Naval Reserve Flying Corps

Students at several Ivy League colleges organized flying units and began pilot training at their own expense.

These men recruited and organized qualified members from the various state naval militia and college flying units into the NRFC.

The first class of fifty student pilots arrived on 23 July 1917 for an eight-week program covering electricity, signals, photography, seamanship, navigation, gunnery, aeronautic engines, theory of flight, and aircraft instruments.

Those who successfully completed ground school were transferred to naval air stations for flight training.

[2] United States naval aviation manpower had climbed to 37,407 when the First Armistice at Compiègne ended hostilities on 11 November 1918.

Many Naval Reserve Flying Corps pilots trained in this Curtiss Model F seaplane.
Robert Abercrombie Lovett (1895-1986), David Hugh McCulloch (1890-1955), Albert Dillon Sturtevant (1894-1918), John Martin Vorys (1896-1968), Rear Admiral Earl Clinton Barker Gould (1895-1968), Frederick Trubee Davison (1896-1974), Artemus Lamb Gates (1895–1976), John Villiers Farwell III (1895-1992), and Allan Wallace Ames (1893-1966) in July 1916 at Port Washington, New York.