United States Army Air Forces Contract Flying School Airfields

With the consolidation of pilot training by the United States Army Air Corps in 1931, nearly all flying training had taken place at Randolph Field, near San Antonio, Texas. During the 1930s, Randolph had produced about 500 new pilots per year, which was adequate for the peacetime air corps. With war clouds gathering in Europe, especially after the 1938 Munich Agreement, General Henry H. Arnold, the Chief of Staff of the Air Corps, realized that the Army was going to have to increase the number of its pilots in case of a general war breaking out again. As a result, Arnold and his command staff developed a plan to supplement the training at Randolph with military pilot training conducted by the civil flight schools in the United States. Trainers used were primarily Fairchild PT-19s, PT-17 Stearmans and Ryan PT-22s, although a wide variety of other types could be found at the airfields. The primary training syllabus was initially twelve weeks in length including 60 hours of flight time and 225 hours of ground training. However this was changed by the Army as the situation required. Although the number of flight hours remained at 60 throughout the war, the demands of the increasing pilot training rate resulted in the primary training to be reduced to ten weeks in 1940, then reduced to nine weeks in 1942. German DFS-230 combat gliders were used in the invasion of Belgium in May 1940 when they landed on top of the Eben Emael Fort and captured it. They were also used in the invasion of Crete. These actions led to the British and later American interest in Combat Gliders and their integration into their armed forces. As part of the training program, cadets learned to perform maintenance and, in an emergency, to rebuild wrecked gliders. This was a relatively simple operation, considering that the primary glider consisted of little more than a shell, equipped with radio, wheels, and brakes. Once the Glider Pilot Cadet successfully completed their primary training, they moved on to advanced training, taught by AAF instructors at several military glider schools using the CG-4A Waco and British Airspeed Horsas that the pilots would eventually fly into combat during several operations primarily in the European Theater. Once in operational Troop Carrier squadrons, the gliders and their pilots were initially established as separate flights in the squadron organization. However, in late 1943, it was decided that having a separate glider force within the Troop Carrier squadrons, it was decided to end the separate glider instruction program and integrate the glider flying and maintenance training program into the Troop Carrier training program. The contract Glider Schools were subsequently closed or converted into Primary Flight Schools and all glider training was conducted by military glider pilot instructors at schools at Army Air Bases. Closure During the course of the war, the schools graduated approximately 250,000 student pilots. All of the CFS's were inactivated by the end of the war, and were either turned over to the War Assets Administration (WAA) for disposal, or sold back to their previous private owners. Most today are small general aviation airports; some are major municipal airports, and some were abandoned with little or no evidence of their existence. ==List of Contract Flying Schools==