Postwar era Formation On 1 July 1946, Army Air Forces Training Command was re-designated as
Air Training Command (ATC). : 331st Army Air Forces (later Air Force) Base Unit : 3500th Pilot Training Wing (Advanced, Multi-Engine) • Goodfellow Field (later
Goodfellow Air Force Base), Texas : 2533d Army Air Forces Base Unit : 3545th Pilot Training Wing (Basic) : 3006th Army Air Forces Base Unit : 3595th Pilot Training Wing (Advanced, Single-Engine) : 2456th Army Air Forces (later Air Force) Base Unit : 3585th Pilot Training Wing (Liaison-Helicopter) In addition, the pilot training program was consolidated into two classes, Basic and Advanced. Also, the wide variety of training aircraft were reduced to streamline the training program. Jet training aircraft and courses were also added, along with helicopter training as the new wartime technologies were added into the postwar Air Force inventory as fully operational weapons systems. Austere postwar military budgets led to additional consolidations and all of the flying programs suffered from shortages of aircraft replacement parts, qualified maintenance personnel, and instructors...problems that existed with the schools throughout the early postwar era. Technical Division was given the responsibility of assembling and training two specialized arctic training teams. Their mission was to indoctrinate USAAF (later USAF) units and individuals destined for polar assignments in personal survival and in the care and use of equipment in cold weather climates. In March 1947, budgetary cuts caused a major reduction in force of graded civilian employees. Technical Division had no choice but to fill empty civilian instructor slots with military personnel. That left the schools with a high percentage of instructors with little, if any, teaching experience and, in some cases, very limited knowledge of course material. In fact, many of these new instructors had just graduated from the courses they were now expected to teach. Indoctrination Division consolidated all basic training at what became
Lackland Air Force Base in 1946. Separation criteria were progressively lowered for both officer and enlisted personnel as part of the postwar demobilization. Training Command losses from separations were not made up by gains from recruits and returnees and shortages were particularly acute in maintenance, mess, clerical, and medical personnel. In 1948, Air Training Command began rebuilding its training complex, but the command was still reeling from the heavy losses it sustained in its instructor force by demobilization.
Berlin Airlift By 1948, ATC was still reeling from the heavy losses it sustained in its instructor force in 1947. Then the personnel withdrawals that had to be made in support of the Berlin Airlift and the expansion of Strategic Air Command combined to handicap even more the training bases at the same time that pilot production increased. Plans called for ATC to add five additional flight training bases and by year's end the command had already activated four:
Perrin AFB,
Texas;
Enid AFB,
Oklahoma;
Waco AFB,
Texas; and
Las Vegas AFB,
Nevada.
Korean War fighters at
Nellis AFB, Nevada, 1950. The outbreak of the
Korean War on 25 June 1950 indicated that ATC would soon see an increase in training requirements. By 1 July, the Air Force had directed ATC to accelerate training to fill the needs of a new 95-wing Air Force. A few days later, ATC found itself with a new mission: combat crew training. ATC's primary mission in the Korean War was to train pilots, navigators and enlisted aircrew for combat and to fill the need of the expanded 95-wing USAF. The first school opened at
Nellis AFB,
Nevada. In August, the Air Staff raised the rate of pilot production from 3,000 to 4,000 per year, and by the end of the year, it had climbed to 7,200. At the same time, the need for training technicians also rose. As it had in
World War II, ATC met the increased training requirements by contracting with civilian schools. These were former World War II pilot training airfields that were placed in reserve status after the war. Air Training Command applied the "Air Base" designator to these military-supervised/contractor-operated flying training bases. At about the same time, ATC redesignated the 3595th Pilot Training Wing (Advanced Single-Engine) as the 3595th Training Wing (Combat Crew). On 17 July 1950, Nellis AFB began a special training program to provide 115 combat-ready
F-51 Mustang pilots for
Far East Air Forces and 92 combat-ready
F-80 Shooting Star pilots to serve as replacements for casualties in the first months of the Korean campaign. The announcement of unlimited recruiting in December 1950 caused major problems for
Lackland AFB. Clothing and bedding were in short supply, and it got to the point where new recruits were issued only the minimum essentials. Clothing stocks had to be drastically reduced at other ATC bases so recruits could receive essential clothing—although it was impossible to provide exact sizes. Lackland AFB had only been constructed to handle about 28,000 recruits, but by January 1951 the number exceeded 70,000. Officials had no choice but to establish a tent city. Lackland AFB completely exhausted the Air Force's supply of steel folding cots and mattresses. Others had to make do with canvas cots. At one time, the base had almost 10,000 recruits sleeping on canvas cots, without mattresses. There was no time to prepare, and that meant the quality of training suffered...both flying and technical training. Because troops in the Far East received priority in the supply system, ATC also faced across-the-board shortages in equipment such as armament, radar, aircraft spares, maintenance items, clothing, bedding, and office equipment. Shortages of spare parts even caused a reduction in helicopter training at San Marcos AFB and B-29 training at Randolph AFB later in the war. As a direct result of the rapid expansion of the training needs of the Air Force as a result of the Korean War, ATC reversed its 1949 decision to eliminate training divisions and consolidate all command level organizations at its headquarters. Headquarters USAF approved the decentralization in early 1951. While ATC had sought numerical designations for its new air forces—Thirtieth Flying Training and Thirty-first Technical Training Air Forces—USAF officials recommended functional rather than numerical designations. Thus, ATC's new subordinate organizations became the
Flying Training Air Force (FTAF) and the
Technical Training Air Force. Plans called for FTAF to be headquartered at Randolph AFB and TTAF at Lowry AFB; however, the unexpected escalation of training at those bases meant facilities were not available. Thus, ATC established the FTAF headquarters at
