I humbly ask to repeat a story from my father. He was a Lt. IP at Bunker Hill NAS (now Grissom AFB) early 1943. A young NAVCAD stud of his is on the schedule for a late afternoon solo hop in the Stearman, It gets dark and no word from the stud. The assumption is at first light some farmer will find a smoking hole in the cornfield and the mystery will be solved. Morning does not bring a smoking hole but it does bring a call from NAS St. Louis and they want to know why a Stearman with NAS Bunker HIll squadron markings is on their ramp unattended. Young stud appears and states he was doing his airwork, got lost, flew around until he saw lights and landed. The investigation later finds he has a girl in St. Louis. Young NAVCAD is on his way to becoming a gunner's mate when several IP's go to bat and state any stud, who managed to fly a Stearman, with only a compass which you could not read at night 300 miles to St. Louis, find the NAS, land and not kill himself, and there were a half dozen IP's on the base who could not get that plane to St. Louis after dark, obviously possessed skills suitable to continue in training, which he did.