page_title: Air Training Command
section_title: Training
hierarchical_section_title: Air Training Command / History / Postwar era / Training
caption_attribution_description: English: T-33A (formerly F-80C) Shooting Star trainers over Williams AFB, Arizona, 1949
context_page_description: Air Training Command is a former United States Air Force Major Command designation. It was headquartered at Randolph Air Force Base, Texas, but was initially formed at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana. It was re-designated as Air Education and Training Command following a merger with Air University on 1 July 1993.
  ATC was organized on 1 July 1946 as a re-designation of Army Air Forces Training Command as part of the re-organization of the United States Army Air Forces after World War II.
  For nearly 50 years, ATC was the primary training organization of the United States Air Force from its inception as an independent service in September 1947. It provided pilot and aircrew training; technical training, and enlisted and officer basic training.
  At the end of the Cold War, it was merged with Air University in July 1993 as part of a major top-to-bottom reorganization of the USAF. Personnel, equipment and resources of both organizations were re-designated as Air Education and Training Command, which assumed the mission of both organizations, but retained AU as a subordinate organization within AETC.
context_section_description: ATC's Flying Division began its first jet fighter transition course at Williams Field in 1946. However, by early 1947, the USAAF had sped up its conversion to jet aircraft. The only way training needs could be met was by limiting course quotas to commands already using jet aircraft. Also, the training program was handicapped by the fact that no dual-control jet trainer aircraft existed.
  In addition, the pilot training program was consolidated into two classes, Basic and Advanced.  Also, the wide variety of training aircraft were reduced to streamline the training program.  Jet training aircraft and courses were also added, along with helicopter training as the new wartime technologies were added into the postwar Air Force inventory as fully operational weapons systems.  Austere postwar military budgets led to additional consolidations and all of the flying programs suffered from shortages of aircraft replacement parts, qualified maintenance personnel, and instructors...problems that existed with the schools throughout the early postwar era.
  Technical Division was given the responsibility of assembling and training two specialized arctic training teams.  Their mission was to indoctrinate USAAF (later USAF) units and individuals destined for polar assignments in personal survival and in the care and use of equipment in cold weather climates. In March 1947, budgetary cuts caused a major reduction in force of graded civilian employees. Technical Division had no choice but to fill empty civilian instructor slots with military personnel. That left the schools with a high percentage of instructors with little, if any, teaching experience and, in some cases, very limited knowledge of course material. In fact, many of these new instructors had just graduated from the courses they were now expected to teach.
  Indoctrination Division consolidated all basic training at what became Lackland Air Force Base in 1946. Separation criteria were progressively lowered for both officer and enlisted personnel as part of the postwar demobilization. Training Command losses from separations were not made up by gains from recruits and returnees and shortages were particularly acute in maintenance, mess, clerical, and medical personnel. In 1948, Air Training Command began rebuilding its training complex, but the command was still reeling from the heavy losses it sustained in its instructor force by demobilization.
caption: T-33A (Formerly F-80C) trainers over Williams AFB, Arizona, 1949
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