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Harold Hall
During WWII, Harold Hall went from Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Tech (now called Carnegie Mellon University) to flying long-haul Army Air Corps transport planes throughout Alaska, Canada, and the northern United States. It wasn’t exciting duty, Harold recalls, but it was, nonetheless, important to the overall war effort.
“We were the Air Force airlines,” Harold explains, routinely moving people and cargo wherever it had to go–from Greenland to the Aleutians. The horrible weather–not the Japanese or Germans–was the real danger to aircraft and crew. The Great North Country is still littered with the decayed remains of the ubiquitous C-47 “Gooney Birds.”
On March 16, 2015, Pittsburgh area WWII veterans Harold Hall and Bob Buckler shared their stories of military service with the Veteran Voices of Pittsburgh Oral History Initiative. We set up our mobile oral history studio in a new location for us—the Thomas & Katherine Detre Library & Archive at the Senator John Heinz History Center.
Todd DePastino of the Veterans Breakfast Club conducted the interviews, while Kevin Farkas managed the audio and videography.
In My Own Words
“We were the Air Force airlines,” Harold Hall explains, routinely moving people and cargo wherever it had to go–from Greenland to the Aleutians. The horrible weather–not the Japanese or Germans–was the real danger to aircraft and crew. The Great North Country is still littered with the decayed remains of the ubiquitous C-47 “Gooney Birds.”
