First Flight for the Navy in Arizona

PREPARED FOR ARIZONA HIGHWAYS BY THE U. S. NAVY PUBLIC RELATIONS OFFICE, ELEVENTH NAVAL DISTRICT

OFFICIAL U. S. NAVY PHOTOGRAPHS

ISOLATED from their usual oceanic habitat, nearly 150 Navy Aviation Cadets are being born at the mile-high city of Prescott, Arizona. They are the elementary phase of War Training Service, the successor to Civilian Pilot Training, and the knowledge and skills which they are daily gaining now will serve as a basis for more advanced aerial schooling. Ultimately they will become naval officers with wings, providing all goes well with them in the year of arduous training which looms ahead.

When civilian activities along the Pacific Coast ceased upon the outbreak of war, Dec. 7. 1941, all CPT schools migrated to inland areas. That is why, today, the Navy Aviation Cadets begin their schooling with a backdrop of dusty desert land and saguaro forests rather than one of ground-swelled ocean and kelp beds.

To some it might seem incomprehensible that this section of the state is ideal for any type of aerial training, but with the cooperation of the city of Prescott, the Glendale (Calif.) and Fullerton (Calif.) junior colleges and the unbeatable Arizona climate, the Navy has found everything it desired for its program there and its trainees.

The Ernest A. Love airfield, situated northeast of Prescott, is one of the best in the state. Built by the Civil Aeronautics Administration for the City of Prescott early in 1942 it represents a $300,000 investment. Remodeling what Prescott's Ray Purves, 41-year-old airport manager and aviation enthusiast, termed "a cow pasture," cost more than a quarter of a million dollars, required the excavation of some half million yards of earth, and took three months of constant toil by men and machines.

Transportation from the barracks in Prescott to the airfield is provided by two privately-owned busses which operate on an hourly schedule six and sometimes seven days a week.

Flights are so planned that no bus returns empty. From the time the sun climbs up over the rugged skyline of Granite Dells to the moment it sinks below Thumb Butte and its adjacent peaks, planes are constantly zooming into the air. Activity is continuous for flying time is a precious thing today.

Situated high on the western rim of the town is the rambling barracks, a former health home, which contains sleeping quarters, a mess-hall, a dispensary, classrooms, a commissary, a laboratory, and administrative offices. It is not modern, but improvements by the men stationed within its frame walls, have helped to make it livable. Each class of men has contributed something. There were no showers, so "hatches" were cut in the floor, and in the basement the student-pilots constructed suitable showering facilities. Another group built an outdoor boxing and wrestling ring. Although only 130 are there now, the barracks could

house more, if all space were properly utilized. Under the competent leadership of Miss Anne Marie Rambo, are some 60 fledgling Navy airmen, who together comprise the Glendale J. C.-Prescott unit, while Mr. C. E. Line heads the Fullerton J. C. group, numbering 65 Navy cadets. Competition between the two outfits has increased the tempo of their training, and the intensity of their efforts toward perfection. The rivalry is healthy.

Alongside the barracks is an outdoor boxing ring, where the Navy men release energy by "trading leather," and receive beneficial instruction in jiu jitsu from Ground Instructor William Bittner, a tall, husky youth, educated at the University of California. Bittner confessed that the jiu jitsu, a form of sleight-ofhand wrestling, was not a required course, but because the men had such a great desire to master it, he spent many hours teaching them all he had learned himself.

"A Navy pilot must know how to take care of himself if he mixes hand-to-hand with the enemy on the ground. Every trick in the bag in disarming an opponent may be necessary for his very existence at times. The men know they aren't required to learn jiu jitsu, but they know the Japs, and they are anxious to be skilled in this type of combat," Bittner explained.

Ground classes in navigation, meteorology, mathematics, physics, International Morse code, and Civil Air Regulations not only consume part of the cadet's time during the day when he isn't at Love Field flying but continue in the evening until 9:15. There's no other solution to the problem of training these men in just 60 days, for there are hundreds of details which they must know almost instinctively if they are to become Navy flying officers. advanced military-type trainers powered by 225 h. p. engines. Another two or three months will see him at advanced flight school-his final step to his commission, but perhaps his toughest.

