Paper Workers

With every pilot it has on hand needed desperately for flying and fighting, the U.S. Navy can ill afford to spare airmen for administrative tasks. Last week, at Quonset Point, R.I., the service was training a group of picked civilians to take over such paper work. Among them were bankers, brokers, even undertakers. Ranging in age from 27 to 42, all had been executives of one kind or another in civilian life, were due after 60 days of training to emerge as lieutenants and lieutenants, junior grade, in the Navy.

The executive recruits will have no easy time of it. It will be their business to see that pilots have everything they need, from shoelaces to bombs; that routine reports are taken care of; that air bases are properly supplied. Some of them will be stationed in the Caribbean, some in Alaska, some on carriers roaming the Atlantic and Pacific.

The idea of hiring businessmen to handle the housekeeping jobs at Naval air stations was cooked up before Pearl Harbor by energetic Rear Admiral John H. ("Jack") Towers, Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics. The Admiral planned to begin in a small way, but Pearl Harbor changed all that. Since then, the Navy has been swamped with applications.

These civilian recruits will hold jobs that the Navy seldom entrusts to civilians. At Quonset they are boning up on Naval custom, procedure, tradition, by the time they don their stripes should be able to tell a fid from a marlinspike. The first class now at Quonset is scheduled ultimately to include 500 men; and the Navy expects to train many another in the future.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.