Waco, Texas near
James Connally AFB, and TTAF took up residence at the Gulf Coast Military Academy near
Keesler AFB. A third organization, the
Crew Training Air Force, was activated on 16 March 1952 and headquartered at Randolph AFB. During the last half of 1952, however, the volume of training conducted steadily decreased as the supply of trained pilots and technicians met the Air Force demand in almost all areas. Air Training Command reached its Korean War peak of 176,446 personnel in June. With the end of the Korean War and cutbacks in the military budget afterwards, Air Training Command discontinued its basic training schools at Sampson and Parks AFB on 1 July 1956. Shortly after the beginning of the Korean War, the Air Staff transferred most of the combat aircrew training mission from the operational commands to ATC, placing an even heavier burden on the command. Air Force directed Air Training Command to double pilot production to 7,200 per year, and to increase technician production to 225,000 per year. With the end of the Korean War on 27 July 1953, Air Training Command again began to reduce its training activities. Many of the command's facilities were transferred to
Strategic Air Command (SAC) and
Tactical Air Command (TAC) in the 1950s. Over the next ten years, ATC reduced its bases from 43 to 16, and its personnel from 271,849 to 79,272. In large part this was due to the return of the crew training mission to the operational commands. In 1958, ATC returned bomber crew training to SAC and fighter crew training to TAC. One year later, the command began experimenting with eliminating propeller-driven aircraft from primary pilot training. "Project All-Jet" was a success, and in 1959, ATC began replacing the
North American T-28 "Trojan" propeller-driven trainer with the
Cessna T-37 "Tweety Bird" jet engine primary trainer. When president
Lyndon B. Johnson increased America's military involvement in
South Vietnam in 1965, there was a resultant increase in Air Force military and technical training. However, unlike previous wars, the
Vietnam War did not result in a drastic increase in the command's bases or personnel. This was because ATC reverted to a split-phase program of basic military training, and because the command's training philosophy was geared toward generalized rather than specialized technical training. Pilot training gradually increased as the war dragged on. But officials reassigned many of ATC's best instructor pilots to the operational commands, creating severe flying training difficulties. Then in 1969, ATC's involvement in a program of training and equipping the
Republic of Vietnam Air Force to become a self-sufficient, 40-squadron air force caused technical training production to surge by approximately 50 percent, to over 310,000. This increase, however, was not to last long. One change was in the command's approach to technical training. Poor retention rates and the generally lower quality of recruits prompted ATC to shift from a "career oriented" technical training philosophy to one of teaching only those tasks recruits needed during their first enlistment. This reduced the length of training while also lowering training costs. To supplement on-duty training, and in hopes of attracting higher-quality recruits, Air Force established the
Community College of the Air Force in 1972 as part of ATC. Other changes came out of the need to reduce training costs in order to fund the
F-15,
F-16 and
A-10 modernization programs. These included closing
Craig and
Webb Air Force Bases, increasing reliance on flight simulators, and reducing flying hours in undergraduate pilot training. Still another change was the way in which ATC conducted undergraduate navigator training. In 1978, navigator training shifted from generalized to specialized, with follow-on advanced training specific to the student's career track. During the military expansion of the
Reagan Administration in the early 1980s, ATC was able to improve training in several areas. The command added more flying hours to the pilot training program and extended the course by three weeks. In 1984, expanded training budgets allowed the command to change back to a philosophy of training technical personnel to the fullest extent possible, rather than limiting training to the skills needed only for the first enlistment. Technical training courses, especially those in "sortie-producing" specialties, were expanded from generalist courses to specialized instruction. By 1985, the average length for these courses had risen to nearly 17 weeks.
Persian Gulf War and post-Cold War reorganization of the 1990s In the midst of these world changes, the
Persian Gulf War erupted when
Saddam Hussein's Iraqi forces invaded
Kuwait on 2 August 1990. In support of wartime demands, ATC deployed over 3,000 command personnel to other commands. Then ATC called up 2,387 individual mobilization augmentee (IMA) Air Force Reservists and over 1,000 inactive Air Force Reservists and Air Force retirees to fill active duty positions vacated by wartime deployments. Air Training Command got on with the task of consolidating training and in Fiscal Years 1993 and 1994, executed
BRAC-directed closures of
Chanute AFB,
Mather AFB,
Williams AFB, and
Lowry AFB. However, despite the return to tightened budgets, ATC did not back off from its commitment to fully train personnel to be mission ready upon arrival at their first operational assignment. An especially important Year of Training initiative was the recommendation to create a single, coherent education and training structure for officer, enlisted, and civilian personnel. As a result of this recommendation, Air Force again merged
Air University and ATC, redesignating the command as the
Air Education and Training Command (AETC) on 1 July 1993.
Lineage • Established as
Air Corps Flying Training Command on 23 January 1942 : Re-designated:
Army Air Forces Flying Training Command c. 15 March 1942 : Re-designated:
Army Air Forces Training Command on 31 July 1943 : Re-designated:
Air Training Command on 1 July 1946 : Re-designated:
Air Education and Training Command on 1 July 1993
Assignments ; As designated Air Training Command • Headquarters,
United States Army Air Forces, 1 July 1946 • Headquarters
United States Air Force, 17 September 1947 – 1 July 1993
Headquarters ; As designated Air Training Command •
Barksdale Field (later, AFB), Louisiana, 1 July 1946 •
Scott Air Force Base, Illinois 17 October 1949 •
Randolph AFB, Texas, 15 September 1957 – 1 July 1993 ==Major Training Units and Bases==