The Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP) was a flight training program (1938–1944) sponsored by the United States government with the stated purpose of increasing the number of civilian pilots, though having a clear impact on military preparedness.
Establishment
In the years immediately preceding World War II, several European countries, particularly Italy and Nazi Germany, began training thousands of young people to become pilots. Purportedly civilian in nature, these European government-sponsored programs were, in fact, nothing more than clandestine military flight training academies.
In October 1938, General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold brought in the top three aviation school representatives to request they establish an unfunded startup of CPTP schools at their own risk. These were Oliver Parks of Parks Air College, C. C. Moseley of the Curtiss-Wright Technical Institute, and Theophilus Lee, Jr. of the Boeing School of Aeronautics; all agreed to start work. The Civil Aeronautics Authority Act of 1938 formed the Civil Aeronautics Authority headed by Robert H. Hinckley. The act contained language authorizing and funding a trial program for what would evolve into the Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP), as run by the CAA. President Franklin D. Roosevelt unveiled the program on December 27, 1938, announcing at a White House press conference that he had signed off on a proposal to provide a needed boost to general aviation by providing pilot training to 20,000 college students a year.
Following the precedent established in Europe, the CPTP was established as a civilian program, but its potential for national defense was undisguised. The program started in 1939 with two laws passed by Congress in April and June, with the government paying for a 72-hour ground school course followed by 35 to 50 hours of flight instruction at facilities located near eleven colleges and universities. It was an unqualified success and provided a grand vision for its supportersto greatly expand the nation's civilian pilot population by training thousands of college students to fly.
A joint publication released in 1970 by the Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration recounts the historical success of the CPTP, stating the program "was planned originally as an experiment in vocational training." The intent was to boost industry and aviation manufacturing, with the "added benefit to the Armed Services building a reserve of knowledgeable pilots." It began in 1939 with 13 colleges and 330 students, and by the summer of 1944 had grown to incorporate 1,132 educational institutions and 435,165 qualified trainees – including several hundred women, all of whom had been qualified by 1,460 contractors. Members of the CPTP became an impetus of innovation which transformed United States history, long after World War II. Their efforts proved the necessity for a radical departure from conventional thinking, when required, to preserve failing sectors of industry and become a vital adjunct to national defense.
Controversy
The military establishment was initially unenthusiastic about the CPTP concept, quite unimpressed by any program initiated and administered by civilians. Congress, too, was split along mostly party lines as to the value of the CPTP. Isolationists branded the program as provocative saber-rattling that threatened the nation's neutrality; others slammed it as a pork barrel waste of tax dollars, while supporters touted the positive impacts on the aviation industry and the defense value of a vastly enlarged base of trained pilots.
After the Nazi invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, triggered World War II, the military value of the CPTP became obvious, even to the program's detractors. The United States started to evaluate its ability to fight an air war and the results were appalling. Pilots, instructors, and training aircraft were all in short supply. Acknowledging the shortage of trained pilots, both the Army Air Corps and Navy reluctantly waived certain “elimination” courses for CPTP graduates and allowed them to proceed directly into pilot training.
The Army Air Corps deemed the situation to be so grave it proposed that private aviation be suspended and all pilot training (most notably the CPTP) be brought under the control of the military. The December 13, 1940, issue of American Aviation Daily carried this account of the Army's intentions:
Preliminary plans are understood to be already drafted by the Army to ground all private flying in the United States for the duration of the national emergency...The Army will take over all training (including CPTP).