page_title: Flying Division, Air Training Command
section_title: Air Corps Training Center
hierarchical_section_title: Flying Division, Air Training Command / History / Air Corps Training Center
caption_attribution_description: English: An early model Douglas BT-2 (O-38) equipped with a flying blind hood at Randolph Field, Texas
context_page_description: Flying Division, Air Training Command is an inactive United States Air Force unit. It was last assigned to Air Training Command, stationed at Randolph Air Force Base, Texas. It was inactivated on 14 November 1949.
  The organization was initially organized in 1926 as the main pilot training organization for the Army Air Corps. It was later one of three training commands by the Office of the Chief of Air Corps in 1940 to accommodate the large number of Air Cadets being recruited due to the expansion of the Army Air Corps after the Fall of France. During World War II, thousands of cadets were in training at various flight schools across the Central United States being trained as pilots for fighters, bombers and transports. The command also trained the navigators, bombardiers and gunners necessary for the bombers to attack enemy targets in the combat areas overseas. After World War II ended, it became the primary pilot and aircrew training organization for Air Training Command during the postwar years.
context_section_description: Flying Division, Air Training Command's origins begin in 1922 when the Army Air Service consolidated its center for primary training at Brooks Field, Texas, and its advanced center at Kelly Field, Texas.  In the era after World War I, each phase of instruction lasted about six months, with the school at Kelly being divided into three months of basic and advanced instruction.   With the decision by the Coolidge Administration to expand the Air Service, the Army established the Air Corps Training Center in San Antonio, with the two fight schools, and adding the School of Aviation Medicine at Brooks Field.
  As the new center began to carry out its mission of improving supervision of flying training, it discovered that the facilities in the San Antonio area were insufficient to accommodate the expanded number of cadets entering primary training. Hence, primary pilot training resumed at March Field, California, from 1927 to 1931.
  The decision in 1927 to continue the system of a hierarchy of training schools led to the search for another primary flying field close to the hub of activity and the good weather in Texas. The investigation resulted in selection of an area seventeen miles northeast of San Antonio. Opened on 1 January 1931, Randolph Field was
  trumpeted as the "West Point of the Air".
  With the opening of Randolph Field primary flight training was transferred from March to the new facility there.  The Air Corps Training Center at Randolph Field was in charge of the entire Army pilot training program in the United States from 1931 to 1939. The Center developed an efficient, well-coordinated flying training program that focused on the quality of its pilots.  It was not only critical to the development of military flight training, but also to the training of American pilots, who after graduation spread out over the world, some to commercial airline jobs in Latin America and the Philippines, others to government or industry occupations that took them to Europe and Asia. However, the program only produced about 200 pilots a year.
  The size of its aircraft inventory and the number of airmen who trained at Randolph Field failed to equal the compound’s magnificence. By 1934 the school could graduate 150 cadets a year, although it had increased the number of flying hours by thirty-five and expanded the syllabus. Between the time in October 1931, when the first school troops reported to Randolph from the old primary schools at Brooks and March Fields, and 1 March 1935, when GHQ Air Force took form, slightly more than 2,000 would-be pilots reported to the Primary Flying School. Cadets constituted approximately 75 percent of the students reporting, and nearly 47 percent graduated.
  The creation of the GHQ Air Force made 1935 a banner year, as the air arm moved a step closer to that longed-for reality.  GHQAF gave the Chief of the Air Corps responsibility for overseeing individual training at the flying schools. The Training Section reviewed the programs of instruction at the Primary and Advanced Flying Schools, the Air Corps Tactical School, and the Air Corps Technical School; reviewed training programs submitted by the War Department; supervised preparation and revision of pertinent training materials including manuals, regulations, circulars, and films; maintained various types of training records
  and statistics; and reviewed and recommended matters concerning the training of the National Guard and Air Reserve.
  In late 1937 Chief of the Air Corps Maj. Gen. Oscar Westover submitted to the General Staff a statement of Air Corps objectives that ratified pilot specialization and pinpointed desired stops in the now-established professional educational system along an upward path toward promotion and leadership.  Following graduation from the Training Center, all officers would join a tactical unit for at least two years. Thereafter individuals might compete for additional education and training.
  In 1939 only two Air Corps flying schools were operating, Randolph Field and, for advanced training, Kelly Field with Brooks as a subpost. Begi
caption: An early model Douglas BT-2 (O-37) equipped with a flying blind hood.
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