Evening star., 1944-03-19
Bv Erwin Brown.

The Naval Air Transport Service,
established five days after Pearl Harbor,
is considered a military air transport
system larger than all the Nations do
mestic airlines combined and flies the
equivalent of 80 or 40 trips around the
world each week.
The needs of this service are great.
So great that the Navy has contracted
with commercial airlines to train trans
port pilots. The service has grown
from one squadron of seven planes in
March, 1912, to 10 squadrons of about
200 planes, and much of the credit for
its rapid success is given the airlines
and their veteran pilots, who have i'm
parted the "knoW-how" of cargo flying
to naval trainees.
On March Is, ls43, American Air
lines opened the Nations first training
school for graduate Navy pilots at
Meacham Field, Fort Worth, Tex, and
on December 81, 1943, similar course
was inaugurated by Pennsylvania-Cen-
trail Airlines at Woodrum Field, Roa-
noke, Va.
The Navy has control over the tram
sitional training schools, where the
pilots are taught the intricacies of cargo
plane operation and all the techniques
that go into the successful plotting Of
multimotored aircraft by instructors
who are airline pilots. On completion
of the 30-day course and students are
fitted to handle the big airliners on the
long trips to battle areas, carrying blood
plasma, troops, supplies, and to evacuate
field hospitals behind the lines.
Veteran Pilot Instructors.
Capt. Trow Sebree, 1910 Twenty-sixth
street, South, Arlington, Va, a veteran
OF IA years service with Pea, is di-
rector of the school at Woodrum Field.
Firsts mark his record He few the first
plane equipped with Shotgun starter"
In which cartridge like shotgun shell
blasts the motor into action; he made
the f1rst test flights on air mail pick
up" work, where the plane dives low
with grapnel trailing to hook a sack
OF mail hung between two poles, and he
was the first to fly the night mail run
between Washington and Cleveland.
The Fort Worth school operates under
the direction of American Airlines Capt.
A. E. Austen. He has been with the firm
IL years, has been stationed at Chicago,
Detroit, Cleveland, st. Louis and New
York
At both training centers the Navy
pilots are taught aerology and the read
ing OF weather maps, airline communi-
cations procedure and the details and
workings OF airliner equipment-includ-
ing radio, for in a noncommercial type
plane the pilot and co-pilot also are the
radio operators.
Timetable Flying.
Instructors at Fort Worth total 90
while at Roanoke there are 2o r. Victor
Cooney, former mathematics instructor
at Bethesda Chevy Chase High School,
Bethesda, Md, Is chief of the five ground
school instructors for Pea. He also
conducts the navigational fight plan
class, which teaches the pilots to chart
their flights before they take OF. Trans
port flying is not hit-or- miss PROPOSE
ton. Each flight is carefully laid out
beforehand like a timetable, 50 that both
pilot and airways men know where the
plane is at any given moment during
its trip.
Most OF the men assigned to the
schools are veterans of at least 300 hours
OF flying. The majority of the students
at Woodrum Field are transfers from
the Navy's instrument flying school at
Atlanta, Ga. Nevertheless, both courses
include instrument instruction on Link
trainers. The Link trainer is hooded
replica of an airplane cockpit in which
all the conditions of instrument flying
can be simulated without the necessity
of leaving the ground. On large map
like table small electric motors trace
out a complete record of the STUDENT s
flight"
At both schools women employees work
with the Link trainer instructor. At
Roanoke there are Ave other women
workers. Oldest in point of service is
Miss Evelyn Corell, native Of Roanoke,
who is secretary to Capt Sebree. Both
~ ~ NE r.