Recruitment and Training of Medical Personnel

Apart from research and development, the main business of the AAF medical system in the United States was recruitment and training. The AAF medical recruiting campaign, designed by Assistant Air Surgeon Col. Wilford H. Hall, acquired about 8,300 doctors and 3,700 nurses before the 6 Normandy invasion in June 1944. Another 4,980 nurses came from the Army and other agencies. Enlisted medics came from the Army’s draft pool and often had no medical training when they were assigned to the AAF. Training those new medics was the responsibility of the AAF Training Command Surgeon, Brig. Gen. Charles R. Glenn.

From 1941 to 1943, most volunteer doctors in the AAF worked as aviation medical examiners, giving physical and mental examinations to candidates for skilled flying jobs as pilots, navigators, bombardiers, and aerial gunners. At the AAF aviation cadet centers, the cadets were tested physically for general health, motor skills, eyesight, hearing acuity, and other physical traits that predicted success in flying school. Applicants also received a battery of twenty psychological tests dealing with mental and physical alertness, intelligence, learning ability, memory, attention, and emotional stability. These psychological tests predicted a cadet’s success in training and operations, although more accurately for pilots and navigators than for bombardiers.

Administering a standard test soon became tedious and boring to most volunteer doctors, so the AAF gave each of them an opportunity to learn the more advanced skills of a flight surgeon. The didactic classes were administered by the School of Aviation Medicine (SAM) at Randolph Field, Texas. The subjects were general aviation medicine and AAF medicine, including nutrition, physical fitness, and convalescence. To show some of the physical and mental stresses of flying, the program after July 1944 included an introduction to flight, including some hours in BT–13 trainers with a flight instructor. SAM graduates preparing to deploy to combat theaters learned about field aviation operations from the Tactical Unit Surgeon’s Course at the AAF School of Applied Tactics in Orlando, Florida. From August 1940 to V–J Day, about 4,600 doctors passed the basic aviation medical examiner program. Approximately 50 percent of those doctors satisfied further learning and experience requirements and were rated as full-fledged flight surgeons.

The stateside medical instructional cadre also helped train two other critical specialists in combat units: the unit oxygen officer (from May 1942 to May 1943) and the personal equipment officer (from May 1943 to September 1945). Combat units quickly saw the need to make one officer totally responsible for their oxygen equipment, and a May 1943 regulation expanded this responsibility to include protective (armor) and emergency equipment.

Starting in March 1942, the High-Altitude Training Program was another responsibility of AAF medics. At several AAF bases, a team of aviation physiologists, directed by the base surgeon, used a large, low-pressure chamber to introduce fliers to the effects of high altitude. Within a year, the AAF had sixty-five high-altitude chambers. By November 1944, this program had given introductory high-altitude flights to 623,000 airmen, usually in groups of twenty. The original purpose of the training program was to identify those servicemen who could handle the stresses of low pressure; but in the summer of 1943 the emphasis changed to teaching airmen how to survive at high altitude and especially how to prevent illness or death from lack of oxygen (anoxia). The anoxia prevention program contributed to a fourfold drop in the accident rate and a threefold drop in the fatality rate in the Eighth Air Force. The altitude chambers also proved valuable as diagnostic aids, sometimes revealing unusual problems. One combat pilot who complained of severe headaches at high altitude was given three chamber flights without access to an altimeter. His medical examiner wrote:

Although actually far below, he developed a headache when told that he was above 20,000 feet. When he was told he was going down, but was actually taken up 5,000 feet, his headache improved but he complained of “clogged” ears. One hour and fifteen minutes at 30,000 feet produced no headache when he thought he was at 15,000 feet. On the way down he was told he was going up to 30,000 feet; at 15,000 feet he developed a headache. This man’s symptoms were not organic.

In the United States, AAF medics trained at several bases. AAF enlisted medical technicians trained mostly at Warner Robins Field, Georgia, as members of the various types of small medical units authorized by the AAF. Specialized nurses’ training consisted mainly of flight nurse training at Bowman Field, Kentucky, starting in November 1942. On June 23, 1943, the aeromedical training program at Bowman Field—which also 9 trained medical officers and enlisted men in aeromedical evacuation— was named the AAF School of Air Evacuation, the first of its kind in the world. Just as World War I produced the first flight surgeons, World War II produced the first flight nurses, a specialty that had been promoted since 1932 by civilian Lauretta M. Schimmoler, founder of the Aerial Nurse Corps of America. Early in the war, General Grant personally encouraged creation of the flight nurse specialty and the aeromedical school.