Re pilot training dropout percentage.

Face it. Dropout % is almost exclusively dependent on selection process. With
perfect selection requirements one would have near zero drop outs. When I went
through the NavCad program in the early 50s, one needed to pass a bunch of Navy
exams, be physically adequate, and have 2 years college in any major.
Admittedly the navy was hungry for pilots at that time, but I suspect the
overall dropout % was about 10%.

We didn't start out (after 6 months pre flight) in Piper Cubs. We started out
in SNJ/T6s -- in which everybody carrier qualified. The advanced *trainer* was
the F6 Hellcat -- the hottest thing the Navy had a few years earlier -- and in
which the single engine students all carrier qualified.

People really don't change, but selection and training procedures surely do --
as they should. Technology is dandy: selection and training are what counts.

Quent

...but after Pearl was hit the US military couldn't wait for everybody to go
out and get 2 years of college. CTD was used instead. And by the results, it
worked just fine.

Absolutely. Ask my two of my brothers-in-law. Inefficient, but worked!

Quent

In WW II there was a depression. Almost nobody had any college at all.

The same two years of college were required of aviation cadets as late
as 1941, and I think in 1942. I don't know when the requirement was
relaxed, but indeed it was.

Art is quite right that a very small percentage of high-school
graduates had two years of college in the 1930s. I suppose that's one
reason the navy had its "Fighting Chiefs" and the army likewise
experimented with sergeant-pilots early in the war. (Chuck Yeager got
into flying that way. Postwar, he had a devil of a time meeting the
education requirements at Wright Field.)

I don't think it's ever been remarked, but the fact that almost all of
the AVG Flying Tigers had completed two years of college during the
Great Depression (Louis Hoffman had been a navy enlisted pilot) likely
contributed to their unusual record. They had to be a group of
particularly determined men.

(Of course the same was true of the army pilots in the Philippines in
December 1941.)


all the best -- Dan Ford
email: www.danford.net/letters.htm#9

see the Warbird's Forum at http://www.danford.net/index.htm
Vietnam | Flying Tigers | Pacific War | Brewster Buffalo | Piper Cub

QDurham wrote:

...but after Pearl was hit the US military couldn't wait for everybody to go
out and get 2 years of college. CTD was used instead. And by the results, it
worked just fine.

Absolutely. Ask my two of my brothers-in-law. Inefficient, but worked!

"CTD"? "Connect the dots"? Help out the laity here, guys.
--
Andrew Chaplin
SIT MIHI GLADIUS SICUT SANCTO MARTINO
(If you're going to e-mail me, you'll have to get "yourfinger." out.)

ubject: Re pilot training dropout percentage.
From: Andrew Chaplin
Date: 7/14/03 3:51 AM Pacific Daylight Time

...but after Pearl was hit the US military couldn't wait for everybody to go
out and get 2 years of college. CTD was used instead. And by the results,
it
worked just fine.

Absolutely. Ask my two of my brothers-in-law. Inefficient, but worked!

"CTD"? "Connect the dots"? Help out the laity here, guys.
--
Andrew Chaplin

CTD was CollegeTraining Detachment. Back then we volunteered for the Army Air
Corp cadet program while still in high school If we were acceptede were called
up the day we wwre 18 and sent to basic infantry training. We then were sent
to a CTD unit. I went to Kent State University in Ohio. There we got intense
(very intense) math, physics and earth sciences along with meteorology These
were not the usual college courses but were design for what we would need in
the aviation program. From there we moved on to classification, then to the
various flying schools. I mentioned this in my first post on getting your wings
in WW II. .


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

"Andrew Chaplin" wrote in message
...
QDurham wrote:

...but after Pearl was hit the US military couldn't wait for everybody to
go
out and get 2 years of college. CTD was used instead. And by the results, it
worked just fine.

Absolutely. Ask my two of my brothers-in-law. Inefficient, but worked!

"CTD"? "Connect the dots"? Help out the laity here, guys.

You betcha. College Training Detachment. OK?

George Z.