Subject: Flight Lessons
From: Cub Driver
Date: 8/5/03 2:06 AM Pacific Daylight Time
Message-id:

Before about 1942, to be accepted for pilot training as a commissioned
officer, you had to have two years of college behind you--this in a
time when the army and navy were drawing from a pool of young man
who'd grown up in the the Great Depression. A bachelor's degree in say
1939 was about as rare as a PhD today. So being selective is nothing
new for the air forces.

This requirement was of course relaxed during the war, and men like
Chuck Yeager (who'd trained under a special program for
sergeant-pilots) managed to become pilots, officers, and gentlemen
without the two years of college. But most of them, if they stayed in
the service postwar, went sent back to college by the Air Force or
managed a degree on their own, through the Univ of Maryland or similar
programs.


all the best -- Dan Ford


There has been number of comments on how much more complicated things are now
as compared to WW II. But I dont k now about that. When I talk to guys at
Nellis about navigation and bombing it all seems electronic and automatic now.
It was far from that back then. You had to understand evrything and work
through problems with laborious pencil and paper procedures and an error could
spell disaster. Seems a lot simpler now than it was back then. Take GPS as one
of many cases in point.

Arthur Kramer
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer