Mr. TIBBOTT. Mr. Chairman The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Tibbott. Mr. TIBBOTT. Is the training that you have been giving similar to the elementary training given by the Army? Mr. BURDEN. It is generally similar, but it is given in a different kind of airplane. It is given on a very light airplane, of only about 65 horsepower, and therefore very much more economical in cost, strategic materials, and time. It takes less time to train a man as an instructor in that kind of an airplane. It is much cheaper to operate that kind of an airplane, per hour, in terms of gasoline, tires, and for the material to build and maintain it. Therefore it is the most economical possible way of introducing a man to flying. That really is the basic reason for the program and its success, I believe. Mr. REECE. Mr. Chairman The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Reece. Mr. REECE. If I may ask you a question there. Mr. BURDEN. Yes, sir. Mr. REECE. Is your training program related to the training of the Army in such a way as to abbreviate the time that a graduate of your course may be required to complete his military training? Mr. BURDEN. Yes. We do two things in training for the Army, as I have said. Men we train for use as instructors, receive our complete five courses, from elementary right straight through to Link instrument. Those men are well qualified pilots, on single-engine planes. When they get into the Army, the Army then gives them one or two additional courses-not nearly as much as if they started in from scratch. Mr. REECE. I have heard some of the C. P. T. graduates who were going into the Army say that they were at a disadvantage in entering the Army by reason of their pervious C. P. T. training, that the Army preferred to take a green man, so to speak, and train him from the beginning rather than take a C. P. T. trainee who had not been trained in just the same manner that they first had to "unlearn" him before they started to "learn" him, and which, if true, would seem to me to be unfortunate under the present circumstances. I have not made any investigation myself to ascertain the facts, but I have heard a considerable number of the C. P. T. trainees make that remark. Mr. BURDEN. It has been true to some degree in the past. Congressman, and has been exemplified by the fact that the Army gave no credit for elementary or secondary training when a man goes into an Army combat-pilot school having had it; but this situation will be changed by this new program which we are doing for the Army in which we are taking practically all of the Army cadets and giving them 10- or 12-hour initial courses. Now, they will not give any credit for that course, because it is a very short one, but it will result in eliminating the people who have no flying ability. They estimate that probably 4 to 5 percent of the cadets, although they are physically qualified, and mentally qualified, when they actually get into an airplane and find out that they do not like it or they have no ability whatsoever to fly. Now, we will eliminate those men and give the others a good start on their flying career. Mr. REECE. I hope this training program may be more than an aptitude test. Mr. BURDEN. I believe it will develop into that later on, but to start with, it will be to some degree an aptitude test. At a very small cost we will eliminate those 3 to 5 percent of men on our light airplanes, and give the others some flying training. Mr. REECE. I think, Mr. Chairman, it is unfortunate that we have set up this program and spent a very considerable amount of money in setting it up and have trained some 75,000 pilots, and the training which these 75,000 have received did not expedite their being qualified to become military pilots. And so that it still remains necessary for any of these 75,000 who entered the military service to begin at the beginning and be trained from the ground up, and as I remarked awhile ago, as appears to have been the case, at least that feeling prevailed that it was the case, that they entered the military training schools at a disadvantage by reason of the previous training that they had had. I am not expressing approval of the fact that they should have entered a military school at a disadvantage so as to place any responsibility on the C. P. T. training schools; but I do feel that it is unfortunate that the two training courses have not been correlated in such a way that full advantage might have been given by reason of this very training program that has been set up. Mr. BURDEN. Well, in the case of the Navy, they have been absolutely correlated. We are an integral part of the Navy training program, and the Navy, as I say, has been giving credit right along for C. P. T. courses. In the case of the Army full credit is given to C. P. T. training in the case of instructors and transport pilots and I think we are now on our way to accomplish the same result in this new program in which we will give the initial training to practically every Army candidate