And that, of course, is the goal of each cadet stationed here and at other WTS centers. It is a long road-more than 12 months to the Navy wings of gold, and an Ensign's commis sion in the Navy Air Arm, but never too long.

Faced with different problems from those encountered by Army pilots, Navy airmen must be trained not alone in flying, but in That, in a measure, is why the cadets at this WTS center are forever occupied.

From the time the Navy cadet arises at 6:15 in the chilly morning for Prescott is a mile high until he drops off to sleep at 10 p. m. when taps sounds, he is constantly at work, learning the rudiments of his wartime trade. There is no furlough in the entire course, except for the weekend "liberties" when he can stroll down the hill into Prescott where residents, now accustomed to the sight of these khaki-clad youths, nod to them in friendly western fashion.

In fact, the 6008 citizens of Prescott, many with sons of their own in the Navy, have done everything possible to make these air cadets feel at home. Thanksgiving and Christmas days every cadet gobbled an appetizing dinner at homes of hospitable Arizonans. Because no USO center existed a recreational hall was provided in town for the men. They have only to ask Prescott citizens or their genial and level-headed mayor, 36-year-old E. A. McCabe, a member of the Army Air Corps from 1926 to 1930, and the town is theirs.

But if the Prescott citizenry provides recreational outlets for these Navy flyers, the city has exerted itself equally to assure them one of the finest flying fields in the state. It is at this place that the men hour upon hour gun their ships into the tenuous blue air, for they are already at an altitude of 5000 feet when their wheels lift from the surfaced runway.

If Prescott inhabitants wanted to control the weather to suit the Navy they would find it difficult to improve much on that provided the year around by nature.

"One fog in every four years," Miss Rambo said, "is what we are supposed to have. This morning we had our four years supply! But by afternoon we were no longer grounded and we took up where we had left off. The time is so precious and for that reason this center could not have been better placed. Since July navigation, gunnery, bombing and other allied subjects, so that they may meet any situation which may arise over the trackless sea.

It is this uniqueness of naval flying which accounts for the extended aerial training given Navy pilots. It is one thing to soar over chartless miles of ocean, and another to fly over land affording navigational aids. Furthermore, landing a plane on a 5000-yard surfaced runway does not require the same technique as in setting down an aircraft on the 700-foot flight deck of a carrier as she steams along through water not always smooth.

So, when the cadet completes the War Training Service elementary course he will matriculate to a Naval Pre-flight school, where he undergoes three months of severe physical conditioning, and intensive indoctrination. Following this, he moves on to a naval primary flight school to resume his flying in more

we've had nothing but the best flying con-ditions.'Thus, with an excellent landing field, with weather no serious impediment, and with suf-ficient planes in which to train men, the Navy and the War Training Service personnel owe thanks to Prescott and Arizona.

As Chief Pilot Dick Burgess, who tutors the Prescott group, said: "In the summer we fly mornings and late afternoons only, because the warm air rising makes the air pretty bumpy for small ships. In winter we fly every min-ute there's daylight. Of course the summer days are so long we can actually get in more flying per day than in the winter."

How much flying time does a flight instruc-tor log each day? That's easy! Each instruc-tor has five students under his wing, and each day he spends 40 minutes aloft with each of his brood. Simple arithmetic will tell you his air-time daily totals 3 hours and 20 minutes.

There's a limit though the Civil Air Regula-tions state explicitly that no instructor can fly more than 36 hours a week.

