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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 rapid and thorough training given by the RCFC resulted in numerous accidents. Training consisted of bombing, photography, contact patrol, artillery observation, and scout combats and patrols. Upon completion of the training, the 147th Aero Squadron consisted of 30 flying officers and 193 men, with five more pilots to follow.
Colour Autochrome Lumière of a Nieuport Fighter in Aisne, France 1917. World War I was the first major conflict involving the large-scale use of aircraft.Tethered observation balloons had already been employed in several wars and would be used extensively for artillery spotting.
Camp Taliaferro was a World War I flight-training center run under the direction of the Air Service, United States Army in the Fort Worth, Texas, area.Camp Taliaferro had an administration center near what is now the Will Rogers Memorial Center complex in Fort Worth's cultural area near University Drive and W Lancaster Avenue.
Camp Hancock, near Augusta, Georgia, was used for training service squadrons of aircraft mechanics as well as flight training. [54] When ordered to deploy to Europe, most units reported to the Aviation Concentration Center at Garden City, New York, which was the primary port of embankment. Units there were loaded onto transport ships for the ...
Payne Field served as a base for flight training for the United States Army Air Service. In 1918, flight training occurred in two phases: primary and advanced. Primary training took eight weeks and consisted of pilots learning basic flight skills under dual and solo instruction with a student capacity of 300.
Cadet flight training was reduced in 1940 to seven months of training [2]: 566 and only 200 flight hours to meet a potential demand for military pilots. From 30 June 1940 to 30 June 1941 the US Army Air Corps tripled in size from 51,165 men (19.1% of the Army's total strength) to 152,125 men (10.4% of the Army's total strength).
Prior to this time, the Marine Corps simply relied on garnering its pilots from among Navy trainees. One hurdle was a three-year minimum service requirement after completing flight training, which caused hesitation among potential officer candidates. It was a five-year commitment because flight training was approximately two years.