from the '92 to go to Great Lakes Training Center Illinois for release from active duty July 11, 1946. He got his honorable discharge from the inactive Naval Reserve on February 8, 1955. Lt(jg).