V
Training at Brooks Field
I arrived at Brooks Field on March 15th, 1924, but was not enlisted as a Flying Cadet until March 19th. Ordinarily a cadet enlists at the nearest station to his home and is given free transportation to his post of service and back to the enlistment point after his discharge. By enlisting at Brooks I was entitled to no transportation allowance except possibly bus fare back from Kelly where I graduated a year later.
There were one hundred and four of us in all, representing nearly every state in the Union. We filled the cadet barracks to overflowing. There were two cots to each window and some of us were even quartered in the recreation hall. We were a carefree lot, looking forward to a year of wonderful experiences before we were graduated as second lieutenants and given our wings. Nearly all of us were confident that we would be there to graduate a year later. We had already passed the rigid physical and mental entrance examinations which so many of the other applicants had failed. We had no doubt of our ability to fly although most of us had never flown before, and we had yet to get our first taste of the life of a flying cadet.
By the time we had been in the barracks a few hours stories began circulating around which originated from conversations with the last class of cadets who were waiting to be transferred to the advanced flying school at Kelly.
Rumors of “Benzine Boards” and “washouts,” “academic work” and “eight-hour examinations,” “one eightys,” and “check pilots,” “walls with ears” and “cadet etiquette”—these and a hundred other strange terms were condescendingly passed down to us by the old cadets of six months experience. Someone remarked that less than forty percent of us could expect to finish the primary training at Brooks and that probably half of those would be washed out at Kelly.
By bed check that night we had already begun to feel the apprehension which is a part of a flying cadet’s life from his first day at Brooks until he has received his pilot’s wings at Kelly.
Our actual flying training was to begin on the first of April. Two weeks were required to become organized and learn the preliminary duties of a cadet. During these two weeks we were inoculated against typhoid and smallpox at the hospital, taught the rudiments of cadet etiquette, given fatigue duty, required to police the grounds surrounding our barracks, inspected daily, and instructed and given examinations in five subjects. In our spare time we were allowed to look around the post or take the bus to San Antonio, provided, however, that we were back in bed not later than ten o’clock on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights. At all other times we could stay out as late as we desired.
When we did have a few spare moments in the afternoon, they were usually spent in trying to “chizzle” a hop from one of the instructors on the line.
Early one morning we were allowed to take the training ships out and push them to the line for the old cadets to fly. But when one of the planes nosed over after eight husky rookies heaved up on the hundred and fifty pound tail, it was decided to put us to work moving hydrogen cylinders for a balloon ascension.
As the first of April approached we were looking forward to the start of actual flying with great anticipation. Coupled with this was the anxiety of waiting for the returns from our examination papers, the failure of any two of which would be sufficient cause for their owner to be washed out from the courses.
The flying instruction was carried on from two stages or different sections of the field. I was assigned to B stage which was about a half mile out in the field from the cadet barracks. Each instructor had about six cadets assigned to him, and early in the morning on the first day of April, our instruction commenced. I was assigned to Sergeant Winston, together with five other cadets. We pushed his instruction plane out from the hangar to the line. Sergeant Winston picked out one of us, told him to get into the rear cockpit and was off. The rest of us walked over to B stage, watching for tarantulas along the road on the way.
In 1924, the Curtiss Jenny was still used by the Army for a training plane, although the 90 hp Curtiss OX-5 engines had been replaced by 150 hp Hispano-Suizas. The more modern types of planes for training were still in the experimental stage. The Jennies had been designed during the war and they were becoming obsolete, but it is doubtful whether a better training ship will ever be built, although undoubtedly the newest type is much safer. Jennies were underpowered; they were somewhat tricky and they splintered badly when they crashed hard; but when a cadet learned to fly one of them, well, he was just about capable of flying anything on wings with a reasonable degree of safety.
