Introduction
My grandfather, Harold Trumbull, took a stand in history by becoming a fighter pilot, a “Flying Tiger” in the Fourteenth Air Force in China in the fight against Japan during World War II.
During the beginning of World War II, Harold Trumbull was an engineering student at Ohio State University. He completed 3 years of Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) which graduates one as a Lieutenant in the Army Corps of Engineers. (OSU was a land grant college, which means that the government owned the land and would give it to OSU as long as they required every male to take the first two years of ROTC training.) Two months into his senior year, in October of 1942, Harold was required to sign a document to accept a commission in the Army Corps of Engineers. Instead, he declined the commission and decided he wanted to be a pilot in the Army Air Force. He took a huge gamble by dropping out of school and applying to the Air Force, not knowing if he would be able to pass all the tests to qualify as a pilot, or if he would be assigned to be a pilot.