Day after day these young men of the Navy wing their way across the flat table-land in their Cubs, Porterfields, and Luscombs, power-ed by 65 and 75 h. p. engines. These planes, once scoffed at by many aviation experts and critics, are proving their worth. WTS co-ordinators and flight instructors are convinced the rudimentary air schooling absorbed by these enthusiastic Navy men, just emerging from the cocoon of their aerial understanding, has a definite place in the total war effort. Because of this small-ship training the Navy is amass-ing a satisfactory backlog of combat and in-structor pilots. The American flyer either Navy or Army -employs a traditionally free mind to fly with. He is accustomed to thinking while he flies. He is no automaton. When the Axis powers begin to wonder how its best pilots were outmaneuvered, how its finest squadrons went down before courageous Americans in Avengers, Wildcats, Lightnings, Tommyhawks, and Fortresses, they may blame these happen-ings upon the American dogma of training. Consider how the Navy flyer begins his aerial education in small planes which land at a mere 45 miles an hour. In combat, these ships would be worthless.

But when the young naval aviator completes his elementary WTS course, after logging just 35 hours in flight, he knows the air, and he knows how the ship reacts to the air.

Chief Pilot Don Ellis of the Glendale J. C. group, explained that: "We teach them to fly by the sensitivity of controls, not by instru-ments alone, and not as mere auto-pilots, me-chanically perfect. They must fly as human beings who can judge flying speed by the feel of the controls, who can tell you without look-ing at their airspeed indicator whether their plane has sufficient flying speed."

Ellis said that this requires (1) intelligence, (2) aptitude, (3) judgment, and (4) free-thinking. "The men the Navy sends us have these attributes. We 'washout' about one or two in an entire class, usually because they lack physical coordination, not because they lack intelligence or because they have not learned to think for themselves. They simply are not physically adapted for flying an air-plane. Each man gets a fair chance, and we give him all the breaks possible, and in that way we help many over an initial obstacle which might cost them their wings if they went directly to flight schools and began training in 225 horsepower craft."

The Navy agrees on that point-men are

This is jiu jitsu at its worst-at

least for Donald M. Debenedictis, Navy Aviation Cadet from Los Angeles, who is learning the Japanese form of wrestling the diffiDifficult way from Instructor William Bittner. The landing probably won't be too gentle.

Worth saving. Prior to the establishment of CPT and WTS, a costly quantity of pilot-can-didates were "washed out" in primary flight schools because of the extreme necessity of producing superior pilots at once. Slow-to-grasp students, who by their inability to learn rapidly tied-up valuable instructors and more valuable training planes, were, of necessity, eliminated. Now the primary flight training is mostly a matter of mechanics, for the WTS is designed to aid the slow-grasping men, and weed out those who utterly lack aerial sense.

Here, then, is Reason No. 1 why the Navy has begun to stress this pre-primary air school-ing. It means salvaging good men at a time when manpower is being rationed along with vital war materials and foodstuffs.

"Better flyers are actually coming from these WTS programs, because the light ships are pretty good 'stool pigeons.' A man who doesn't fly right 'on the nose' can't fool anyone but himself. The 65 h. p. ships just haven't the stability of the heavier craft. If you fly sloppy in one of those Cubs the instructor knows it. So add this point: You've got to fly with pre-cision in a small ship or you won't pass a conscientious instructor's checkride." These are the words of Chief Pilot Ellis, Reason No. 2 why the Navy is expanding the WTS program, then, is that small ships produce precise flying. A Navy pilot emerging from one of the WTS schools has acquired the habit of punctilious flying it graduates with him as he moves on to more advanced aeronautics.

Chief Pilot Burgess stressed another item. "In this training, we give the men in the final two phases of their elementary course a sequence of maneuvers. Not just one today, and another tomorrow. Today they may have to execute five precision maneuvers in succession. So they can't think about a maneuver while they are executing it they must think ahead and plan its execution. Some of them have a little difficulty doing this but they soon catch on. From there on it's like shooting fish in a rain barrel, or a Jap sniper in a gum-tree!"

So, as Chief Pilot Burgess points out, the Navy flyer who undergoes this small craft training must learn to think ahead of his plane. The plane can't stop and wait for the pilot to determine what he must do, so the pilot must, in plain logic, beat his ship to the "punch."

"Planning," the Chief Pilot said, "is what we (Continued on Page Thirty)