Most arrived in the scorching summer heat of Pensacola, Florida, by train, for some their first exposure to the Deep South. Gathering the baggage that marked the last vestiges of civilian life, they climbed aboard busses or into cabs for the ride to Naval Air Station Pensacola. Riding through downtown streets they took in their first scent of salt air and noted a tall, stucco building that hinted at Pensacola's Spanish roots, the sign atop it proclaiming “Hotel San Carlos.” As they neared the naval air station, the buzzing sound that was so familiar to locals and would define their youth at distant spots on the globe yet unrealized, filled their ears. Their arrival at the Cradle of Naval Aviation on 20 July 1935, marked the reporting of the first class of aviation cadets for flight training. The road to that day came the previous year, one in which the Navy, with an eye towards Japanese expansion in the Pacific, received authorization from Congress to increase its complement of aircraft by 2,000 over the course of the ensuing five years. With this expansion of hardware came the necessity of filling their cockpits, the training of naval aviators having reached a low point given the fiscal restrains of the Great Depression. In 1929, the year of the stock market crash, only sixty-six aviators had pinned on the wings of gold, a number that was even lower in 1934, when only thirty-five naval aviators were designated. That number grew only to 100 in 1935, the year Congress authorized the Aviation Cadet Act. This momentous piece of legislation opened the ranks of flight training to qualified college graduates, who upon completing the program would serve in the fleet on active duty with the rank of aviation cadet for a period of three years. For a generation coming up in a period when jobs were scarce, the program offered a paycheck, and as was the traditional draw of the Navy, held promise of adventure. First learning the ways of a military officer through close order drill and inspections, the first cadets then found themselves immersed in the process that transformed them into naval aviators. Days were spent between ground school and in the air progressing through five training squadrons, from the first solo in Squadron One (rewarded with a dunking in Pensacola Bay) to landplanes at Squadron Two, where thirty percent of the students were typically washed out, to formation flying, flying boat indoctrination, and finally combat type aircraft in Squadron Five. “After completing Squadron Five,” commented the 1936 Flight Jacket, the yearbook of the cadet battalion, “those cadets who have survived elimination by a combination of ability, pertinacity, and luck are designated Naval Aviators…” In between came liberty in Pensacola or as far away as the Florida State College for Women in Tallahassee, activities in the former including time on sugar white beaches or deep sea fishing. A note in the station newspaper, the Air Station News, humorously pointed out the feelings of one cadet whose liberty had been cutback due to excessive demerits. “Hoyt reports that Pensacola hasn’t changed a bit since he was there last. It must be great to have liberty again, eh, John?” By mid-1936, more than 500 Aviation Cadets had passed through the gates of Naval Air Station Pensacola. During the first year of the program, they contributed largely to the 122,000 flight hours logged and 9.8 million miles traveled by aircraft at Pensacola during Fiscal Year 1936. The men hailed from forty-four states and represented the 166 colleges and universities, the disparate group forming bonds unique to brothers in arms. There was “Wing chopper” Tigert, whose name came from the time he ran the nose of a training aircraft into the wing of another one when parking his plane. Cadet Buxton was kidded about his blind flying, losing only 1,000 ft. of altitude on a training flight before he got the scarf that had blown around his head untangled. The first among them to graduate was Aviation Cadet Elliott M. “Mae” West, who received his wings as Naval Aviator Number 4854 on 12 June 1936, his jealous classmates writing in the station newspaper, “We’re watching you go, Mae, with vicarious anticipation—and not a little jealousy.” Others would follow, among the ranks of the aviation cadets during that first year one appropriately named John Paul Jones and another named Boone Guyton, the latter eventually ending up as the primary test pilot for the famous F4U Corsair. Another cadet of that time who would fly that plane into glory was Gregory Boyington, who shared the skies in Pensacola in 1935–1936 with Aviation Cadet Robert E. Galer. Both would receive the Medal of Honor for actions in World War II. Langdon Fieberling would also serve in World War II, losing his life at the Battle of Midway leading the land-based element of Torpedo Squadron (VT) 8 against the Japanese Fleet. Theirs was the foundation, begun one July day in 1935, upon which thousands of aviation cadets made naval aviation history. Pictured here, aviation cadets form up for inspection and receive an indoctrination on carrier operations using a model of Lexington (CV 2). The Consolidated NY seaplanes like that pictured in front of the Squadron One hangar along the waterfront at Naval Air Station (NAS) Pensacola, trained the initial aviation cadets before being replaced by the famed N3N Yellow Peril. June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008
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