The U.S. Army Air Forces, like the U.S. itself, planned for victory in World War II and pilot training was a big part of that plan. The USAAF's wartime training story was detailed in a special museum presentation on August 25 by Lt. Col. Don Johnson, a retired U.S. Air Force officer with 20 years of service and more than 11,000 hours of flight time, and a museum docent.

Johnson told how, beginning in 1939 in reaction to such world-shaking events as Germany's invasion of Poland, the U.S. started to grow its military forces. And the growth was dramatic. By the end of the war, the air branch of the U.S. Army had gone from 23,435 people and 2,500 planes to 2,282,259 people and almost 80,000 planes.

The "gentlemen's flying club within the Army" had become "a world-beating, world-dominating offensive delivery package that [was] the biggest the world had ever seen, and probably will ever see," and it was all done in just five years, Johnson said.

He traced the growth this way: The invasion of Poland, the official beginning of World War II, prompted the USAAF to set a requirement of 1,200 pilots per year. The fall of France in 1940 increased the number to 7,000. Germany's defeat of Yugoslavia and Greece in March of 1941 boosted it to 30,000. The requirement grew to 50,000, then 70,000 and, with Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, to a final requirement of 93,000 new pilots per year.

But how to get there? "They're going to start with recruiting," Johnson said. But there were challenges. Only 20 percent of those who applied would meet acceptance standards, and only a little over half of those would successfully complete pilot training. So, to meet the goal of 93,000 pilots per year, they would have to recruit far more -- 930,000 per year.

The Army had several ways to attract recruits. One was to pay more. "There was a statutory limit on how much they could pay their pilots, and the Navy was paying more. So they went to Congress," which allowed a raise in pay and allowances, Johnson said. The Army also dipped into the enlisted ranks to find qualified men.

And they established travelling recruiting teams. "America was very different back then,” Johnson said. “In rural America, there might not even be a telephone line, and that's where [the recruiting teams] were going to find some of their candidates." The teams "asked for help from community leaders like preachers, teachers, politicians" who would identify potential candidates.

The Army also launched a publicity campaign using newspaper and radio ads, and posters that said things like, "’Keep 'Em Flying’ Is Our Battle Cry! First Class Fighting Men Needed."

In the photo at the right, Alan Wojciak checks the T-6.

More examining boards were established to process the flood of new recruits.

The Army and Navy both had basic standards for pilots -- vision, height and weight, and age among them. Age was 18 to 26, but 17 with permission of parents. That's how President George H.W. Bush "became the youngest ensign ever to graduate from Navy pilot training," Johnson said. "He was only 17 but had his parents' permission."

Once pilot candidates were selected, they were sent to basic training, or Ground School, where they were introduced to Army life, getting a full dose of drill and ceremonies, firearms and physical training, for instance. Pay was $75 per month plus $1 per diem. Flight-pay came when candidates started flying. They got $10,000 of free government life insurance. The term "buy the farm" may have had its origins here, Johnson said. "It was about $10,000 back then to buy a small family farm, so if you died and they paid the family $10,000, you 'bought the farm.'"

After Ground School, the candidate moved to Undergraduate Pilot Training, which took about 27 weeks. and consisted of three phases -- Primary, Basic and Advanced.

In the Basic Training phase, trainees were sent to military bases with military instructors. They trained in the more complex BT-13, learning to fly at night, in formation, on cross-country flights, and by instruments.

A "huge force multiplier" here, Johnson said, was the Link Trainer, which taught students to fly on instruments. The U.S. and its allies did much more of this kind of training than the Axis powers. Some 10,000 Link Trainer were built during the war. The museum's Link is demonstrated to visitors during our operating hours.

"We got a big increase in our capabilities in 1943 when we went to the full [instrument] panel system that [the Army] borrowed from the Navy," Johnson said. It “added two very important instruments, a gyroscopic attitude indicator and a gyroscopic compass, so you always know which way is up and which way is north, two very important things to know if you're a pilot."

