1910s AD

Air Force Journal of Logistics, Fall, 2004 by Roger G. Miller

In December 1917, Air Service planners explored the expansion of maintenance and specialist training through civilian vocational schools. A detachment of enlisted students arrived at the Dunwoody Industrial Institute in St Paul, Minnesota, on 10 December. The initial courses proved excellent, and on 1 January 1918, the Liberty Engine Ignition School opened under the supervision of five of Dunwoody Institute's best instructors. Subsequently, the Institute taught courses that ranged from aircraft and motor maintenance to instrument repair. Additional courses opened at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Washington DC on 25 January for coppersmiths, blacksmiths, and motor and aircraft repairmen; at the Pratt Industries, in Brooklyn, New York, on 18 March for carpenters, cabinetmakers, and motor mechanics; and at the David Rankin School of Mechanical Arts in St Louis on 1 March for carpenters, blacksmiths, electricians, metal workers, propeller specialists, and motor mechanics. The use of vocational schools proved highly successful, and the Air Service soon incorporated the training at St Paul as a permanent part of its wartime technical training program. (21)

Finally, in mid-November, the Air Service established the Enlisted Mechanics Training Department at Kelly Field near San Antonio, Texas. Initially, this effort bordered on farce. Kelly authorities designed a program for 320 men and set it up in eight hangar tents, each with an aircraft, engine, and instructor. Three days later a Texas norther blew everything down. The officials immediately reestablished the program in two metal hangars, but then no students came. The Kelly Field commander appealed to the commander of the US Army's Southern Department, who ordered every squadron forming at Kelly to furnish a cadre of trainees. The squadrons immediately furnished 3,000 men who, first, were not the best men in each unit and, second, completely overwhelmed the program with their numbers. Directed to return to their units, the men responded by stripping the engines and airplanes of parts as souvenirs of the experience. Unsurprisingly, on 29 December, Army inspectors closed down the program. Opened again in January 1918, the school still proved unsatisfactory. Kelly officials then revised the curriculum, provided increased quantities of training equipment and reference materials, put the instructors through an extensive training course, and reopened the program once again on 18 March. The revised program was successful, and by 30 June 1918, it had graduated 419 airplane and 300 motor mechanics, as well as 195 motor transport specialists. These men ultimately were rated as some of the best technical personnel sent to the flying squadrons in the United States and in France. Subsequently, the Air Service expanded the program to a capacity of 1,000 students. Renamed the Air Service Mechanics School, it became the foundation for the technical training system operated by today's Air Force. (22)

It is important to note that the men who went through these programs received general rather than system-specific training. In the case of engine mechanics, for example, they trained to work on an aero engine, not necessarily the aero engine that they would find when they reached the flight line. This was less true for mechanics assigned to flying fields in the United States, who usually received instruction on the ubiquitous Curtiss and Hall-Scott engines, especially after these became available in large numbers in early 1918. But many mechanics who had never touched anything but a Curtiss OX-5 suddenly found themselves confronting the mysteries of the geared Hispano-Suiza V-eight, the water-cooled radial Salmson, or the air-cooled Gnome and Le Rhone rotaries, in which the entire engine spun around its own crankshaft. These men still had to learn on the job, adapting their general knowledge to the peculiarities of whatever equipment their unit operated. In the last few months of the war, however, the Air Service addressed this deficiency by establishing specialized schools at various factories where engines were being built, including the Liberty Motor School in Detroit, Michigan; the Hispano-Suiza School at New Brunswick, New Jersey; and the Le Rhone Engine Course at Swissvale, Pennsylvania. System-specific instruction also took place in the Ignition Course at the Splitdorf Magneto Plant at Newark, New Jersey; the Instrument Course taught at Langley Field, Virginia; and the Handley-Page School at the Standard Aircraft Corporation in Elizabeth City, New Jersey. (23)