Evening star., 1939-04-09
Aviation Mechanics
To Be Trained in
High Schools
President Expected
To Put Program in
Effect This Month
BY the Associated Press.

oS tHc nSSoSldteu fIeSS.
The administration is making ar
rangements to train thousands of
aviation mechanics in high schools
while pilots are being turned out
in colleges to meet national defense
needs.
Disclosing this yesterday, inform
ed officials said President Roosevelt
was expected to put the program
into effect this month. To carry
it out, the administration proposes
to give vastly augmented Federal
subsidies to specialized high school
vocational education.
An interdepartmental committee
turned to the high schools as a
reservoir of future mechanics after
modifying radically Mr. Roosevelt's
original plan, announced last fall,
to depend on the National Youth
Administration.
The altered arrangement calls for
mere work experience" training by
the N. Y. A.. supplemented by inten-
sive schooling for some youths at
the recently reopened naval ord
nance plant at Charleston, w. Va,
and the New Orleans Navy Yard at
Algiers, La.
Many Mechanics Needed.
Without discussing actual sum-
bers. officials said several times as
many mechanics as pilots must be
provided, to meet the needs of ex-
panding Army and air forces, plane
factories and airlines. Congress
has approved a program for training
10000 college flyers annually.
Already shortage among the
top 10 per cent of highly skilled
workers has led to what aviation
quarters termed "raids" on the per-
sonnel of various aircraft plants by
other manufacturers.
BY official estimates, the present
$1,000 plane factory employees must
be more than doubled in number
to turn out the present and pros
pective American. British and
French orders for military planes
and to meet commercial contracts.
The Inter-Departmental Commit
tee, headed by Oswald Ryan of the
Civil Aeronautics Authority, has
sought both to cope with the imme-
diate threatened shortage and pro-
vide a future reservoir of mechanics.
For the present, the chief re-
lance will be on existing private
schools for mechanics, and appren-
tice training systems of individual
plants, officials indicated. The Army
expects its schools at Rantoul. ILL.,, |
and Denver. Colo. with emergency
expansion measures. to meet its
needs for fighting mechanics
among the 10000 men to be added
to the Air Corps in the next two
years.
For the future, much is expected
from intensified training in high
A start already has been
made. DR.. j. w. Studebaker, COM
missioner of education, reported in
December that more than 1000
young men were receiving aviation
mechanic training.
About 10000 high schools and sec
ondary schools were canvassed last
year on what training now is being
given.
Four-Year Course.
Louis Johnson, Assistant Secretary
OF War, limited at what is planned
in an Army Day address at Chicago.
"A four-year training in our pub
lie vocational schools will help in
dustry meets its growing demands, .
provide the Army and Navy with !
the fighting mechanics that may
make the difference between victory
and defeat in battle, and give
America young. useful citizens who |
have learned to work with their !
hands as we'll as with their heads" !,
he said
Another phase of the aviation ex-
panslon program had attention on
Capitol Hill. Senator Downey. Dem
ocrat. of California said he and !
Senator johnson. Republican, of
California, with the support of a
group of Western Senators, would
demand that Congress approve
establishment of $4,000 900 aviation
research center at Sunnyvale, Calf.
The National Advisory Committee
for Aeronautics recommended the
center, but the Senate
Appropriations Committee turned