Pilot Shortage

Warplanes practically butted one another, so fast did they wheel off assembly lines and out to the edges of flying fields. There were scads of planes on hand, scads more to come.

But pilots to fly those planes was another matter. The Army Air Forces vowed that its training program was geared to match the plane output. But the factories were now outstripping the schools. Planes were built faster than the Flying Training Command could create crews.

The lag was discernible six months ago. Now it could no longer be ignored. Lines of planes sat squattily outside factory doors, their engines snugged into tarpaulins, waiting for pilots to fly them away. Grey-crowned oldtimers in the flying business were being hired for ferry work. Commercial airline pilots were hustled into the Army's transoceanic service.

Replacement Crews. This week the Army faced a problem in simple mathematics. Factory output for 1942 and 1943 is expected to reach 185,000 combat aircraft. Even if half of that is lent-leased, the Army and the Navy between them will still have 92,500 combat planes. Army schools will graduate something less than 30,000 pilots this year, must step up their training pace next year. The rub: in the tension of long flights and in the electric strain of combat, pilots tire. Flight surgeons ground them, make them rest. But planes don't get tired. Back from a mission, refueled, rearmed, a plane is ready to fly again. Consequently, every plane needs one or more replacement crews.

The Army's stumbling block is training facilities for pilots. Of potential manpower there is aplenty. In Bangor, Beloit and Berkeley young men with sound bodies and good heads, who had passed their mental and physical examinations, cooled their heels at home, waiting to be called.

Average wait: three months. The 60-odd schooling fields of the Flying Training Command could not absorb the candidates as fast as they were needed or as fast as they applied.

One Pilot, One Year. Training takes time. The rule for a superior air force is that an aviation cadet has to have nine months of instruction before he can wear wings, three more months of tactical seasoning before he may fight abroad.

Added headaches for the harried Training Command are: 1) a shortage of flight instructors; 2) a tardy start on a campaign for glider pilots; 3) a growing need of liaison and scout pilots by the ground forces (infantry, artillery, tank outfits).

This training situation is somewhat on the mend. At scores of civilian fields, a new supplemental pilot program was under way this week, managed by CAA.

Goal: to supply 20,000 reservists to the Navy, 6,500 instructors, an unspecified number of glider and liaison pilots to the Army. But the overmastering, overall fact about the U.S. airplane program is that the U.S. is woefully short of pilots--measured against planes--and will be woefully short for months to come.

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