Rat Race Changed

The Army architects who planned the Air Corps's Randolph Field near San Antonio made one mistake. They forgot about sidewalks, and people there have to walk in the paved streets or on the brown, famished grass. Otherwise the post is one of the Army's finest. On the east and west sides are two wide, grassed flying fields. Between, in precisely patterned octagons and circles, are separate rows of shops, barracks, officers' and noncoms' homes, all converging on the white, stone-towered administration building Where the post commandant rules.

Last week Randolph Field lost the quiet, -steely-eyed officer who has been its commandant for three years. Colonel John B. Brooks was promoted to Brigadier General, transferred to the new Westover Field (at Chicopee, Mass.) to command a bombing wing. His new stars pleased General Brooks, but he was bound to regret leaving Randolph. For the Air Corps's biggest job just now is training pilots, and Randolph is the centre of the job. Under John Brooks, the course had been drastically changed and speeded up. Under his successor, Colonel Idwal H. Edwards, it is soon to be changed again.

Air Corps cadets used to get a year's schooling at Randolph and nearby Kelly Field. Randolph gave them their primary training in simple, low-horsepowered planes, and an intermediate ("basic") course in faster, higher-powered (400-450 h.p.) ships. They finished at Kelly on still bigger & faster ships, were then ready for tactical duties, second lieutenants' commissions. Early this year, to meet the expanding Air Corps's demand for more pilots, the courses at Randolph and Kelly were telescoped to ten weeks each. Primary training was farmed out to 18 private schools.

Result: a rapid increase in pilot output.

Randolph-Kelly graduated 2,159 fliers between 1922 and 1939. Total this year: 1,786. But the speedup had its drawbacks. Graduates of the new system were not finished military pilots, actually had to have ten more weeks of training with tactical squadrons. Top-notch graduates were kept on at the schools as instructors. Courses were so compressed that instructors had little leeway to make up flying time lost because of bad weather, to nurse along slower students. Essential ground-school instruction had to be abbreviated. Veteran fliers blanched when they saw the hourly, crowded "rat race" at Randolph --the close-packed stream of trainers, gliding in to land and take on fresh cadets and instructors.

Good luck and good management had kept down fatalities (three at Randolph, nine at Kelly during the first eleven months of 1940). But the General Headquarters Air Force howled that it had been turned into a school for unfinished "graduates." By last week officers in charge of training saw that their telescoping had gone too far in some respects, could go further in others. They had already decided to set up two more intermediate schools (at Moffett Field, Calif., Maxwell Field. AlaA last week were still waiting for sufficient trainers. Next year's cadets will have 30 additional days of ground school (military history & law, primary navigation, meteorology, etc.) before they begin to fly. Intermediate courses will be expanded to give cadets more training in practical navigation, formation flying, etc. Biggest change in effect wipes out the present "advanced" course at Kelly, substitutes training on military-type planes in specialized schools at Kelly and other fields. The Air Corps thus hopes to keep its speed up and turn out 7,000 specialized pilots next year who will be ready for combat duty.

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