United States Army World War I Flight Training
With the purchase of its first airplane, built and successfully flown by Orville and Wilbur Wright, in 1909 the United States Army began the training of flight personnel.
[1] The Army airplane trials had been held at Fort Myer, Virginia in 1908 because of its proximity to Washington, headquarters of the Army and its Aeronautical Division, but the commandant at Fort Myer (a cavalry and field artillery post) refused to relinquish the parade ground for further flight training.
[2] However flying training in the Army remained on a small scale until the USA joined World War I in April 1917.
[3] When the United States entered World War I, the exhausted British and French forces wanted American troops in the trenches of the Western Front as soon as possible.
By 1917, aerial warfare was also considered key to the success of the ground forces, and in May 1917, The French, in particular, asked the Americans to also bolster Allied air power.
The system served to weed out some unfit or incompetent students early, conserving time and instructional and equipment resources.
[4] This was conducted at: Upon successful completion of preflight training, flight cadets were sent to Camp John Dick Aviation Concentration Center, located at the Texas State Fairgrounds in Dallas.
The British also operated three flying schools in the United States, located at Camp Taliaferro, Fort Worth, Texas.
[4] When the United States entered World War I, only the North Island field was a usable military airfield.
Proposed advanced schools at Houston, Texas, and Lake Charles, Louisiana, were also used for primary training until the necessary equipment could be supplied for specialized instruction.
[4] Between June and late November 1917, manufacturers met the immediate demand for primary trainers with the delivery of 600 new Curtiss JN-4A Jennies, as the airplane became known.
[4] Depending upon the vagaries of weather, equipment, and individual ability, the aspiring pilot needed six to eight weeks, including forty to fifty hours of flying time, to earn his wings.
[1] Advanced training in the United States adopted the scheme used by tactical squadrons in France of classifying flying personnel (pilots or observers, the latter including all non-pilots) according to mission.
Airfields might be used for primary as well as for advanced training, or they might be converted from one type to the other as weather conditions dictated, as equipment became available, or as demand for specialists increased or decreased.
1, Fort Worth, Texas; and at Wilbur Wright Field, Fairfield, Ohio, which also served as an armorers' and instructors' school.
From 1917 to 1918 British Royal Flying Corps instructors trained 6000 flight cadets at the facilities making up Camp Taliaferro.
Because the structure for primary flight training had yet to be erected in the United States and because European facilities appeared to have space, it was arranged for several hundred American cadets to be admitted to French training schools, and he contacted the British and Italians to obtain similar commitments.
[4] Tours and Issoudun conducted primary training for as many cadets as possible, even though some were left to languish, while other European schools also accepted trainees at overflow levels.
Some new arrivals stayed at the Beaumont Barracks in Tours; others lodged at St. Maixent; still others were quartered at AEF headquarters in Paris.
In January, 1918 the Training Section attempted to introduce some order by having all untrained cadets, of whom no more were authorized, removed from the schools and sent to St. Maixent, site of an old French barracks.
* The 5th Aviation Instruction Center at Bron (now Lyon–Bron Airport) was located at the French Air Service Mechanics School.
The War Department determined to purchase and maintain fifteen flying fields and five balloon schools for training purposes.
Early plans anticipated opening several primary schools and separate sites for advanced training in bombardment, observation, pursuit, and gunnery.
