Evening star., 1942-07-05
Army Drops CAA Pre>combat
Training for Air Force Pilots
Limits Instruction to $50 Students This Year, All
Destined for Auxiliary Activities
Instead of as Fighters
Br Richard L. Stokes.

The Navy and War Departments have
come to the parting of the ways over the
civilian pilot training program of the
Civil Aeronautics Administration.
Under revised schedules, with classes
starting last Wednesday, the Navy has
called on CAA to provide 10000 flying
men during the present fiscal year, of
whom 1880 are earmarked for combat
service. The Army, on the other hand,
has rubbed out CAA's function of pre-
combat training for military airmen and
assigned to it the task of instructing only
1880 students. all of whom are destined
for non- n-combat duty.
According to Department of Commerce
figures, the total CAA schedule of 1880
trainees for the Army and Navy repre-
sents $4,000 courses, and will reduce to
idleness nearly four -fifthS of its potential
of 100000 annual courses. Only 1888
CAA training planes will be utilized, it is
declared, leaving 14,139 available but not
employed.
mo comment is the War Depart
ment's comment on these and similar
allegations.
In the face of such existing but unused
facilities, further charge is that the air
forces and permitting thousands of en-
listed men to mark time until place is
found for them in the Army's own air
schools, large proportion of which can
not begin operation earlier than next
winter.
Paid for Idleness.
These volunteers joined up with
burning desire to fight the enemy. IN
stead, on Government pay. they are
walking the streets or lounging in hotel
lobbies. Last springs semester of the
CAA graduated $4,000 pilots. Virtually
sll have been grounded, and will remain
so until the Army's new classes for COM
bat aviation open in october, November
and December.
CAA champions find the above circum-
stances to be in glaring inconsistency
with two facts. One is that aircraft pro-
duction is rapidly outstripping output of
pilots. The other is that the Army Air
Forces are moving heaven and earth,
with every resource of propaganda pub
licity, to obtain recruits for their goal of
double that number in 1943
From the start, CAA has based its
policy on utilization of commercial air
fields, known as fixed bases and number
ing about 600; and of colleges and uni
versities, of which as many as TOO have
from time to time been enlisted. The
latter supplied students of superior quail
ity, teaching staffs for scientific branches
of aviation and readymade class room,
dor1nitory, restaurant and amusement
facilities.
Under the current program, it is
alleged, a considerable volume of these
resources will 60 begging, while the Army
yields to the intoxication of building a
throng of Hollywood" air schools, vast
and ornate, which are said to consume
inordinate quantities of critical mate
rials, especially steel and cement.
Contracts for such institutions, costing
from 100000 to s5000,0o0 each, are
announced almost daily. They are all
brand-new and complete with flying
fields. housing quarters, class rooms,
cafeterias and recreational equipment.
Few of them, the prediction is, will be
turning out pilots before the end of 1912,
Or beginning of 1943.
Navy Praises CAA Training.
Opposite attitudes of the armed serv-
ices toward CAA's role in the national
aviation effort are illustrated by two
utterances. Testifying as to Navy sched-
ules on May 81 before examiners of the
Budget Bureau, Comdr. Austin K. Doyle
of the Bureau of Aeronautics, spoke as
follows:
Our experience shows that we get
better pilots and get them more quickly
from Civilian Pilot Training graduates
than from those selected otherwise. Re
lection rates are to IA per cent for
entrants not coming from CPT, and only
fraction of per cent for students with
CPT training. With existing fields, in
structors and flying equipment CPT has
q tremendous potential. Failure to make
use of these facilities, under conditions
such as we are facing. would be nothing
short of criminal negligence"
CAA's cause has been championed