USAF OCS Class 62-A
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History of OCS

 


Once the Armed Forces had achieved full mobilization, the need for professionally trained officer inductees lessened, and OTS graduated its last class in June 1943. Thereafter, the various Army Air Forces commands resumed responsibility for indoctrinating most civilians receiving direct commissions. A few civilians were accepted directly by OCS, receiving reserve commissions upon graduation or being returned to civilian fife upon failure. As the wartime need for administrative officers diminished in late 1943, OCS classes became smaller (declining from enrollments ranging between 2,100-4,100 to classes numbering 800-950 enrollees each) and failure rates rose (from approximately 12 percent to about 30 percent).

Nonrated Officer Training at Lackland. Army Air Forces commands apparently continued to receive and indoctrinate some officers awarded direct commissions, because an informal Officer's Training School operated at the San Antonio Aviation Cadet Center between 2 July 1942 and 25 April 1944. In all, it conducted five three-week classes and trained 675 officers. Another small-scale but vital officer training function at SAACC in the late stages of the war was performed by Army Air Forces Nurse Training Detachment 9.

In the spring of 1944, Army Air Forces officials began to anticipate postwar manpower needs and Miami hotel owners were eyeing postwar tourism. The Officer Training School at Miami Beech disestablished, and its mission and resources moved to a new Army Air Forces Officer Candidate School, which was established on I April 1944 and stationed on the San Antonio Aviation Cadet Center. Fourteen months, later, on I June 1945, this AAF Officer Candidate School discontinued, its mission passing to a named activity (NA) with the same designation at Maxwell Field, Alabama.

With the end of World War II in sight by mid 1945, the Army Air Forces training mission began to give way to the tasks of demobilization. On I July 1945, the installation redesignated from the San Antonio Aviation Cadet Center to a name more appropriate for the times: San Antonio District, Army Air Forces Personnel Distribution Command. The cadet center's principal training missions -preflight and officer candidate training-now much reduced in scope, had already moved to Maxwell Field, Alabama. The task of reassigning or discharging troops returning from overseas diminished by the end of 1945, and the installation's fate hung in the balance until War Department and AAF officials decided to give it peacetime training responsibilities.

POSTWAR ERA AT LACKLAND

The installation's future was secured and defined on 1 February 1946. The Army Air Forces Technical Training Command redesignated the San Antonio District, AAF Personnel Distribution Command, as the Army Air Forces Military Training Center (AAFMTC) and established the Army Air Forces Basic Military School on base to conduct initial military indoctrination for new enlistees. The same general orders (GO) transferred both the Army Air Forces Officer Candidate School and the Army Air Forces Pre-Flight School (PFS) to the center from Maxwell Field. The installation had recovered its first mission-initial officer training-even though flights of marching basic trainees would be the single most dominant feature of the base for decades to come.

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