at the Army schools. Of course, you know that many thousands of our graduates are now successful military pilots. Mr. REECE. But nevertheless, more than a year has elapsed-2 years have elapsed-or approximately that amount of time, and that amount of time has been required to begin to get the two training programs correlated, and as I say I am not in any wise attaching blame to the C. P. T. courses. Mr. BURDEN. Actually, the two programs have been correlated from the beginning as far as the type of instruction is concerned. Army and Navy men sat in with our experts when the original curriculum was first laid out in 1938-39; and in 1942 the courses were revised in cooperation with the Army and Navy to meet the specialized requirements of each service exactly. As a result, our Navy course is now somewhat different from our Army course. As I said before, Navy gives credit for hours logged in C. P. T. Army, too, gives credit in its instructor- and transport-pilot schools. Army has not so far been willing to give credit in the case of its combat pilots, but a real step in that direction has been taken in this new program. The fact that this initial time is given in cheap light planes means that there is real saving to the Government and the country. No less important is the enormous saving in human material by the reduction in Navy and Army wash-out rates. Mr. NEWSOME. Mr. Chairman. The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Newsome. Mr. NEWSOME. Going back a little bit in your original statement— and if you cover this later on in what you are going to testify, you do not need to answer it now-but you stated that the Department exercises some supervision over the economic stability of the air lines. Could you elaborate on that? Mr. BURDEN. I said the Board, Civil Aeronautics Board. Mr. NEWSOME. Could you elaborate on what their views are? Mr. BURDEN. Well, that is really up to the Board to pass on, Congressman. I think Mr. Pogue probably covered that fairly thoroughly in his testimony, as to what their standards were in setting mail rates, and so forth. I will be glad to say what I can on it, but I really am not an expert in that field and I am not thoroughly familiar with their standards. Mr. NEWSOME. Thank you. Mr. HARLESS. Mr. Chairman- Mr. HARLESS. It seems to me that if you could provide, if the witness could provide us with the percentage or the number of the 75,000 who have gone into the armed services, that would give us something definite on the very point that Mr. Reece was discussing a moment ago as to whether or not those trainees have not met the requirements and accomplished the things for which they are being trained. I believe you said a moment ago you had those figures and could give them to us a little later on and that Mr. Stanton could give us more specific information on that. Mr. BURDEN. Yes, we can provide more specific figures in Mr. Stanton's testimony, or can submit them very shortly thereafter. The answer is that the vast majority of them have gone in and very few of them have failed in their Army and Navy courses. In other words, they have gotten through with practically no wash-outs whatever. So, the C. P. T. performed a very valuable function by eliminating the unfit at very low cost to the Government and providing the others with sound elementary training. Mr. HARLESS. It seems to me if we could have the information as to how many of that 75,000 are actually in the Army then that certainly would be the answer to Mr. Reece's question. Mr. BURDEN. We don't have exact figures on that point, for until last June, ours was a civilian program. It is a conservative estimåte that well over half our graduates are now in the air forces of the Army and Navy. Moreover, there is little question but that virtually all of them are now in war work of some sort. Mr. HARLESS. In regard to the 75,000 trained up to December 7, 1941, how many have we had trained since that time that have gone into the armed services? One question right along in connection with that and Mr. Reece's question, is it not a fact now in order to get the basic Army traning they have to have this civilian training course? Mr. BURDEN. That is true, as I said, of all Navy students. Since June of 1942 we have been training nothing but people who were enlisted in the Army or the Navy. We have been training no civilians whatsoever and almost everyone who takes naval flying has to start out with one of our courses. Mr. HARLESS. How about the Army flying courses? Mr. BURDEN. Up until about a month ago for the Army we were largely giving advanced training for men who were to become instructors or transport pilots, but in the new program which was approved in January we will start doing mass training for the Army on an elementary basis, very much in the same way that we are training for the Navy, although much shorter courses. Mr. HARLESS. You have been training some pilots, though, for the Army since December 7? Mr. BURDEN. Yes; we have trained several thousand people. We now have over 