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Army Air Forces Training Command

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Army Air Forces Training Command

The United States Army Air Forces during World War II had major subordinate Commands below the Air Staff level. These Commands were organized along functional missions. One such Command was the Flying Training Command (FTC). It began as Air Corps Flying Training Command on 23 January 1942, was redesignated Army Air Forces Flying Training Command (AAFTC) on 15 March 1942, and merged with Army Air Forces Technical Training Command to become Army Air Forces Training Command on 31 July 1943. Continuing service after the war, it was redesignated Air Training Command on 1 July 1946. During the consolidation of Air Force Major Commands in the retrenchment of the 1990s, Air Training Command assumed control of Air University and became Air Education and Training Command on 1 July 1993—today's Air Education and Training Command (AETC), which celebrated its 75th anniversary 23 January 2017. see the Lineage and honors statement for AETC.

Army Air Forces Flying Training Command's mission was conducting the flying program for new Army pilot candidates and air cadets. The program was divided in to stages including primary, advanced and specific classification such as pursuit, twin engine and multi-engine. These phases were prelude to Operational or Replacement training or crew training.

AAFTC was created as a result of the merger of the Army Air Forces Flying Training Command and the Army Air Forces Technical Training Command on 31 July 1943. Constituted and established on 23 January 1942. Its mission was to train pilots, flying specialists, and combat crews. Re-designated on or about 15 March 1942, after the Army Air Forces became an autonomous arm of the United States Army.

During its lifetime, the command struggled with the challenge of a massive wartime expansion of the air forces. Throughout 1942, the need for combat crew personnel far exceeded the current and contemplated production of the command's flying training schools. The rate of expansion of housing and training facilities, instructors, as well as the procurement of aircraft and other equipment, though at a breakneck pace, constrained the rate of increase of production. Facilities were used to their maximum capacity as quickly as they could be stood up. Some schools were expanded while they were still under construction. New airfields had to be located in areas with sufficient flying space free of other air traffic, and the West Coast training center faced the extraordinary requirement to avoid sites near the internment camps for Japanese-Americans.

During World War II, the training of its officers and enlisted men was one of the chief functions of the United States Army Air Forces, consuming a great deal of money, people, equipment, and time. Such training encompassed both flying personnel along with the ground support personnel needed to have a military force trained to defeat the enemy forces threatening the United States.

When the Air Corps began to lay its plans for expansion in the fall of 1938, one of its major tasks was the provision of facilities for the additional thousands of men to be trained in (1) basic military courtesies, customs and traditions, to include classification of personnel for advanced training. (2) Flying and flight crew operations of military aircraft, and (3) the technical training necessary for the even larger numbers of men to be taught to service and maintain aircraft and aircraft equipment.

The United States has traditionally fought its wars with a citizen military mobilized and trained after the emergency arises. Its members on their induction into the military face an abrupt transition to a life and pattern of behavior altogether foreign to their previous experience. For their assistance the military has provided an initial period of basic military training, a course of instruction intended to transform the raw recruit into an airman. Only after completion of basic training are recruits, in theory, advanced to instruction in the technical specialties to which they are assigned.

Upon entry into the Army Air Service in the 1920s, each man received some basic training. The mechanic school at Kelly Field, Texas (later Chanute Field, Illinois) emphasized technical training, and for the following two decades, the amount of military training provided to new enlisted personnel undergoing technical instruction varied with their unit commanders, who had sole responsibility for the program.

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