Fact Sheet Alphabetical List

Fact Sheet Search

  • Shooting the Sun: Navigators

     Following preflight training, navigation cadets went to flying school, where they spent from 15-20 weeks. Emphasis was placed on precision dead-reckoning navigation with basic proficiency in radio and celestial navigation. A navigation cadet logged approximately 100 hours in the air and about 500

  • Forging Combat Pilots: Transition Training

    The successful completion of pilot training was a difficult and dangerous task. From January 1941 to August 1945, 191,654 cadets who were awarded pilot wings. However, there were also 132,993 who "washed out" or were killed during training, a loss rate of approximately 40 percent due to accidents,

  • Winning Their Wings: Advanced Flying School

    Advanced flying school prepared a cadet for the kind of single- or multi-engine airplane he was to fly in combat. Those who went to single-engine school flew AT-6s for the first 70 hours during a nine-week period, learning aerial gunnery and combat maneuvers and increasing their skills in

  • Crossroads: Basic Flying School

    During basic flight training, a cadet received approximately 70 hours in the air during a nine-week period. The basic school made military pilots of those who had learned only the fundamentals of flight in primary school. In addition to operating an airplane of greater weight, horsepower and speed,

  • Into the Sky: Primary Flying School

    When the United States entered World War II in December 1941, the U.S. Army Air Forces continued with the type of pilot training program it had originally established in 1939 -- primary flying school operated by civilian companies under contract, and basic and advanced flying schools operated by the

  • Cadet Program

    The flying cadet program to train pilots, navigators and bombardiers was demanding. Following application and appointment as an Aviation Cadet, a man was usually sent to one of three classification and preflight centers established at Nashville, Tenn.; San Antonio, Texas; or Santa Ana, Calif. There

  • AAF Training During WWII

    One of the greatest accomplishments of the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II was the training of hundreds of thousands of flying and ground personnel for its air armada. Coming from all walks of life, they were molded into the most formidable Air Force the world had ever seen. Before the war,

  • Two Escapes: Capt. Jack Ilfrey

    Capt. Jack Ilfrey, an ace who ended the war with eight victories, twice escaped capture. In November 1942, on a ferry flight from England to North Africa, Ilfrey diverted to an airfield in neutral Portugal because of a malfunctioning drop tank. The Portuguese seized his P-38 and Ilfrey was to be

  • Escape and Evasion Accounts

    Doolittle Raiders After bombing Japan on April 18, 1942, all but one of the sixteen B-25 Doolittle Raid crews crashed or bailed out in China (The remaining crew landed in the USSR, and they successfully escaped internment in 1943). Thanks to the generous help of the Chinese people, 64 of the 75

  • Tools of the Trade

    USAAF airmen were supplied with many tools to help them evade the enemy if they were downed or to escape from POW camps if they were captured. In addition to these, ingenious POWs made their own from material at hand.Evasion PursesEvasion purses were issued to aircrews before they flew over enemy