10,000 men in training, of which about half are Army men. Mr. HARLESS. You mentioned 75,000 up to December 7. Mr. BURDEN. That is right. Mr. HARLESS. You did not mention the number that has been trained after December 7. Mr. BURDEN. I have those figures, but they are strictly confidential military figures. I will be glad to submit them to you, but I do not think that they should go into the record. Mr. HARLESS. That would be in line with the question asked by Mr. Reece as to whether or not this has been a complete failure, has been a partial success, or good success. Mr. BURDEN. I can assure you that it has been a good success. It is absolutely the basic part of the naval training program and is becoming such a part of the Army training program. The CHAIRMAN. Are you in a position to state whether or not the Army at the present time approves the course given by your organization? Mr. BURDEN. The best proof that they do is that our course was worked out in collaboration with the Army and that they are contracting with us for training many tens of thousands of Army cadets. The CHAIRMAN. And what effort has been made for training for Army purposes? Mr. BURDEN. We have taken the greatest care to be sure that both our Army and Navy courses are strictly in line with military requirements. The Army and the Navy want us to teach flying in a somewhat different way, and we have our men segregated in two sets of schools, the Navy men taking a slightly different course from that which the Army men take. The CHAIRMAN. Have you consulted with and collaborated with the Army in working out the program which is now in operation? Mr. BURDEN. Yes, sir; we have been in constant consultation with them. They would not ask us to do a training job of this magnitude unless they were convinced that it was going to be done the way they wanted to have it done. They have gone over the proposed courses in detail. The CHAIRMAN. As I understood you a while ago, you seemed to concede that the courses you had given had not shortened the courses required by the Army, even though they had taken your courses, and that it did not apparently, or you conceded that it did not, increase the efficiency of one who went through your course, but that the chief benefit of your training perhaps was to eliminate the men who were not qualified. Is that a correct understanding of what you said here? Mr. BURDEN. I did not intend to concede that. Most of the men we have been training for Army in recent months have been instructors, transport pilots, and glider pilots. In this training, Army has definitely recognized the usefulness of our courses both as a means of eliminating the poorest prospects at low cost and as a means of providing initial flight training efficiently and inexpensively for the others, and Army has cut down its own finishing courses as a result. In the case of combat pilots, Army has not in the past given credit for C. P. T. training. However, Navy's combat-pilot courses do give such crèdit, and I believe that under the new arrangement with Army something along the same line will be achieved. The CHAIRMAN. In substance, what I am trying to find out is, does the Army recognize your training course as making a substantial contribution to their training program? Mr. BURDEN. Yes. I think they do. The CHAIRMAN. You are familiar with the method of appropriating funds to carry on this work? Mr. BURDEN. Yes. The CHAIRMAN. Will you please state the reasons for that? Mr. BURDEN. The Army feels that if we are going to carry on a program of this size for them that it should be carried on with our own funds, and they are willing to support a request to the Budget for the funds. They feel that it is an important training job and they prefer to have it done as a part of our job from our funds instead of having the money transferred from the Army. The CHAIRMAN. The Army desired that participation in your training program? Mr. BURDEN. Oh, yes; a provision in their formal agreement requesting us to carry on the training is that the change in the act be made. The CHAIRMAN. What is the necessity of this amendment striking out the word "civilian"? Mr. BURDEN. Because we are now training men only on active duty. We are not training any civilians any more. The CHAIRMAN. The present act does not provide for the expenditure of funds for that purpose? Mr. BURDEN. That is right. Mr. HOWELL. Mr. Chairman- Mr. HOWELL. Mr. Burden, it is not clear to me yet whether you exercise the same degree of selectivity in accepting candidates for this civilian-pilot training as the Army, the Navy, or the transport lines did. Mr. BURDEN. At the present the Army and the Navy are doing all of the selecting. They select the men, recruit them, give them their physical examination, and turn them over to us for training. So we, in effect, are contracting with the Army and Navy to do the training-not select the men. Mr. HOWELL. To what extent is the civilian pilot training you are now providing for these Army and Navy men correlated to the require |