page_title: United States Army Air Forces Contract Flying School Airfields
section_title: Primary Flight Training
hierarchical_section_title: United States Army Air Forces Contract Flying School Airfields / History / World War II / Primary Flight Training
caption_attribution_description: English: Rankin Field - Flight Cadets with PT-17s
context_page_description: During World War II civilian flying schools, under government contract, provided a considerable part of the flying training effort undertaken by the United States Army Air Forces.
context_section_description: After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and both Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany's declaration of war against the United States in December 1941, plans were made by the Army to increase the training rate to 50,000, then 70,000 and finally 102,000 pilots per year.  The Defense Plant Corporation (DFC) purchased all of the CFS's and leased the facilities back to the civilian contractors.  This effectively made them government property, although they continued to be operated by the civilian contractors.  The DFC then funded the construction of all future CPSs.  
  The CFS's were assigned to the various Flying Training Commands, and each had a designated USAAF Flying Training Detachment assigned for supervision and liaison with the command.  According to the contract, the government supplied students with training aircraft, flying clothes, textbooks, and equipment. Schools furnished instructors, training sites and facilities, aircraft maintenance, quarters, and mess halls.  To the flying cadets, the CPSs were just another training assignment—although the flight instructors were civilian contractors, the cadets still experienced the discipline and drudgery of military life.
  Due to the wartime pressure to produce pilots rapidly the AAF paid scant attention to their military training. The atmosphere of the civilian-operated primary schools was not conducive to the development of rigid discipline, and too little time was available for military instruction at all the stages of pilot training. What instruction there was, over and above the regimen of Army life, was restricted largely to marching, ceremonies, inspections, and military customs and courtesies. The vigorous physical conditioning, however, continued and intensified during flying training.
  Trainers used were primarily Fairchild PT-19s, PT-17 Stearmans and Ryan PT-22s, although a wide variety of other types could be found at the airfields.   The primary training syllabus  was initially twelve weeks in length including 60 hours of flight time and 225 hours of ground training.  However this was changed by the Army as the situation required. Although the number of flight hours remained at 60 throughout the war, the demands of the increasing pilot training rate resulted in the primary training to be reduced to ten weeks in 1940, then reduced to nine weeks in 1942.
  The instruction given at the CPSs was an adaptation of the primary phase formerly taught at Randolph Field.  Each student in primary was required to make at least 175 landings.  As given at the height of the effort, primary flying training was divided into four standard phases. In the pre-solo phase students became familiar with the general operation of a light aircraft.  In the second, or intermediate phase, pre-solo work was reviewed, and precision of control was developed.  The third, or accuracy, phase demanded high proficiency in various types of landing approaches and landings, and the fourth, or acrobatic, phase required ability to perform loops, Immelmann turns, slow rolls, half-rolls, and snap rolls. In 1944, after the training demand had peaked, the course length was increased back to ten weeks.
  The Army Air Forces never reached the 102,000 pilot training rate.  This was reduced to a more realistic rate of 93,600 in June 1943.  The peak of AAF flying training was reached in November 1943 when the CPSs graduated 11,411 cadets.   After that AAF flight training began a gradual reduction that resulted in the closing of most of the CPSs in the fall of 1944.   Ten CPSs remained in operation in 1945, which were closed at the end of World War II and the Army Air Forces returned to in-house primary pilot training.
caption: Flight Cadets prepare with their instructors to learn to fly the Boeing PT-17 Stearman at the Rankin Aeronautical Academy, California, 1943.
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