The radio operator-mechanics course was designed to run for 22 weeks but it depended to some degree on the availability of space in the classrooms. So many Aviation Cadets were eliminated from the cadet program and sent to Scott Field in the beginning of 1944 that many were held in Area 4, the transient area, for a couple months waiting to enter the school.
The objective was to train the radio operators to send and receive international Morse code in the air at 16 words a minute. That was about as fast as one could take the code by hand in an aircraft. The number operators in the air sending messages, the atmospheric interference and other factors limited the speed of sending and receiving messages as compared to the same operation on the ground.
The training of the radio operator was not restricted to sending and receiving code. He was trained in voice transmission, radio navigation , reading of charts and the use of a radio compass to plot the position of the aircraft in the air on the charts and to send position reports to the ground stations, to interpret and transmit weather reports, to supervise and inspect the mechanics and operation all the radio equipment on the aircraft and perform in air repair and maintenance of the equipment. This was rather difficult for he had to do so with a screwdriver and pliers.
The radio operator was an important and highly skilled position on an air crew. If the student had been treated with the same respect as the bombardier and navigator, many of the surplus aviation cadets would have accepted the change without the bitterness.
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At the time of Peral Harbor, the school had a twenty-two week course designed to train air crew radio operator-mechanics to operate the radios on the airplanes at sixteen words per minute as well as mechanics. The student learned Interrnationl Morse Code, comminication by voice, .
that included navigation aids, weather reports, and charts. After he learned to send and receive code at eight words a minute, he went into radio-telegraph procedures and learned to run a radio message station. When he reached the speed of sixteen words minute, he learned to operate the radion equipment in the air. Radio training included fourteen weeks of mathematics, direct and alternating current, all the componet parts of transmitters and receivers and their circuits and their functions.
In order the handle the large number of students, Lieutenant Colonel Albert T. Wilson, Director of Training, put the school on a three shift schedule. The first shift ran from 5:00 A.M. to 1:00 P.M. The second shift was from 1:00 P.M. to 9.00 P.M. Then, the graveyard shift was from 9:00 P.M. to 5:00 A.M. The allnight shift was the most hated of them all.
In March 1943, the 58th Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC's) Post Headquarter's Company arrived at Scott Field from Datona Beach, Florida. On August 6, 1943, they became a part of the Army becoming the Army Women's Corps, (WAC's). On becoming part of the Army, some of the WAC's picked up the Army profanity that the old regular Army thought was necessary for a fighting soldier. Although, after hearing it all the time, one became somewhat used to it, it never sounded right coming from a WAC.
Some of the WAC's became instructors and supervisors in some of the radio classes. They were usually more gung-ho and more patriotic that the male counterparts.
Some French students attended Scott Field and in January 1944, fourteen Chinese officers entered the radio school. We didn' t come in contact wirt them until we graduated and has to listen to one of them speak at our graduation. We didn't like that too much.
