Oral History Transcript - Virgal Sansing - December 11, 1986
Interview with Colonel Virgal Sansing
Interviewer: Mitchel C. Bell
Transcriber: Mitchel C. Bell
Date of Interview: December 11, 1986
Location: New Braunfels, TX
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Begin Tape 1, Side 1
Mitchel Bell: Mr. Sansing, what brought you here to Central Texas?
Virgal Sansing: Well, I was in the Air Force, and I was stationed at Bergstrom Air Force Base in Austin and retired in 1973, and my wife and my children and myself liked the area, and we decided that we would be making this home.
Bell: Where had you lived beforehand?
Sansing: Well, I grew up in Bay City, Texas, which is down near the Gulf Coast. I went in the Air Force, which was the Army Air Corps at the time, in 1941. Between 1941 and 1973, I lived in various places in the U.S. and abroad, overseas, all over the world really.
Bell: So, in 1973 you came to San Marcos?
Sansing: Yes, I do not live in San Marcos; I live in New Braunfels. We lived in Austin until 1978, and then we built our home in New Braunfels and moved there, and we have been there ever since 1978.
Bell: Are you still flying actively?
Sansing: Yes, I fly with the Confederate Air Force. I do quite a bit of flying, mostly the old P-39 Airacobra and the Douglas A-26 at the present time.
Bell: Did you have experience with those aircraft in the military?
Sansing: The A-26, yes, I had flew those for a year while I was in the services. And the P-39, not until I had arrived in San Marcos.
Bell: How extensive is the Confederate Air Force, and what is its purpose?
Sansing: Well, the purpose of the Confederate Air Force is to maintain, in flying condition, a flying museum made up of World War II aircraft that were used by not only the U.S. services but foreign services worldwide from the period of 1939 through 1946, which basically is the World War II period.
Bell: So you fly all World War II aircraft?
Sansing: Yes, and quite a bit of civilian airplanes, too. I still do some instructing.
Bell: How many airplanes do you have here with the Confederate Air Force?
Sansing: At the present time, we have five airplanes with the Confederate Air force. We have a P-39 Bell Airacobra; we have a replica of a Japanese torpedo bomber, the “Kate;” we have a twin-engine Cessna, the old Cessna Bobcat, which was used as a plane in twin-engine training. We have a P38 Lockheed Lightening, which we are restoring at the present time, and we have a T-34, which is a trainer. It’s a little later vintage than 1946, but it’s getting up in years now.
Bell: How many other wings or how extensive is the Confederate Air Force in the U.S.?
Sansing: Well, not only the United States but also overseas, too. We have units in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, Minnesota, Michigan, North Dakota, all over really, all over the states. Also we have units in Australia New Zealand, France, England; it’s not a local affair at all.
Bell: Are most of the individuals involved veterans of foreign conflicts?
Sansing: No—no, actually, anybody can join the Confederate Air Force; a lot of people are misinformed on that. You do not have to be a pilot; you do not have to be a service person or flying in the service. Actually, flying is a small part of it. Keeping these old airplanes in condition to fly, running the concessions at air shows, fundraisers for maintaining the airplanes, there are many, many jobs that we need help on.
Bell: Is the basic goal of the Confederate Air Force to keep these old machines flying and in the public eye?
Sansing: Right, to keep them flying and maintain them in a flying-museum and trying to show people what it was like back in the 1940s, and hopefully that we will never be caught again as short as we were in 1941. We need to keep strong armed forces.
Bell: What was your experience with the Air Corps in 1941?
Sansing: I enlisted in 1941 and went through mechanics school and worked on P-40’s for a while and then went to flight school in 1943. After flying school, I went to flying P-47’s, the old Republic Thunder bolts. I went to England with the Eighth Air Force [Division]. Late in 1943 and early ’44, we switched over to P-51’s. So, basically, P-51’s and P-47’s in World War II. And I stayed in on up through the jets—the F-80, the F-84, the F-86, and F-104—until I retired in 1973.
