OTS Growth/OCS Demise. As The Officer Training School became fully operational and as its enrollment grew, the new school began to dominate initial officer training at Lackland. Although the Air Training Command increased the quota of active-duty males entering Officer Candidate School (from 127 to 170 per class) in April 1961, the Air Staff was already laying plans to greatly expand OTS and contemplating whether to reduce or eliminate OCS. While OCS and OTS production were comparable (413 and 611 graduates, respectively) in FY 1961, the next year yielded 2,265 officer training and 489 officer candidate graduates. [See Appendix 2.]

With incremental increases in class size programmed to begin with Class 1962-B on 5 July 1961, the Officer Training School would quickly outgrow its original quarters, so the Lackland Military Training Center made arrangements for it to occupy a portion of Medina Base, a United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) facility a mile west of Lackland. The move came on 29 June, while LMTC negotiated to acquire the OTS site from AEC, which occurred on 1 September 1961. The Air Training Command officially named the new officer training area as the Lackland Training Annex (LTX). Class 1962-A graduated on LTX on 8 August 1961.

Headquarters USAF announced on 9 March 1962 the discontinuance of the Officer Candidate School at the end of Fiscal Year 1963. Reflecting the changing configuration of initial officer training at Lackland, the Air Training Command published Special Order (SO) G-59 on 6 June to inactivate Officer Military Schools and realign its subordinate units, effective I July 1962. The Officer Candidate School as well as the chaplain and legal officer courses were reassigned to the Officer Training School, and the Language School went to the 3275th Technical School, USAF.

Officer Candidate School Class 63-D graduated on 21 June 1963, and the LMTC phase-out plan was accomplished by 30 June. Thus ended a 21 year tradition of the Air Force enriching its officer corps with a significant portion of seasoned enlisted people and warrant officers.

The Officer Training School system had several advantages over the Officer Candidate School program. It was a more expeditious and responsive procurement system, and training costs per graduate were less. It met the Air Force leadership's desire to make a college degree the minimum educational standard for its officers. There were indicators, however, that OCS students and graduates performed favorably in comparison with their OTS counterparts. Self-initiated elimination rates were disconcertingly high in OTS but negligible in OCS. In a study of undergraduate pilot training attrition for 1962, OCS-trained officers maintained academic, flying, and military grades equal to Air Force Academy graduates and superior to those of aviation cadets or officers from OTS and ROTC. Overall, the attrition rate in UPT for OTS produced officers was twice that for OCS officers (43 to 22 percent), including higher self-elimination and flying deficiency rates.

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