Charles Dills was quick to react to an unfavorable comparison of his second favorite airplane, the A-36, to the P-47. He flew both aircraft in combat and proved to his own satisfaction that the relatively unknown Apache (as it was rarely called) was superior in every respect to the larger, and much more famous Thunderbolt. His favorite airplane was the P-51D, an airplane that might very well never existed had it not been for an earlier, almost offhand, order for 500 of the A-36 as a sort of “gapfiller” in British procurement.
Born to be a pilot
Dill was born in the town of LaMoure, North Dakota (population 800) on April 20, 1922. Sadly, his father died when he was 8 and his mother when he was 4. His uncle John, a partner with his father in the Dills Brothers Drugstore, became his guardian.
After two years in the North Dakota Agricultural College, in the fall of 1941 he participated in the important for the time Civilian Pilot Training program. Flying was heaven for him, and he soloed in a Piper J-4 Cub Coupe on November 18, 1941. He nostalgically recalled that, “I can still see the shadow of the airplane receding to my right as I left the ground. It was afternoon, and I was singing a popular tune of the time. ‘I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire’ at the top of my lungs!”
Dills enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps in June 1942 and graduated as a pilot in May 1943. Sent to North Africa in August, he spent several months flying war-weary Curtiss P-40s at an “African warehouse” before joining the
