V
Training at Brooks Field
I arrived at Brooks Field on March 15th, 1924, but was not enlisted as a Flying Cadet until March 19th. Ordinarily a cadet enlists at the nearest station to his home and is given free transportation to his post of service and back to the enlistment point after his discharge. By enlisting at Brooks I was entitled to no transportation allowance except possibly bus fare back from Kelly where I graduated a year later.
There were one hundred and four of us in all, representing nearly every state in the Union. We filled the cadet barracks to overflowing. There were two cots to each window and some of us were even quartered in the recreation hall. We were a carefree lot, looking forward to a year of wonderful experiences before we were graduated as second lieutenants and given our wings. Nearly all of us were confident that we would be there to graduate a year later. We had already passed the rigid physical and mental entrance examinations which so many of the other applicants had failed. We had no doubt of our ability to fly although most of us had never flown before, and we had yet to get our first taste of the life of a flying cadet.
By the time we had been in the barracks a few hours stories began circulating around which originated from conversations with the last class of cadets who were waiting to be transferred to the advanced flying school at Kelly.
Rumors of “Benzine Boards” and “washouts,” “academic work” and “eight-hour examinations,” “one eightys,” and “check pilots,” “walls with ears” and “cadet etiquette”—these and a hundred other strange terms were condescendingly passed down to us by the old cadets of six months experience. Someone remarked that less than forty percent of us could expect to finish the primary training at Brooks and that probably half of those would be washed out at Kelly.
By bed check that night we had already begun to feel the apprehension which is a part of a flying cadet’s life from his first day at Brooks until he has received his pilot’s wings at Kelly.
Our actual flying training was to begin on the first of April. Two weeks were required to become organized and learn the preliminary duties of a cadet. During these two weeks we were inoculated against typhoid and smallpox at the hospital, taught the rudiments of cadet etiquette, given fatigue duty, required to police the grounds surrounding our barracks, inspected daily, and instructed and given examinations in five subjects. In our spare time we were allowed to look around the post or take the bus to San Antonio, provided, however, that we were back in bed not later than ten o’clock on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights. At all other times we could stay out as late as we desired.
When we did have a few spare moments in the afternoon, they were usually spent in trying to “chizzle” a hop from one of the instructors on the line.
Early one morning we were allowed to take the training ships out and push them to the line for the old cadets to fly. But when one of the planes nosed over after eight husky rookies heaved up on the hundred and fifty pound tail, it was decided to put us to work moving hydrogen cylinders for a balloon ascension.
As the first of April approached we were looking forward to the start of actual flying with great anticipation. Coupled with this was the anxiety of waiting for the returns from our examination papers, the failure of any two of which would be sufficient cause for their owner to be washed out from the courses.
The flying instruction was carried on from two stages or different sections of the field. I was assigned to B stage which was about a half mile out in the field from the cadet barracks. Each instructor had about six cadets assigned to him, and early in the morning on the first day of April, our instruction commenced. I was assigned to Sergeant Winston, together with five other cadets. We pushed his instruction plane out from the hangar to the line. Sergeant Winston picked out one of us, told him to get into the rear cockpit and was off. The rest of us walked over to B stage, watching for tarantulas along the road on the way.
In 1924, the Curtiss Jenny was still used by the Army for a training plane, although the 90 hp Curtiss OX-5 engines had been replaced by 150 hp Hispano-Suizas. The more modern types of planes for training were still in the experimental stage. The Jennies had been designed during the war and they were becoming obsolete, but it is doubtful whether a better training ship will ever be built, although undoubtedly the newest type is much safer. Jennies were underpowered; they were somewhat tricky and they splintered badly when they crashed hard; but when a cadet learned to fly one of them, well, he was just about capable of flying anything on wings with a reasonable degree of safety.
I had been particularly fortunate in my assignment of an instructor. Sergeant Winston held the record for flying time in the army with about thirty-three hundred hours. He was an excellent pilot and knew how to instruct if he wanted to. When my turn came he asked me how much flying time I had had and after I told him about three hundred and twenty-five hours he turned the controls over to me with orders to take the ship around and land it. I had some difficulty in flying with my right hand. The wartime ships which I was accustomed to were built to be flown with the left, but after the Armistice it was decided to change the throttle over to the other side on the theory that the