Advanced Training divided students into two groups, Single Engine for fighters and Multi Engine for bombers and transports. Both groups continued instrument training. The Single Engine course, using the AT-6 trainer, included combat maneuvering. The Multi-Engine curriculum, with the AT-17 Bobcat, included formation flying, among other things. Upon completion of the Advanced phase, trainees became Second Lieutenants and were awarded pilot's wings.

But they were far from finished, Johnson said.

Transition Training was next. Those in the fighter pilot group would be taught to fly more powerful but obsolescent planes like the P-39 and P-40. The five-week course was formalized if the pilot remained in the U.S., but not so much if he was sent overseas because there was little time for such instruction. "They gave them the airplanes and the manuals and said, 'Figure it out, we're all counting on you,'" Johnson said. "They'd just hop into the airplanes and start flying."

Bomber pilots took longer to go through Transition Training, ten weeks, because of greater complexity. The emphasis was on instruments, formation flying, long-range navigation and high-altitude flight.

Once finished with Transition Training, pilots were sent to either Operational or Replacement Training. If you were chosen for Operational Training, you went overseas as part of a group. If it was Replacement Training, you took the place of an individual.

It took about a year from the beginning of Undergraduate Pilot Training to the end of Transition Training, when a pilot was deemed ready for combat.

"So," Johnson asked, "how did our training stack up against Germany and Japan?" For one thing, the USAAF was “able to maintain a consistently high level of training throughout the entire war." Fighter pilot training hours, for instance, remained at a base level of about 200 hours from 1939 to 1944. By the time a fighter pilot entered combat, however, he had logged about 450 hours.

German fighter pilots entered combat early in World War II with about 200 hours of flying time, Johnson said. But by 1944, this had dropped to about 116 hours. And by 1945 the Luftwaffe had effectively stopped all pilot training.

Japanese fighter pilots flew into combat early in World War II with about 350 hours of flying time. By 1944, however, a Japanese fighter pilot transitioning to combat "would be lucky to get about 60 hours," Johnson said.

Germany's failed 1941 invasion of Russia "started their irreplaceable losses," Johnson said. "To accommodate, they had to start taking instructors out of their schools to enter the front lines, which hurt their training." Allied attacks on oil supplies made it much worse.

Japanese losses in the 1942 Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway could not be replaced. Oil supplies also dried up.

At the same time, Germany and Japan failed to take advantage of the technology used in the Link Trainer. Their pilots thus got far less instrument training than their Allied counterparts, and were therefore unable to fight with full effect.

Ultimately, U.S. industrial power and wherewithal defeated the Axis powers. By war’s end, the USAAF, for instance, had 783 main and subbases and auxiliary airfields (compared to 17 in 1939), 12 air depots (4 in 1939), and 480 bombing and gunnery ranges (6 in 1939).

And, in addition to out-producing Germany and Japan in terms of aircraft (building some 300,000 planes), the U.S. trained more pilots -- 193,440 by the USAAF between 1939 and 1945. More than 74,000 USAAF students were under instruction at the service’s peak of training in December of 1943.

But, Johnson said, "Aerial combat is a deadly business [and] so was training for aerial combat in World War II." There were 40,061 USAAF combat fatalities during the war, and an additional 14,903 training fatalities or about one-third of the total deaths suffered by the USAAF during the war.

USAAF aircraft losses in combat totaled 22,948, while 21,530 USAAF planes were lost in training. The USAAF destroyed 40,259 enemy aircraft.

(Col. Gene Pfeffer (USAF-ret.), the museum’s Curator and Historian, contributed to this article.)

Rich Tuttle

Docent

Shown to the right is First Lt. Benjamin Kelsey (later Brigadier General) stepping out of the cockpit of a P-36A fighter after a flight test at Wright Field in 1938.

In 1943, Kelsey became deputy chief of staff of 9^th Fighter Command, the Army Air Forces’ ground-support element for the Normandy invasion. In early 1944, he was appointed chief of the Operations Engineering Section of the 8^th Air Force and flew combat missions over Europe.

(Col. Gene Pfeffer (USAF-ret.), the museum’s Curator and Historian, contributed to this article.)

Rich Tuttle

Docent