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Thanks guys, and what a years this cockade was used ?

 

Some information:

 

"This is for Army Cadets - Prior to the end of 1943, Scott Field received its radio students from Basic Training Centers such as AAF Basic Training Center No. 4, Miami Beach, Florida. However, near the end of 1943, the AAF found itself with a large surplus of Aviation Cadets and began eliminating them from the Aviation Cadet program and sending them directly to tech schools.

 

After Pearl Harbor, the AAF launched a massive recruiting program to enlist every college student they get for their Aviation Cadet program. They knew that the flight training facilities were not adequate to train all that were recruited and planned to maintain a reserve of 54,000 men in the program at all time. The surplus were placed in the Air Force Enlisted Reserve to be held until needed. By October 1942, there were 50,000 in the reserve and another 20,000 already in the service that had qualified for the cadets waiting to begin flight training. At the beginning of 1943, there were 93,000 men waiting to commence flight training. The War Manpower Commission learned about the men in the reserve and brought pressure upon Hap Arnold to get them into the war effort. As a result, the AAF began calling them into active duty in February and by the end of March all of the cadets in the reserve had been called in.

 

But, the flight schools were full and Arnold had to have a place to put them. As a result, Arnold set up the College Training Detachments and expanded the basic training program to include the cadets to hold the cadets until training facilities were available. Calling all of the men into active duty at one time created a backlog problem that the AAF was never able to solve. Beginning at the end of 1943, the AAF determined that they had all the pilots that they needed, they had to cut back on pilot training and had to get rid of some of the cadets. Many of these surplus Avaiation Cadets ended up as enlisted men in the technical schools of the AAF such as Scott Field. Even worse, large numbers of them ended up in the Infantry.

 

From 1 September 1943 to 1 March 1944, 4,931 former cadets were entered into the radio mechanics school at Scott Field alone. In February 88.3 per cent of the students were ex-cadets. The schools student capacity was in excess of 14,000 which meant that something in excess of 12,000 washed out cadets were in the school at this time. This did not include several thousand in Area 4 waiting to be sent to radio operator-mechanics school. Almost all of them wanted to be reclassified. Many complained to the Inspector General's Office. Those with an educational background that qualified them for other duty tried to get reassigned to that work. "To all of these requests, the Army replied with a firm 'No'" The policy of "higher headquarters" to wash out Aviation Cadets and send them to technical schools created a great problem for Scott Field. (See: History of Scott field, 7-7-43 to 3-1-44, Ch. I, pps. 16-19, Ch. XVIII

 

When the Army Air Force recruited the college students in 1942 as Aviation Cadets from the colleges and universities across the land, they they told the students that they were needed as officers in the rapidly expanding Army Air Force and would become pilots, navigators, or bombardiers. Furthermore, those that did not choose to fly and had two years of college would become an Aviation Cadet Ground Crew and commissioned in armaments, communication, ,meteorology, photography, or engineering. But, when the AAF discovered at the end of 1943 that their over zealous recruiting and over estimation of loss rate had created a large surplus of pilots, they ignored all of the promises made to the college students and began transfering them to technical schools. This did not create a pleasAnt situation for the schools or the ex-cadets.

 

Font: http://genforum.genealogy.com/usaf/messages/162.html

 

Best regards,

 

Ricardo.

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More:

 

THE CADET PROGRAM - by LTC Leonard A. Blascovich, CAP - Member of the National Historical Committee - February 1994

 

With the pending war on the horizon, Great Britain also realized that there would be a need for pilots and aviation support people, what best to develop a cadre of well trained youth with knowledge in basic military and aviation experienced. The Royal Air Staff in 1939 formulated a program that would support the "Cadet" air training concept and developed an organization using reserve & auxiliary staff to support and manage it, the activity was named the Air Training Command (ATC).

 

The Canadians also developed a program along the lines of the ATC and formulated the Air League of Canada. Other branches of the British and Canadian Military saw the merits of the concepts of youth training and adopted programs that parallels the Royal Air Force & RCAF but were more structured to the Army and Navy needs.

 

CIVIL AIR PATROL: CAP itself officially started on December 1,1941, the civilian founders of the organization foresaw the need for a cadet corps. Then with the United States locked in a do-or-die struggle with Japan and Germany, the need became far more urgent than had ever been visualized in peace time.

 

Many letters of support from high level commanders including the USAAF, felt that CAP was the ideal program to have cadets. As Colonel Earle Johnson CAP's National Commander put it, "When the CAP was founded, it was able to undertake no more than the task of mobilizing the civilian planes and pilots, adding auxiliary workers, organizing them into military units, and putting them to work on missions such as coastal patrol and the courier service. But the broader plan of full-scale mobilization of civilian resources for the building of air power was never lost to view".

 

Correspondence was arriving daily at CAP National Headquarters in Washington DC asking for information, and requesting the CAP to organize the teen-agers into a corps. The letters were not written in vain. A new world -- the air world -- was opened wide to American youth on October 1, 1942. On that day the Civil Air Patrol began its cadet program under the supervision of Major (then Captain) Kendall K. Hoyt, AC, recruiting and public relations officer for National Headquarters.

 

At the outset, membership was held down in order to insure a solid foundation for the program. Each man in CAP was permitted to sponsor a boy, and every woman member allowed to sponsor a girl. Youngsters from fifteen through seventeen years of age, in the last two years of high school, were eligible, provided they were physically fit and up in their studies.

 

The cadet program worked out by Captain Hoyt caught on. The first junior squadron in the country was reported by Squadron No. 711-4 of the Minnesota Wing with 39 cadets. Within six months, more than 20,000 teen-agers in every section of the United States were attending weekly meetings in schoolrooms and armories, studying in groups of their own or side by side with seniors members, and spending most of their weekends at the nearest airport. The cost to the government of recruiting the first 20,000 cadets was a little less than $200, the amount spent by National Headquarters on its directives, applications, and membership cards.

 

The Civil Air Patrol cadet program was off to a flying start!

 

Ready Reserve - From its humble beginnings, the Civil Air Patrol Cadet program was a catalyst for eager aviation minded American youth, built on a concept of establishing a ready reserve if you want to call it, of aviation/military trained teens that cover the ages of 15 to 18 years which was to become a reservoir of an informed and well trained young people to be absorbed into the ranks of Civil Air Patrol, and the United States Army Air Force as may be needed.

 

Font: http://sq153.cawg.cap.gov/Files/Documents/...t%20Program.htm

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