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Vic Rizzo and the Air Section
I think it was in early 1943, when I returned to Camp Barkeley after taking the
Officers' Basic Course at Fort Sill, that I found an Air Section had been added to our
Division Artillery. It was destined to add a third dimension to our actions, and in combat
turned out to be invaluable. It comprised nine Piper Cubs - little more than box kites with
propellers - and the personnel to operate them. Most of the pilots were staff sergeants, but
before long the War Department decided that only commissioned officers should pilot
airplanes, and they were all made second lieutenants.
The day after I got back, each of us junior officers were taken up to practice
adjusting fire from the air. I did very badly, because I had missed the orientation lecture
where everyone had been told that as soon as the pilot heard the announcement "On the
way!" meaning that the battery had fired, he would make a 180 degree turn and fly back
across the line of fire to get a closer look. Since I didn't know that, by the time I quit
looking out the left side of the plane and managed to locate the target, now on the right
side, the smoke from the bursting shell had already drifted away.
Actually, the technique for adjusting fire from a plane was quite different from the
elegant but mind-numbing French system used on a ground OP which I had been taught,
both in ROTC and at Fort Sill, and much simpler. So much simpler, in fact, that almost
all the adjustments of fire done in combat, even by ground observers, used that technique.
We had all wasted a lot of time and ammunition learning World War methods.
When we and the air people had gotten used to one another, they were divided up,
and each battalion was assigned its own Air Section, with two planes, two pilots, and a
ground crew. I don't remember the name of one pilot: it seems to me that several different
officers were assigned from time to time. The one I do remember was 2nd Lt Victor P.
Rizzo, a feisty free soul who often rubbed some people the wrong way. He frequently
resented the demands of the Army system when he felt his own way was better.
This did not go down well with his superiors, including our new battalion
commander, Major Costain, and the Division Artillery Air Officer, Captain Salisbury.
Neither of them was a pilot, a fact which may have made Rizzo believe that they lacked
the background to tell a pilot what to do. However, both of them were hard-nosed West
Point graduates brought up in a tradition of quick and unquestioning obedience to orders.
These personality clashes led to problems, and at one period Rizzo was grounded on the
vague charge of "lack of cooperation." Major Costain assigned him to one of the firing
batteries intending to educate him to be an artilleryman as well as a pilot.
One of the things he was to practice was how to adjust fire from the ground. I
remember him at the observation post (OP) during Service Practice. [That's when the
howitzers actually fire and the officers at the OP give commands to move the fire from
where it landed to where it belongs.] I was in charge that day, and we were using the
French technique, which I mentioned above, rather than the simpler air observation
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