I had been particularly fortunate in my assignment of an instructor. Sergeant Winston held the record for flying time in the army with about thirty-three hundred hours. He was an excellent pilot and knew how to instruct if he wanted to. When my turn came he asked me how much flying time I had had and after I told him about three hundred and twenty-five hours he turned the controls over to me with orders to take the ship around and land it. I had some difficulty in flying with my right hand. The wartime ships which I was accustomed to were built to be flown with the left, but after the Armistice it was decided to change the throttle over to the other side on the theory that the right hand was the natural one to fly with. After three landings, however, Sergeant Winston got out of the cockpit and told me to fly around for thirty minutes and try to get used to right handed piloting.
When we were not flying we were gathered around the stage house watching the progress of our classmates and learning how to turn the propellers over in starting the engine without placing ourselves in a position to be struck in case it kicked backwards. To a pilot, the propeller is the most dangerous part of his plane, and is a constant source of worry to him when his ship is on the ground among people who vie with each other in seeing how close they can stand to the whirring blade while the motor is still running. Then there is usually a contest to see who can be first to move it up and down after it stops turning over.
A cadet is usually given about ten hours of dual instruction before he is allowed to solo. The instructor first takes him up and after flying around for a few minutes, allows the student to take hold of the controls to get an approximate idea of the amount and direction of movement necessary for gentle banks and turns. Then the instructor throws his hands up in the air in full view of the student—the signal that he has turned over entire control of the ship. The cadet is given the opportunity suddenly to realize that flying is not a simple operation of pulling the stick back to go up and pushing it forward to come down, but that an instinctive and synchronized movement of all controls is necessary even to keep the machine in level flight.
For a moment after the pilot turns over the controls the plane keeps on a straight course, then the nose begins to lose its normal position on the horizon, a wing dips down, and a blast of air rushes in from one side of the cockpit. Carefully learned instructions are forgotten and the controls serve only to move the earth still farther from its proper position. All this time the instructor’s hands are gripping the top of the cowling. The cadet realizes that it is up to himself in some manner to level the plane out into a normal flying position once more, not realizing for an instant that his instructor can operate the stick nearly as well with his knees as with his hand and that he has probably already saved the plane from falling into a spin several times.
After splashing around the sky in this manner for several minutes the pilot brings his ship back into position and pulling up into a stall with a throttled motor, roars back his instructions at a cadet who is much more absorbed in watching the approaching ground below than in listening to his instructor. When forty-five minutes have passed, the ship is flown back and landed near the stage house where the next cadet, with helmet and goggles adjusted, is waiting for his turn in the air. The first climbs out and takes his place on the bench surrounding the base of the building and the plane is off to repeat the performance over again.
At the end of ten hours, if the cadet is not capable of soloing he is in grave danger of being washed out as a flyer. However, if the instructor believes that a little more time will be sufficient and that the student has shown signs of eventually becoming a military pilot, the dual instruction may be continued for three or four more hours.
At Brooks when an instructor came to the conclusion that one of his students would never master the art of flying quickly enough to keep up with the standard of the class, he turned the cadet over for a check hop with the stage commander who was always a pilot of long experience. Few cadets ever passed this check; if the stage commander believed that any cadet had been misjudged, however, he had authority to place him back on flying status for further instruction. If the commander concurred with the decision of the instructor, he recommended the cadet for a final check on headquarters stage with the chief check pilot. The decision of this officer was final and to be returned to flying after a flight with him was an occurrence seldom recorded in cadet history. After failing his final check flight a cadet was ordered to appear before a board of officers known as the “Benzine Board.” If he was reporting for misconduct or academic deficiency there was still some slight hope of beating the board, but if it was for inability to fly, the decision of “washout” was a foregone conclusion.
The washing out for our class commenced in earnest with the approach of solo flights and the returns from our examinations. I was fortunate enough to have passed them and my previous flying experience kept me from worrying on any other account during the first part of our training.
There was no disgrace in washing out. It simply meant in the majority of cases, that the cadet was not especially adapted to flying and he was sent back to his point of enlistment with an honorable discharge and the advice to take up some other form of occupation.
