World War II Trainers - The Ace Makers - Flight Journal

TSgt Joe C. PO3 Steven Sherrill CW3 Kevin Storm SSG (Join to see) SGM Steve Wettstein SMSgt Thor Merich MSG (Join to see) PO1 John Johnson MAJ Ken Landgren LTC Greg Henning PVT Mark Zehner MSG Tom Earley Alan K. SPC Mark Huddleston PO1 H Gene Lawrence SGT Elizabeth Scheck Sgt Deborah Cornatzer SSgt Boyd Herrst SPC Diana D. Sgt Wayne Wood

CW5 Jack Cardwell, the USAAC really liked that color scheme! Here’s a Boeing P-26 Peashooter! Same timeframe, same paint job!

Thank you, my friend CW5 Jack Cardwell for sharing the link to the article about The Ace-Making Trainers.

ARMY AIR CORPS FLYING CADETS WWII RECRUITING FILM 79124
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAsXaYLdxeo


"The Ace-Making Trainers
World War II was about numbers.
It was a global war foughton an industrial scale unlike anything before or since. Conservatively, it consumed at least 55 million lives while overturning the way humans regarded their nations, their worlds, and themselves.

It also spurred the greatest technological revolution of all time: in five years, going from 250mph biplane fighters in some nations to 550mph jets and ocean-spanning bombers that delivered atomic weapons.

Supporting the vast American effort were huge training establishments for the U.S. Army Air Force (AAF) and the U.S. Navy (USN). This is their story.

Prelude to war
In September 1939, when war returned to Europe, the Army Air Corps had fewer than 1,000 pilots in training. Two years later, before Pearl Harbor, the AAF had 12,000 potential pilots in schools from coast to coast, from Texas to the Canadian border. That figure was swamped: In the last two months, 10,152 Army pilots pinned on silver wings, too late to put their newfound skills to use—until the next time.

From 1939 to 1945, Army schools produced 193,440 pilots. They included 61,000 for twin- and multiengine bombers, plus 21,240 to fly gliders and 204 to master new helicopters. There was, of course, what the Army called “wastage”: over 200,000 budding fliers eliminated by failure, death, or injury.

“Wastage” included prodigious numbers of aircraft. The Army wrote off nearly 5,000 trainers of all types during the war, with 3,500 fatalities in 2,100 accidents.

Army flight training consisted of four phases: preflight, with an enormous variety of academic subjects; primary, usually at 50-odd civilian-owned schools; basic, with more advanced aircraft at military facilities; and advanced, with single- and twin- or multi­engine pipelines. Once winged, new pilots reported for transition training at bases for fighter, bomber, or transport-type aircraft. By that stage, most of them had logged about 220 hours—the point at which instructors said, “They know just enough to get themselves in trouble.”

But those pilots existed to go where directed and to put Norden sights on target: 56,119 navigators and 28,361 bombardiers. The latter two figures are somewhat skewed because some were double-rated in both specialties.

The military had long known that flying an airplane is an athletic ability that can be learned with approximate uniformity by relatively large numbers of individuals. The main difference from civilian students—other than physical and vision requirements—was the time factor. Aviation cadets needed to absorb immense amounts of information and skills in a short time, typically less than 250 hours of flight instruction plus ground school in X months (the period varied throughout the war). But a cadet who hadn’t soloed in eight to 10 hours likely was sent to a “washing machine” with a frequently humorless instructor for an up- or down-check to continue."

FYI Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen Lt Col Charlie Brown LTC Greg Henning LTC Jeff Shearer Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. Maj William W. "Bill" Price Maj Marty Hogan CPT Scott Sharon CWO3 Dennis M. SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL SSG William Jones SGT (Join to see) SGT John " Mac " McConnell SP5 Mark Kuzinski PO1 H Gene Lawrence PO2 Kevin Parker PO3 Bob McCord