Bell: Sounds like quite a career?
Sansing: I enjoyed every bit of it.
Bell: Is our present day Air Force, in your opinion, prepared enough for what they face?
Sansing: I don’t think you’re ever going to feel prepared for what’s going to happen. The best we can do is get as much as we can with the money that’s available. Naturally, the more money [the US] Congress gives, the bigger and better Air Force we will have. But they are well-equipped and well-trained. The training today is much better than it was back in World War II. The pilot goes through training now, when he gets through with Flying School he goes to either Luke [Air Force Base] out at Phoenix or Nellis [Air Force Base] at Las Vegas and goes through fighter training, goes through a complete training program, gunnery, the whole works. Most of the people in World War II did not have a chance to go through a school like that.
Bell: How about more contemporary conflicts, were you with the Air Force, involved?
Sansing: Yes, I was in Korea, with F-84’s, F-86’s, and in Vietnam with F-101’s.
Bell: So what brings you to San Marcos after this world experience?
Sansing: I was doing some instructing with the Bergstrom Aero Club after I retired and got interested in the Confederate Air Force, joined the Confederate Air Force and started flying with them. Shortly after that, Mr. Stokes about the time had the fixed base of operations and flight school here at San Marcos. And he had thirty-four old World War II airplanes, also. I went to work for him instructing and running the flight school and flying his airplanes. That’s what has brought me here, and that’s what’s keeping me here.
Bell: Do you like the area?
Sansing: Oh yes. Yes, very much. We have certainly enjoyed the area; good fishing, good hunting, good flying, I enjoy all of it.
Bell: Sir, can you tell me the role of the Confederate Air Force in the local community [and] possibly what plans you have for the future?
Sansing: It is difficult to say what the role of the Confederate Air Force is in the local community. There are local people who belong to the Confederate Air force; we have quite a few people from Austin, Lockhart, and the surrounding area. It’s not just the San Marcos local; it’s the general area that our unit is formed from. We have other units in the state. We have a unit at Corpus Christi, Harlingen, San Antonio, El Paso, Dallas-Fort Worth area, Houston; we have many units in the state. We’re not just a little local unit here, just from San Marcos.
Bell: Are there more units in Texas than anywhere else? It sounds like there are quite a few.
Sansing: Yes, right now, because of the size of the state, there are more units, and also the Confederate Air Force started near Harlingen, at Mercedes, Texas. A group of four or five people got together and bought an old World War II airplane. They got to flying it, and all of a sudden they were being invited to various air shows around, and they bought a couple of more airplanes, and the demand got to be more than they could handle. Then it suddenly dawned on them that the old airplanes were very difficult to come by. They were hard to find. That’s when they came up with the idea of starting a museum and collecting the airplanes and trying to preserve them because they were being destroyed at a terrific rate. In fact, the Bell P-39 that we have here, that’s the only one flying in the world right now. There are two others being restored, but it will be some time before they are ready to fly.
Bell: Restoration must be very expensive. How do you raise money for this?
Sansing: Well, we have a fundraiser here just about every year, it’s a dinner, and we try to raise money to restore the P-38. And we have a sponsorship program where people can donate money to the restoration and maintenance fund for that particular aircraft. We have [a] concession that sells souvenirs and things like that that we have at various air shows, and we make some money anyway we can.
Bell: Do you have any goals for the Confederate Air Force for the next few years, any plans?
Sansing: Well, for the local unit, we are restoring the old Lockheed P-38 at the present time. Hopefully when we get that finished, we have another aircraft over in the hanger, sitting over in the corner that’s a British Sea Fire; it’s a Navy version of the Spitfire, that’s what it is. It’s a very rare airplane. In fact it’s the only one that’s left in the world that we know of. Hopefully we can get started on that when we finish the P-38, which we hope to finish and have flying this coming summer.
Bell: Big Plans. Well, thank you sir, we appreciate this very much.
End of interview