History of Air Education and Training Command, 1942-2002 PDF
Preview History of Air Education and Training Command, 1942-2002
History of Air Ed ucation and Training Command 1942-2002 HISTORY OF AIR EDUCATION AND TRAINING COMMAND 1942-2002 Thomas A. Manning Command Historian Dr Bruce A. Ashcroft Richard H. Emmons Ann K. Hussey Dr Joseph L. Mason Office of History and Research Headquarters, Air Education and Training Command Randolph Air Force Base, Texas 2005 ii iv PREFACE A work of this scope, covering such a long span McGriff from the command’s intelligence shop of years, can be done only with the help of a great helped immeasurably with the computer scanning of many people. This history rests squarely on the photographs and art work. foundational work of our predecessors in the Air Education and Training Command history office in The new photos for the second edition were their seminal book, the History of Air Training more easily obtained from our collection of Command, 1943-1993. Former members of the photographs, digital photographs from the last decade history office, CMSgt Robert J. Davis and Dr Karl D. of the command’s histories, and official Air Force Preuss, wrote passages and contributed ideas in the photos. early stages of that undertaking. Others, notably Mr Lawrence R. Benson, Dr Dennis F. Casey, Mr Lloyd Updating the earlier edition was not a trivial H. Cornett, Jr., Mr Jerome A. Ennels, Mr Jay E. matter. Dr Joseph L. Mason and SSgt Oscar M. Vega Hines, Dr J. Dillard Hunley, Mr David W. Shurcliffe, spent many weeks recovering and reformatting the Mr Edgar P. Sneed, and Mr Warren A. Trest, made a outdated computer files and photos that comprised real contribution through the monographs and special the earlier edition. In some instances, the old material studies they prepared while part of the AETC history has been altered or updated in this edition. program. Mrs Edith J. Taylor spent hours looking at reels of microfilm and locating missing pieces to the All members of the AETC history office puzzle in dusty storage boxes. Last but not least, Ms contributed to this edition. Dr Mason extensively Patricia E. Parrish and Mr Dick J. Burkard took on used the research of historians Ann K. Hussey, Dr the Herculean task of laying out the entire book. Ashcroft, and Mr Emmons to write the new material. Without their countless hours of overtime, the first Mr Thomas A. Manning, AETC Command Historian, edition would never have left the drafting table. edited the entire manuscript. Current members of the AETC history office, This sixtieth anniversary history was therefore a Dr Bruce A. Ashcroft and Mr Richard H. Emmons, collaborative effort by the staff of the History and wrote substantial sections of the first edition. Research Office. With the help of all those mentioned above, we did our best to get it right. Any errors of A host of other people assisted in a variety of fact or interpretation are ours alone. ways. Mr Joe Lopez and Ms Lydia Rodriguez from Air Education and Training Command’s manpower office provided the answers to innumerable questions about unit designations and the command’s organizational structure. Mrs Susie Leatherwood, a member of the civil engineering staff, helped fill several gaps in the appendix dealing with AETC bases, and Mr Ollie Barker, from the logistics staff, was able to resolve our questions about trainer aircraft. Finding the right photograph was a continuing challenge. For the many old photographs in the first edition, we received help from scores of sources, ranging from the San Antonio Express-News, to the public library in Fort Worth, Texas, to the historical society in Boca Raton, Florida, to the Eighth Air Force history office at Barksdale AFB, Louisiana. We are also indebted to the National Archives and Records Administration, the National Air and Space Museum, and the Department of Defense Still Media Records Center for their extensive collections of aviation photos. Most of all the command’s history offices repeatedly came up with the photos we needed. Similarly, the folks in the 12th Flying Training Wing’s media center at Randolph AFB were helpful in copying untold numbers of prints and converting slides into photographs. SSgt Larry L. v vi Prologue ORIGINS Air Education and Training Command (AETC) traces its lineage back to 23 January 1942, when the War Department constituted and activated the Army Air Corps Flying Training Command. The purpose of this volume is to recount and commemorate the first 60 years of AETC history, but the history of aviation training in the United States military began much earlier. On 8 October 1909, Wilbur Wright began instructing Lieutenants Frank P. Lahm With his ground crew, Lt Benjamin D. Foulois (second from and Frederic E. Humphreys on Signal right) stands in front of the Wright Type B airplane at Fort Sam Corps Airplane No. 1, which the Army Houston, Texas. The Army had moved flying operations from had recently purchased from the Wright College Park, Maryland, to Fort Sam Houston for the winter. On brothers. Each of the two men received 2 March 1910, Foulois made his first solo flight, and by a little over three hours training before September he had made 61 practice flights. soloing on 26 October 1909. FLYING TRAINING Flying training in the Army remained on this small scale until the outbreak of World War I. During the course of that war, approximately 23,000 volunteers entered flying cadet training. Eight private and state universities offered preflight (ground school) training. Primary and advanced training were more of a problem because, in April 1917 when the United States entered the war, the Army had fewer than 100 flying officers and only three flying fields-- Mineola, New York; Essington, Pennsylvania; and San Diego, California. Because it would take a long time to con- struct adequate training facilities in the United States, Canada provided flying bases during the summer of 1917 so that several hundred American cadets could begin primary flying training. By Christmas 15 US training bases were available, a number expanded to 27 in the United States and 16 in Europe by the end of the war. Here cadets underwent six to eight weeks of primary pilot training, including 40-50 hours in the air, usually in a Curtiss JN-4. Of the 23,000 who had begun preflight training during World War I, over 11,000 received their wings and were commissioned before entering four weeks of advanced training either in the United States or Europe. Bombing instruction occurred primarily at Ellington Field, Texas. Taliaferro Field, Texas, among other locations, provided observation training, while pursuit (fighter) courses were restricted to France because of a lack of necessary equipment in the United States. Brooks Field, Texas, contained the principal instructor's school. Because the United States was in