University of Tennessee Air Force ROTC (officially Air Force ROTC Detachment 800) is a United States Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) detachment hosted by the University of Tennessee (UT) in Knoxville, Tennessee. The detachment educates UT students enrolled as cadets for service in the officer corps of the Air Force and Space Force. Upon successful completion of the ROTC curriculum and graduation from the university, cadets are commissioned as second lieutenants.
History
Background
Military instruction at UT predates all other American state universities. In 1844, Professor Albert Miller Lea formed a cadet infantry company at the university. The 1862 Morrill Act required military tactics to be taught, and in 1869 the university was made the state’s land-grant institution. In 1916, the National Defense Act formally made this organization into an Army ROTC unit.
Army Air Corps ROTC
On October 22, 1946, General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower, Chief of Staff of the United States Army, signed General Order No. 124 directing the establishment of Army Air Corps ROTC units at UT and 76 other colleges and universities effective at the beginning of the 1946–1947 academic year. These Air ROTC units were initially assigned to Air Training Command; however, a few weeks later, on November 15, 1946, Headquarters Army Air Forces transferred the Air ROTC program from Air Training Command to Air Defense Command. UT's Air ROTC unit was subordinate to Air Defense Command's Fourteenth Air Force, Robins Air Force Base, Georgia.
UT established its Air ROTC unit within the university's existing Military Department alongside its regular Army ROTC unit. The air unit's first commander and the university's first professor of air science and tactics was Major (later Colonel) Frederick Weston Hyde Jr., a West Point alumnus, World War II B-24 Liberator pilot, and former Stalag Luft III prisoner of war.
Classes began on September 25, 1946, with an initial enrollment of 30 cadets. By November 1946, enrollment had grown to 46 cadets. The inaugural class of cadets received training in the history of the Army Air Forces, aircraft, air navigation, engine mechanics, and administration procedures. The following summer, 39 cadets reported to Keesler Army Airfield, Mississippi, for 42 days of field training.
Air Force ROTC
On September 18, 1947, the Air Force became a separate branch of the United States Armed Forces. On September 26, 1947, the United States Department of Defense transferred all units and personnel of the Army Air Forces, including the Air ROTC program, to the Air Force. The separation of UT's Air Force ROTC unit from the university's Army ROTC unit was completed on July 11, 1949.
As an Air Force ROTC unit, the unit's early enlisted instructors included Master Sergeant (later Major) Joseph N. Peeden, a Flying Tigers veteran.
In October 1951, the unit began operating fully independently of UT's Army ROTC unit. As part of this transition, the unit was restructured similar to an Air Force wing composed of groups and squadrons. In that same month, the unit began sponsoring the Lieutenant General Frank M. Andrews Squadron of the Arnold Air Society.
In early 1952, the unit allowed women to enroll in a class, a first in the history of military instruction at UT.
Effective August 1, 1952, all 188 Air Force ROTC units nationwide became part of Air University and were organized and designated as detachments of Headquarters Air Force ROTC, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. UT's Air Force ROTC unit was designated Detachment 800.
By May 1953, UT separated its Army ROTC and Air Force ROTC programs into their own academic departments; Detachment 800's was named the Department of Air Science and Tactics. By May 1956, the department was renamed the Department of Air Science. By December 1965, the department was renamed the Department of Air Force Aerospace Studies.
In 1963, Detachment 800 began sponsoring the Lieutenant General Frank M. Andrews Chapter of Silver Wings (then known as Angel Flight).
The detachment began enrolling women as cadets during the fall semester of 1970. Vicki Wise was the first woman to join.
In 1988, cadets Shaun Fields, Kerry E. Poole, and Donald W. Smith and student Terri Lynn Papes were killed when their rented single-engine plane crashed into the south bank of the French Broad River near Kodak, Tennessee.