Historical Highlight
Air Officer’s educAtiOn*
Captain Robert O’Brien
T
HERE are three distinct elements in the education of an Air
Force ofcer: military instruction, technical or professional
training, and general education.
Air warfare has come upon us so rapidly that the military in-
struction of Air Force ofcers has never been thought out and ana-
lyzed as a new military problem. The traditional army basic train-
ing has consequently served as the model for military instruction
in the Air Force. Close-order drill, bivouacs, eld exercises and the
other common routine ground-training maneuvers are as much an
introduction to military life for a young yer as they are for a foot
soldier. This approach overlooks the fact that each occupation has
its own peculiar psychology, its own dialectics.
Flying, which has been a dream of mankind throughout his-
tory, adds a new dimension to man’s existence. There is no experi-
ence in a yer’s life prior to his air training that prepares him for this
dimension, whereas an infantryman learns to walk and to double-
time as a child, and a sailor learns the problems involved in han-
dling a ship through the experience of operating and directing a
wheeled vehicle over a denite course. When we subject the yer
to the same basic military instruction as an infantryman, we not
only delay his orientation to this new sphere—the air—but we
doubly handicap him by forcing him to act two more long years as
an infantryman.
As there is no preparation for the yer in ordinary life, a spe-
cial emphasis is needed to steep him in his new element from the
*Reprinted from Air University Quarterly Review 1, no. 2 (Fall 1947): 9–24.
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