Curtiss Field, L. I.—Getting ready for the takeoff. “The weather was pretty sick”
Curtiss Field, L. I.—Just before starting on the big adventure
Our first “Benzine Board” met about a month after the start of school and reconvened more or less regularly from that time until we were ready to be graduated from the primary school and transferred to Kelly for instructions on service types of planes.
With the washing out process our barracks became less congested. It was not unusual to see the fellows on both sides pack up and cheerfully depart for destinations in different corners of the United States. After a few weeks there would be one bunk standing where eight had been—this in some part of the barracks on which the decisions of the “Benzine Board” had fallen hardest. In another case an entire bay was washed out and left entirely vacant. We never knew who would be next to go, and we could only continue to plug along as best we could with our flying and study a little harder on our ground-school work while we waited for the almost weekly list of washouts to be published on our bulletin board. We were in the full swing of cadet life and under the constant apprehension which accompanies it.
Along with our trials and worries went the fascination of flying together with the priceless goal before us of graduation with an Air Service commission. The wings of the service would be for those of us who were able to survive the rigid training and discipline of a year in the United States Army flying schools.
Always there was something new to look forward to. The start of actual flying; the first solo; learning various stunts and maneuvers; transitions from Jennies to faster and quicker ships; and finally our transfer to Kelly Field, the alma mater of Army fliers.
The Army Air Service was an exacting instructor. There was no favoritism shown and no amount of politics could keep a cadet from being washed out if he fell down in flying. As a result, only a small percent of those entering Brooks ever graduate from Kelly. In our class of one hundred and four, thirty-three finished their primary training and only eighteen of us received our wings. This appears on the surface to be an unusually low number but as a result of the rigid requirements and careful instruction, our Air Corps schools rank among the best in the world today. They have an extremely low fatality list, not one man in our class being seriously injured.
Probably the most exciting period in our flying training was when the soloing began. The instructor would climb out of his cockpit, tie a white handkerchief on the rudder as a danger signal, indicating that the ship was usually out of control, and signal his student to take off. In some cases the plane would take off nicely, circle the field and make a comparatively good landing. In others the landing would amount to a series of bounces, resulting in the necessity of a second or third attempt before the wheels would hold contact with the ground more than a fraction of a second at a time. In one particular instance, after several futile attempts to get down, the cadet began circling around overhead. His apparent idea was to clinch the chances of landing on his next attempt by waiting until the gasoline ran out. His instructor was out in the field trying to flag him down without the slightest success and for half an hour we watched the ship intently for the first signs of a lowering gas supply; hoping that the fuel would not hold out much longer as the morning flying period was nearly over and we were all anxious to see him land. After half an hour, however, he apparently regained enough courage and determination to make a last attempt at a landing, which turned out much more successfully than the others.
When the solo flights were more or less successfully completed the flying instruction was divided into two periods of forty-five minutes each. One of these was used for dual and the other for solo practice.
The instructor would attempt to smooth out the rough points in his students’ flying and demonstrate the method of going through new maneuvers so that the cadet could be given the opportunity to go up alone and try out the maneuvers for himself.
“I didn’t use my periscope all the time, but could look out my windows”
Paris, France—A salutation from M. Bleriot
One of the first lessons was the “three sixty”—so named because its completion required a total change in direction of three hundred and sixty degrees. The cadet would take off and climb to eight hundred or a thousand feet. The higher he went the less difficulty he had in properly completing the maneuver. Then he would fly into the wind directly over a landing “T” in the center of the field. As the plane passed over the “T” he throttled his motor and made a quick bank either to the right or left depending upon his preliminary instructions. The object was to make a complete circle and land without using the motor, bringing the plane to a stop beside the “T.”
“One eightys” were the next requirement and they were probably the cause of more crashes than any other maneuver. They were started in the same manner as the “three sixty,” but with the plane heading down wind and at only five hundred feet altitude. They required quick manipulation of controls and a steep bank into the field just before landing.
Next came acrobatics. Loops, spins, barrel rolls, Jenny Immelmans, figure-eights, wing-overs, and reversements, every one of which each cadet had to master thoroughly during his course at Brooks.
