Historically, OCS has provided the means by which the U.S. Army could generate large numbers of junior officers during periods of increasing personnel requirements, typically during wars. Prior to 1973, OCS was branch-specific, at one time there being eight separate schools; by 1968, the Army had consolidated OCS. Candidates being commissioned in the combat support branches were sent to
Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and would be trained as Combat Engineer Officers. Upon graduation, graduates other than Engineers would be commissioned in their assigned branch and sent to an officer's basic course. Candidates being commissioned in the combat arms branches would be sent to Infantry OCS at
Fort Benning, Georgia or possibly Artillery OCS at
Fort Sill, Oklahoma. At that time, OCS consisted of twenty-three weeks of classroom and field training. The Vietnam war brought a significant expansion of the program. In 1973, OCS was made branch immaterial and was consolidated into two courses taught at Fort Benning, and another at
Fort McClellan,
Alabama for female
officer candidates; the course length was reduced to 14-weeks. In 1976, the OCS at Fort Benning integrated female candidates and became the only OCS left in the active Army, with the closure of the WAC School. The term "90-day wonders", both as a pejorative and term of affection, has been intermittently applied to junior officers commissioned through OCS since World War II.
World War II era Officer Candidate School was first proposed in June 1938, as the Army began expanding in anticipation of hostilities when a plan for an officer-training program was submitted to the Chief of Infantry by
Brigadier General Asa L. Singleton, Commandant of the Infantry School. No action was taken until July 1940, however, when Brigadier General
Courtney Hodges, Assistant Commandant of the
Infantry School, presented a revised plan to (then) Brigadier General
Omar Bradley, Commandant of the Infantry School. In July 1941, the OCS stood up as the
Infantry, Field Artillery, and
Coastal Artillery Officer Candidate Schools, each respectively located at Fort Benning, Fort Sill, and
Fort Monroe,
Virginia. . In addition to the aforementioned programs, there were Officer Candidate Schools stood up for other branches, in particular, the
Signal Corps at
Fort Monmouth,
New Jersey. Due to the rapid creation of these programs because of wartime necessity, and then the rapid closures or restructuring soon after the end of the war, historical records were not always created or adequately maintained and little is known about some of these branch specific commissioning courses. The Signal Corps however has a full list of records going back to its very first class, which graduated 336 Officers on 30 September 1941. The records are maintained by the U.S. Army Signal Corps OCS Association, which is actively collecting and archiving the personal history of many of the over 27,000 Signal Corps OCS graduates that went through its WWII, Korean War, and Vietnam War programs. The Signal Corps website includes a list of every U.S. Army Signal Corps OCS graduate, the date of their graduation, as well as all TAC Officers, training school CO's, and most enlisted men who served the Signal Corps' OCS training programs. In addition to the Signal Corps, several other units have alumni organizations that have maintained informal records and preserved documentation of the courses. On 27 September 1941, the first Infantry OCS class graduated 171 second lieutenants; 204 men started the 17-week course in July. Testament to the ability of OCS to produce new second lieutenants quickly can be found in War Department decision that ROTC could not fulfill the national demand for officers; so in May 1943, the advanced course in ROTC was suspended and basic course graduates were immediately sent to OCS so they could be commissioned sooner. During the war, the Army's policy of racial segregation continued among enlisted members; Army training policy, however, provided that blacks and whites would train together in officer candidate schools (beginning in 1942). Officer Candidate School was the Army's first formal experiment with integration. Black and white candidates shared officer's quarters, with bunkmates assigned alphabetically, regardless of their race, and all of the candidates trained together. Despite this integrated training, in most instances, the graduates would go on to join racially segregated units. The "wash-out" rate was nearly identical to the men's programs, at roughly 37%, during its first four years; an alarming statistic to observers of both programs. By 1954 WAC OCS had been closed and merged with a commissioning program for female direct commissions, due to the low numbers of women attending the WAC OCS course, due in part to tightened standards for selection – in response to investigations of the washout rates. On 4 August 1953, the Department of the Army reduced OCS from eight to three programs: Infantry, Artillery, and Engineer, finally closing Engineer OCS in July 1954, leaving only the Infantry and Field Artillery schools open. With the onset of the Vietnam War, however, the OCS program was again expanded with officer candidates undergoing a grueling 23-week program of instruction with an extremely high
attrition rate which was designed to prepare young officers to be platoon leaders in a demanding Vietnam jungle environment. In September 1965, Engineer OCS reopened at
Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and before closing for good in 1971, over 10,000 Engineer Officers had been commissioned. As the war in Korea edged into 1953, several classes of Infantry School OCS students were given the authorization to transfer to the Medical Service Corps upon graduation. These selected officers (with previous medical experience) were assigned to Korea (after a short training course at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas), with the explicit duty of trying to keep the direct inductee Medical Officers alive. This was necessary because of the shortage of medical officers and the lack of combat preparation training provided to them after their direct induction into the Army and their immediate assignment to Korea. At the height of the
Vietnam War, Infantry OCS produced 7,000 officers annually from five student battalions, all located at Fort Benning. Also, during the war, a female OCS was once again established; it was stood up at Fort McClellan, Alabama, as part of the WAC Center and School. Other OCS programs were located at
Fort Gordon, Georgia (Signal Corps); Fort Sill, Oklahoma (Artillery), Fort Lee, Virginia (Quarter Master), Fort Eustis, Virginia (Transportation), Fort Knox, Kentucky (Armor), Fort Belvoir, Virginia (Engineer) and Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland (Ordnance). In April 1973, a branch immaterial OCS was established at Fort Benning, ending the Infantry and Field Artillery based courses. In 1976, with the end of the gender-separate Army, the women's OCS was merged with the branch immaterial male course, creating a program very similar to the modern OCS. The
United States Military Academy at
West Point, New York, also admitted its first female cadets in 1976. However, due to the length of instruction there (4 years), the newly gender-integrated Officer Candidate School had the distinction of commissioning a female second lieutenant before USMA. ==List of Historical OCS Programs==