Directly commissioning officers met a need for men with extensive education or experience in technical, scientific, business, and intellectual fields, which the United States Military Academy and the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) could not satisfy fast enough. These recruits were generally older (30 or more) and usually received initial military indoctrination locally and informally while performing the duties for which they had been procured.

Satisfying the Army Air Force's pressing wartime need for nonrated reserve officers posed two immediate problems. Selectivity suffered when the Army Air Forces drew large numbers of men from the enlisted and warranted ranks. With many more people, being directly commissioned, their receiving units, already totally preoccupied with the war effort, were usually unable to properly indoctrinate them. The quality and integrity of the officer corps was at stake. Recognizing the need for an initial testing and training phase for both categories of new nonrated officers, Gen. Henry H. Arnold, Chief of the Army Air Forces, directed the establishment of initial training operations to produce nonrated officers.

Maj. Gen. Walter R. Weaver, Technical Training Command commander, responded by opening an Officer Candidate School (OCS) on 19 February 1942 in several Miami Beach, Florida, resort hotels. Officer candidates were mostly either former aviation cadets, having been eliminated for medical or flying deficiency, or were active-duty warrant officers and enlisted men under 36 years of age.

The officer candidate course initially consisted of a single generalized curriculum, but in January 1943 became a two-phase program. The initial eight weeks involved military indoctrination and leadership subjects; the second phase prepared candidates for duty in a particular field, such as supply, adjutant, training, and intelligence. To handle this expanded curriculum, the twelve-week OCS course was extended to 16 weeks in June 1943.

Direct commissioning of citizens with technical and professional skills greatly increased with war mobilization. Now they were being drafted as well as recruited. As their numbers became significant, Army Air Forces leaders wanted to provide them with a formalized program of uniform military indoctrination. As a result, an Officer Training School (OTS) was established at Miami Beach in April 1942.

The two nonrated officer preparation programs at Miami Beach were administratively consolidated in June 1942 but they remained markedly different in curriculum and conduct. Officer trainees already had commissions; officer candidates gained second lieutenant bars upon graduation. The former were regimented during class hours; the latter remained under continuous regimentation. The OTS curriculum oriented the students; the OCS curriculum was a formation course testing students' endurance. Officer Candidate School adopted the class divisions, student ranks, and hazing of the United States Military Academy, while Officer Training School took on a college campus ambiance.

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