Evening star., 1931-12-13

every officer must start at the bottom
and go through all grades. The policy
Of admitting no second lieutenantS
during the past two years will create
shortages in all grades as the years
go by and the effects, it is estimated,
will be felt for 80 years, until all off,
GERS now in the unbalanced Air Corps
commissioned grades are retired
The failure to commission the new
officers not only is throwing the Air
Corps structure out of balance. but it
also is working an injustice where the
cadets at the Air Corps Flying School
axe concerned These Young men
after long, hard training. are being
turned out thoroughly trained to serve
as Army Air Corps pilots and officers
and nothing else. They have planned
their careers to this end for several
years. When they were accepted for
training at the Army Flying School
they regarded it as a promise from
their Government that they would be
given an opportunity to follow their
chosen careers.
The failure OF Congress to provide
funds for commissioning these flying
school graduates has blasted all their
hopes, made waste their years Of
preparation and frustrated their am
bitions Graduated from the flying
school, they are denied the fruits of
their laborS and are being thrown into
the civil ranks to aggravate the unem-
ployment situation.
Trained as Army combat pilots, they
go into civil life with no training for
civil careers and the results in many
cases are lamentable There are no
openings for them as civil flyers. The
ranks Of transport pilots are overfull
M rffl An FN,-
The failure to commission the new lieu
tenants called for in the Air Corps
program is real tragedy to this many
graduates of the Army flying schools.
In battling for the rights of these
young men, Gen. Fechet gains moth
ing for himself in general way. but
he Is adding to the esteem and affec-
tion with which he is regarded by his
fellows in the service which he is about
to leave
Rose From the Ranks.
Gen. Fechet rose from the ranks,
and he will be succeeded as chief of
the Air Corps by man who also rose
from the ranks-Brig. Gen. BENJAMIN
d. Foulois, who is to step up a grade
70 the rank of major general Gen
Foulots was the Armys first pilot and
Tor year was the entire Army fiying
service, as pilot of the first military
airplane bought from the Wright
brothers in 1909. Before that he flew
an Army balloon.
Gen. Foulois' correspondence school,
flying course under the tutelage of
the Wrights stands as one of the
classics of aviation. Soon after the
Army purchased its first airplane,
Foulois was sent to the Mexican border
with the plane. He uncrated and as
sembled 1t there and began flying. He
made mistakes and often those mis-
takes resulted in broken wing tips or
landing skids. Each time Foulois
would write to Dayton, Ohio explaining
to the Wrights his trouble and asking
how to avoid similar difficulty in the
future. In this way he gradually
ironed out his difficulties so success
fully that, though he has been flying
continuously for % years, he never has
had serious accident.
Foulois accompanied the Pershing
column into Mexico in 1916 as COM
mander Of the First Aero Squadron and
IN France he commanded the air serv-
ice OF the First Army, A. E. F. Since
the war he has held one important
command after another, rising to a cli-
max last Spring when he led the First