Next came the actual flying instruction, divided into two phases, primary and advanced. The former averaged about eight weeks, included ability to execute the simpler evolutions and cross-country flights, and led to an officer’s commission and the right to wear the Reserve Military Aviator’s wings. To June 30, 1918, 4,980 men had been graduated as Reserve Military Aviators for final training, and about 400 had been disqualified as incapable of becoming flyers.
The advanced training, however, presented infinitely more difficulties. It was not nearly so simple to teach the more complex stunts, formation flying, aerial machine gunnery, bombing, and night flying, while at the same time the highly specialized equipment necessary required considerable time for manufacture. Nevertheless, advanced schools of the three types necessary were openeEarly western travels 1748-1846, volume 7 of 10d toward the end of the year 1918, with what equipment was available, and had graduated 110 bombers, 85 bombing pilots, 464 observers, 389 observer pilots, and 131 pursuit pilots by June 30, 1918.
The ideal arrangement in mind at the end of the year was to train each pilot completely on this side of the ocean, where facilities are very good, supplies in abundance, and information and experienced pilots from the front available in ever-increasing numbers. The flyers can then be organized into provisional squadrons and wings and given training as large units with their own administrative officers and enlisted personnel so that they will be able to go immediately to the front, after a month or so of transformation work in France, learning geography and familiarizing themselves with new types of planes. Plans are under way looking to the establishment of such wings and brigades in the United States with the end in view of furnishing complete and fully trained units to the American Expeditionary Force.
The whole training program was considerably held up by lack of equipment. Obviously it required far less time to select men for training than to build the fields, planes, and accessories necessary to train them. Primary training planes, the only type manufactured here before the war, soon became available in increasing numbers, till by the end of the year more were on hand than needed. The advanced training planes, however, presented problems wholly new to this country, so that primary planes had to be fitted with more powerful engines and equipment and made to serve the purpose. The first 16 single-seater pursuit planes were not delivered till January, 1918, the first bombers till March, and the first gunnery late in May.
During this fiscal year a grand total of 407,999 hours were flown by Army aviators in the United States, as contrasted with 745.5 hours in 1914 and 1,269 in 1915. In the single week ending June 30, 1918, a total of 19,560 hours were flown, or 15 times, for that single week, the number of the whole year three years before. This, at 75 miles an hour, is equivalent to over 30,000,000 miles, or 1,223 times around the Equator.
During it there were 152 fatalities, or 2,684 flying hours and 201,000 miles flown to each death. Of these, 86 were caused by stalls, when the plane, usually through some error by the pilot, lost its flying speed and dropped into a straight nose dive or turned into a tail spin, from which the pilot did not have the time or the skill to extricate it. Collisions were responsible for 30 other accidents, often due to failure to fly according to the rules. Side-slips, the only other large cause of accidents, resulted in 10 deaths.
Regrettable as these accidents are, it is felt that, considering the newness of the science, the early state of development of the planes, the inexperience in instruction, and the necessity of teaching stunts in themselves rather dangerous, this number is not large. As a matter of actual statistics, fatalities in American training are less than half as large as those of the other allied countries.
Besides flyers, however, engineer officers to direct the upkeep of the equipment, supply officers to keep sufficient equipment on hand, and adjutants to keep the records and do other military work had to be especially trained. These men, absolutely essential to the maintenance of the Air Service organization, could be secured only after a detailed course of instruction. An engineers’ school, opened for a 12 weeks’ course at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on January 12, graduated 590 men and discharged 228 before June 30; a supply officers’ school, opened at the Georgia School of Technology, graduated 852 men and discharged 111 from an eight weeks’ course before it was closed on May 11; and an adjutants’ school, opened at Ohio State University on January 12, graduated 789 and discharged 97 men in an eight weeks’ course before it was closed June 22.
A six weeks’ course for armament officers and men to care for machine guns and bombs was opened at Fairfield, Ohio, on April 22, graduating 95 officers and 465 men by June 30, all of whom went forthwith overseas. Just at the end of the year a series of special schools in aerial gunnery were opened as the final step in the flyers’ training in this country, graduating 102 pilots, 111 observers, and 101 fighting observers by June 30. Also a special course for compass officers was opened at Camp Dick, Texas, on April 10, with 53 graduates, and another course at the same time for a score of navigation officers.
Radio also required very special instruction, with courses and instructors for all flyers through the various stages of their progress, for the receiving force on the ground, and for the men responsible for the upkeep of the radio equipment. At the outset, volunteer civilians, each with his own methods of instruction, stepped into the breach, but by the end of the year two radio officers, and four enlisted men’s schools were in operation with 49 and 329 graduates, respectively; radio officers and equipment had been sent to every field and ground school; and the courses for flyers had been standardized all the way through.