Fledglings

At 6:15 of a February morning, the wind whistles off the snow and ice of the Flatbush meadows. The barracks at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, windows open, are very, very cold. And cold seems the heart of Sergeant Earl Sanborn, USMC, who on the dot of 6:15 clumps into the bunk room in his undershirt, pipes two shrill blasts on his whistle, bellows: "Hit the deck!"

Thus starts the day for some 40 of the Navy's fledgling fliers. At 13 Naval Reserve Aviation Bases, strung across the U. S. from Opa Locka, Fla. to Oakland, Calif., the day starts in similar fashion for 380 young men, serving a 30-day apprenticeship for flight training.

Sleepily squirming into their warm flight jackets, the students straggle below for a muster. A quarter-mile run around the barracks gives them an eye-opener before they shave, make up their double-decker bunks, sit down to a hearty breakfast served up by corpulent civilian Concessionaire Moe Greenspan, better known as Moe the Greasepan, who loads their stomachs with 80 pounds of food a day, hears more complaints about the chow than a Congressman. By 7:45 they are pushing their yellow biplane trainers out of the hangars for the day's flying. It is still very, very cold as they start the motors, and they shiver and mutter as they catch the blast from the props.

During the day the student pilots have an hour of instruction in flying, an hour in sending and receiving International Morse Code by radio, an hour on other ground-school work--getting acquainted with aircraft and engines, tinkering with the mechanism of a Browning .30-calibre machine gun which they have to learn to take apart and put together, naming 95 separate parts. The rest of the time until they are secured (released) for the day at 4:30, they spend working on the starting line, getting the ships off, gassing them every two hours, wiping them shiny again at the end of the day.

Purpose of this routine: to weed out the impossibles before students go on to more advanced training at Pensacola or at the Navy's two new training bases at Jacksonville and Corpus Christi. Since it costs the Navy some $15,000 to educate a pilot for officer duty with the fleet, it pays the Navy to pick & choose.

Essential prerequisites for naval aviation training are two years of college credits ("or the equivalent"), three letters of recommendation, an age between 20 and 27. Next comes a stiff physical examination (with emphasis on eyes and heart) on which about 50% are turned down. A successful applicant becomes one of the flying cadets now enlisted as seamen second class for elimination flight training. During the first month he gets ten hours of flight instruction. If he manages to solo, he gets a crack at advanced training and a commission on graduation (but with Jacksonville and Corpus Christi still abuilding, there is a two-to-three-month wait).

With Navy expansion galloping full speed, there is hope of an air force of 17,000 pilots to fly the contemplated 15,-ooo planes. This schedule means a vast increase over the 473 turned out last year, the 6,720 expected this year. Already the elimination classes are being hiked from 40 to 100 a month. Before the first month is over, perhaps 20% will be washed out as unsuitable for further training.

From the first day of arrival, talk is almost entirely about flying, with women or food a poor second. The future is invariably referred to in terms of Pensacola --although classes are already being routed to Jacksonville, will soon go to Corpus Christi. The young Navy and Marine instructors--all Pensacola men themselves--scold their pupils with: "At Pensacola they'll give you hell if you let that right wing drop like that." "Just try and remember that you can't go through Pensacola flying along at any altitude you think is" pleasant. Damn it, keep the ship at 800 feet and hold your throttle down to 1,600 revs."

To a student new to flying, the simple Navy trainers have more confusing gadgets than a dog has fleas. Just as he gets his air speed right, his altitude goes off; he corrects his altitude and loses his direction; he corrects his direction and flounders like a walloping window-blind. But with an instructor in the front cockpit ready to grab the controls in crises, flying seems as safe as motoring. Then, suddenly, the tenth hour is over, and two half-hour check flights with strange instructors begin. If a student gets an "up" (the instructor signifies success by thumbs up), he is taken to the end of the field, calmly asked: "Well, do you think you can handle her?"

The instructor is calculatingly casual. But the big moment has come. Somewhere back in the student's mind the thought rolls turgidly: "Can I solo? Will I make a-bull--maybe crack up?" But his conscious mind is busy with the job ahead. "This is it," he says to himself, and shoves the throttle gently open. Minus the instructor, the plane is light, gets its tail up fast. Busy with the job of getting off the ground, the Navy fledgling is in the air before he has time to miss his company. Then, circling the field alone, he notices that the helmeted head in front is gone--no one to bellow at his mistakes, the relief of doing what he wants, being in complete charge. Once around the field and he comes in for a landing, again becomes too busy to notice his loneliness. He never really appreciates what he has done until his feet are back on solid ground. The big thrill is talking about it afterwards.

Last week at Floyd Bennett, five of the 40 members of the Jan. 15 class made their solos without mishap, while the rest entered the last laps of their course. Down in Washington, Congress was haggling over problems as vital to their future as their next bimonthly $37.50 paycheck, but no mention of the Lend-Lease Bill invaded their conversation. When a stray newspaper reached the barracks, the funnies and sport section were devoured, the front pages left untouched. Otherwise, they just played bridge, shot the wind about flying, women, food.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.