After the first few weeks had passed we became more or less accustomed to life in the cadet detachment, and found a little time now and then to look around the country and even spend a night in San Antonio. Our examinations were purposely given on Saturday morning so that we would not spend the weekend studying. It was well known that too much studying affected a cadet’s flying and the school schedule was arranged with that in mind.
Our day began with first call at five-forty-five and flying started about seven. At eleven we returned to the barracks and from one to five o’clock was devoted to ground school. After supper we could study until bed check at ten o’clock. Plenty of sleep is a necessity for the student pilot, and that fact is recognized nowhere more than in the army schools. Every week night at ten p.m. the cadet officer of the day checks each bunk and turns in the names of any vacant ones. Some of our academic subjects, such as aerodynamics and machine guns required nearly all of our time after school because of approaching examinations, whereas others were comparatively easy and the classroom instruction was sufficient in itself. When we were not studying there were always plenty of other things to attract our attention. If one of the boys left the post, as sometimes happened, he often returned to find his belongings heaped together in the middle of the floor with the army cots piled on top. Several times some cadet returned at midnight to find his equipment carefully transferred and set up on the roof or in the mess-hall. Another one of the favorite sports was to put a hose in the bed of a sound sleeper at two a.m. or, if he slept with his mouth open, to fill it from a tube of shaving cream or hair grease.
One of the fellows found a scorpion in his bed and each night for a week thereafter looked through the bedding for another, but finally became careless and forgot to look. His nearest neighbor promptly placed a number of grasshoppers between the sheets near the foot of the bed.
Another evening it was reported that three polecats had crawled into a culvert in front of the barracks. For an hour we attempted to smoke them out. When that failed the fire department was called and we washed them out. The smoke had evidently taken effect, however, and soon three dead polecats came floating out from the culvert. The next problem was how to make use of such possibilities. That question was worthy of a most careful consideration. After a survey of the barracks we found that our cadet first sergeant was in San Antonio. There was scarcely one of us who did not have some small score to settle with him so we took one of the pillows from his bed and after removing the pillow case, placed it behind one of the polecats. The desired results were then obtained by stepping on the back end of the cat, and after cautiously inserting the pillow back in its case, we replaced it on the first sergeant’s bunk. The results were far above expectation. One by one the occupants of that bay arose and carried their cots outside, until by midnight, when our sergeant returned, there were only a half dozen bunks left including his own. By that time the odor had permeated through the other bedding and he was unable to locate the pillow as being the primary cause of offense. Any night for nearly two weeks thereafter our first sergeant and his cot might be located out behind the barracks, and the inspection of quarters, which was to have been held the following morning, was postponed indefinitely.
During our last six weeks at Brooks, life became much less difficult. Most of us who had survived the check pilots and “Benzine Board” were reasonably sure of graduating and although our studies were just as exacting as ever, we were able to absorb them much more easily. Also we had passed our primary flying tests and were making cross country flights in TW-3’s; and learning formation flying in Voughts. And finally we were given a few hours in De Havilands in preparation for the advanced training at Kelly.
We were paired up for the cross country flights. One of us flew on the way out, while the second acted as observer. On the return flight we traded about, so that each achieved an equal amount of experience, both as an observer and as a pilot. These trips were usually laid out in a triangular course, and included landing at each corner of the triangle.
While on one of our first trips from the home airdrome, we landed in the designated field alongside of a road just as a load of watermelons was passing by, so we carried several of them back to the Detachment in our plane.
Always there was some new experience, always something interesting going on to make the time spent in Brooks and Kelly one of the banner years in a pilot’s life. The training is rigid and difficult but there is none better. A cadet must be willing to forget all other interest in life when he enters the Texas flying schools and he must enter with the intention of devoting every effort and all of the energy during the next twelve months towards a single goal. But when he receives the wings at Kelly a year later he has the satisfaction of knowing that he has graduated from one of the world’s finest flying schools.