World War I only for a year and a half and entered it so In World War I, aviation cadets at Kelly Field, Texas, learned unprepared, only about 1,000 of the to fly the bi-wing Curtiss JN-4 "Jenny." After completing 11,000 aviators trained during the war training, graduates went to France for pursuit instruction were actually involved in operations before reporting to their combat units. against the enemy. Most of these operations consisted of artilery observation or air-to-air combat. American airmen confirmed 491 "kills" of German aircraft, of which 462 were credited to 63 pilots officially classified as aces. In addition, there were 57 confirmed losses of enemy balloons as a PROLOGUE result of American action. Although there were some criticisms of pilot training during World War I, on balance it appears that the pilot training program was no mean achievement. Rapid demobilization followed the end of World War I, and despite the experience of that conflict, the Army's air arm remained quite small during most of the interwar period, although there was a five-year expansion program after 1926 in response to the outspoken agitation of airpower advocates. Meanwhile--after a hiatus in training during Brooks Field, Texas, was one of 27 flying fields the United States used for training pilots in World War I. Most fields were in the southern states, where flying conditions were generally good all year round. 1919--primary pilot instruction resumed on a small scale at March Field, California, and Carlstrom Field, Florida, in January 1920. Advanced training at that time included the Observation School at Post Field, Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and both pursuit and bombardment instruction at Kelly Field, Texas. However, the administrative difficulties of training about 200 flying cadets concurrently at such widely separated locations prompted a decision in 1921-1922 to centralize all flying training in San Antonio, Texas--considered to be an ideal location because of climate and other factors. Brooks Field became the center for primary training and Kelly for advanced training. Each phase of instruction lasted about six months initially, with advanced training later divided into three months each of basic and advanced instruction. In 1927 basic moved out of the advanced phase and combined with primary. At that point, primary-basic changed to eight months in length and advanced to four months. With the beginning of the five-year expansion * program in 1926, the new Air Corps decided to eliminate one defect in this training arrangement--the fact that the two fields operated as separate commands--by establishing the Air Corps Training Center in San Antonio with one of the Army's first two pilots, Brig Gen (and later Maj Gen) Frank P. Lahm, as its first commander (1 September ** 1926-16 July 1930). The new command consisted of the primary and advanced schools plus the School of Aviation Medicine at Brooks Field. As the new center began to carry out its mission of improving supervision of flying training, it discovered that facilities in the San Antonio area were insufficient to accommodate the expanded number of cadets entering primary training. Hence, in violation of the principle of geographic concentration, primary pilot training resumed at March Field, California, from 1927 to 1931. * The organizational beginning of aviation in the Army occurred on 1 August 1907 with the establishment of the Aeronautical Division in the Signal Corps (redesignated the Aviation Section on 18 July 1914). On 24 May 1918, the Army created the Air Service, followed on 2 July 1926 by the Air Corps. ** He was succeeded by six other commanders, the last of whom was Brig Gen Barton K. Yount (4 August 1938- 25 January 1939). Yount later served as the first commander of the Army Air Corps Flying Training Command. 2 PROLOGUE Flying cadets refuel an airplane under the direction of an enlisted instructor at Brooks Field, Texas. Another problem for the training center was the growth of the city of San Antonio, which created hazards for training. Consequently, in June 1927 General Lahm suggested the construction of a single large field outside of the city to house all flying training. Congress funded the new field's construction but not the purchase of the land, so the city of San Antonio borrowed the $546,000 needed to purchase the site selected for what became Randolph Field. By the fall of 1931, construction was essentially completed, so the Air Corps Training Center at Duncan Field, adjacent to Kelly, and the primary schools at Brooks and March moved to the new installation. Randolph Field was named in memory of Capt William M. Randolph, who was adjutant at Kelly and had died at Gorman, Texas, on 17 February 1928, while taking off for a return flight to Kelly. The new field, which constituted the largest construction project for the Army Corps of Engineers since the Panama Canal, came to be known initially as the "West Point of the Air" and then, following establishment of the United States Air Force Academy in 1955, as the "Showplace of the Air Force." Lieutenant Harold Clark, later a brigadier general who retired in San Antonio, laid out the design for Randolph. Advanced training remained at Kelly because experience showed that Randolph Field would become quite congested with only primary and basic training located there. Following the 5-year expansion, the number of pilots in training declined until only 184 graduated in 1937, compared to an average of 257 per year during the expansion. But with the emergence of Germany as a major threat, the Air Corps proposed another period of expansion to train 4,500 pilots over a two-year period. Consequently, it contracted with nine civilian flying schools to provide primary flying training beginning in 1939, while Randolph handled basic training, now completely separate from primary. Kelly Field, with Brooks as a subpost, took care of advanced flying training. In July 1939 the full course of flying instruction was shortened in length from a year to nine months--three for each phase. Primary training included 65 hours of flying instruction and basic and advanced training included 75 hours each--a total of 215 hours instead of the 279 under the year-long program. Subsequently, each phase was reduced further to 10 and then 9 weeks before climbing back to 10 weeks in 1944. Meanwhile, the number of primary contract schools expanded to 41 by the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and to 60 at various times in 1943--the peak year for numbers of pilots trained--although not all of them were open at one time. (There were also other contract schools, including 23 for glider pilot training and 4 for basic training, but most basic flying training was provided by active duty flying units.) 3
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