On the Wing

With an updraft of bold words, the U.S. Air Force Academy took aboard its first 306 cadets four years ago. These were to be no mere fly-boys with eyes on a brigadier's star. Unlike West Point cadets or civilian students, they would be instructed in science and the humanities in roughly equal doses. They were to be thinking flyers, and before long, thinkers who might not fly at all. More than anything else, the Air Force, still largely manned by Reserve officers, wanted them to stay in, as wise stewards of the most awesome weapons known to man.

Next week the first 207 cadets to survive this lofty enterprise will graduate from the Air Academy's new home, a sweeping spread of glass and aluminum in the pine-covered Rockies north of Colorado Springs. After four years, their "motivation" is just fine. One graduate has chosen to beopme a Marine Corps officer; another will not be commissioned because of physical defects. The remaining 205 (including 186 slated for pilot training) will become Regular Air Force officers.

"Go-Go-Go!" As attested by every blink of the camera's eye (see color pages), they leave behind the nation's most stunning hatchery of splendid young men. No pains have been spared to make it so; already its cost is about $176 million, and it is not quite finished yet. The plant is so elaborate that Government budgeteers have begun to harrumph. But the academy, which aims to fly first class no matter what, has only one concern: How well educated are the splendid young men?

"We haven't done badly in a bare four years," says a high-ranking faculty member. "I'd say 50% of the first graduating class are the well-balanced men we wanted' to produce, 25% are lacking except in scientific and engineering skills, and the rest should not be graduated." His judgment seems severe. The first class has survived a harsher attrition rate (33%) than those of West Point (28%) and Annapolis (22.5%). It has done so despite a constant "go-go-go" pressure for mental and physical excellence during an eleven-month school year that leaves a cadet about 30 minutes a day to relax (or think). This pressure--good or bad--is the key to the whole institution.

Call Harvard. "We don't go for leisure in education at all," cracks a top officer. "Any cadet can use his pipe and slippers --right after compulsory chapel. Maybe the brilliant man is better off some place else, but we feel our academic program is better than other colleges, because we insist that our men stay up with their work. If we need a scholar in some particular field, we can always fly one in from Harvard."

In ways that show, the academy's 1,110 cadets (soon to be 2,520) play the game to the hilt. One-third arrive with previous college experience; all take on the scrubbed, lithe look that marks the ideal American boy. In 15-student classrooms, mostly built without windows to keep all eyes on the instructor, hands shoot into the air before questions are finished. Through 135 hours of science, social science and humanities, plus 48 hours of "military airmanship," every man is tested every day in every way. Results are plain from the academy's score in tests given last winter to men seniors at 21 U.S. colleges and universities. Cadet first-classmen surpassed 83% of the other seniors in natural sciences, 82% in social sciences, and 69% in humanities.

Hold Humanities. "I can't say we've reached our goals yet," muses Lieut. Colonel George V. Fagan, the academy librarian. His vast establishment (90,000 books now, eventually 250,000) is still unused by more than a handful of cadets. Only 17% of the 204-man faculty boast Ph.D.s, compared to an average 30% at civilian colleges. The "enrichment" program, which challenges bright cadets with advanced courses, may be demonstrating more competition than cogitation by embracing 45% of the corps. "But we can safely say," Colonel Fagan believes, "that each of these cadets has been exposed to more than the average college student."

By stubborn order of Major General James E. Briggs, superintendent of the academy, humanities have survived the post-Sputnik furor for emphasis on science. The required 2 1/2-year English course (Greek drama, Chaucer in the original, philosophy) could march into most liberal arts colleges and rate a salute. "It's hard to get some of our science-oriented boys reading on their own," says Lieut. Colonel Warren C. Thompson, head of the

English department. "But it's being done." Cadet Leonard J. Mahony, 22, graduating next week, arrived from New York wanting only to be an engineer and a pilot. The academy widened his eyes: "I have got top grades here in the humanities, and have been only average in science." To Graduating Cadet Gerald Garvey, 23, of Chicago, science was his weak subject before go-go-go, and he is grateful for being "rounded off in reverse."

Whatever they do in the Air Force, Mahony and Garvey are sold on staying in. "Our real job is just that," says an academy officer. "If they resign when their enlistment is up, we will have failed. If they stay in, and I'm pretty sure they will, in the long run we'll save the taxpayers hundreds of millions."

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