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This is Volume One of The Army Air Forces in World War II, titled Plans and Early Operations, January 1939 to August 1942, edited by Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate. The University of Chicago Press first published it in 1948, and the Office of Air Force History reprinted it in 1983. The front matter explains how the AAF historical program was set up during the war. The index covers Pacific, Atlantic and European operations, and nothing in the text concerns unidentified aerial phenomena.
“King”32 pages
T H E A I R C O R P S P R E P A R E S F O R W A R , 1 9 3 9 - 4 1 training men in such numbers-nor, for that matter, did it have the experience. Its training program at the beginning of 1939 was based on an annual graduating class of approximately 300 pilot^.'^ T o step that up in three years to a rate of 50,000 pilots was as difficult a prob- lem as increasing aircraft production from 2,000 to 50,000. Again it meant the substitution of production-line techniques for handicraft methods. But the United States was as inured to mass education as to mass production. T o build all the additional facilities required by the new objectives would have required the outlay of vast sums; more pertinent to cur- rent attitudes was the fact that it would have delayed the training program by two precious years. Turning to civilian flying schools, the Air Corps found a limited reservoir of instructors, aircraft, flying fields, trained maintenance personnel, and experienced administrative officials. Consideration of the possibility of using civilian training facilities had begun in the fall of 1938;at that time there were twenty- three privately owned flying schools which held zn approved rating from the Civil Aeronautics Authority (CAA). In the spring of 1939 preparations were made for nine of the schools to provide primary training for the Air Corps, though no contracts could be offered until the middle of the year. The undertaking was frankly in the nature of an experiment, but it proved eminently successful and gained wider use as the Air Corps e~panded.~'Another source of potential aid existed in a civilian pilot training program under the auspices of the CAA. Authorized in mid- I 939 and later enlarged, this program created a great reserve supply of pilots which could be tapped in a serious national emergency. Graduates of this program could not, of course, be rated as combat pilots without Air Corps training, but many of them served as instructors in contract primary schools or later as ferry pilots.31 In the training of ground crewmen, Air Corps facilities were also supplemented by the use of civilian schools. At first only a few en- listed men were sent to civilian mechanics schools, but the numbers increased rapidly as the success of the experiment became a ~ p a r e n t . ~ ' By November 1941,the Air Corps had begun to train technicians, in its own and in contract schools, at a rate calculated to turn out IOO,OOO a year. Despite its great need for technicians, the Air Corps at that time was not using men taken into the Army under the Selec- tive Training and Service Act; the single year of service authorized I 1 1
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