AERONAUTICS: National Air Academy

The U. S. Army has a National Military Academy at West Point, N. Y. The Navy has a National Naval Academy at Annapolis, Md. Why not a National Aviation Academy under a Federal Department of Aeronautics?

Aeronautics, William B. Ziff’s aviation monthly published in Chicago, recently printed the idea as a corollary of Col. William Mitchell’s revived demand for a Department of Aeronautics (TIME. June 10). The National Aviation Academy might be located at some midcontinent point remote from possible boundary invasions. To it Congressmen might nominate cadets who would get a four-year training in mechanics, piloting, tactics, strategy. Graduates would be able to move in war as an independent force, instead of as auxiliaries to Army or Navy groups.

This idea published, Aeronautics waited for public comment. Last week it announced honestly: “So far nothing has materialized except a notable expression of sympathy from a large share of the daily press, and a few of the usual large gestures from those who profess to believe that the present hodgepodge is the noblest possibility of our great democracy.”

Publisher Ziff, Editor Harley W. Mitchell and Contributor-Col. Mitchell* know, however, that the Secretaries of the various Government departments which now have aeronautic subdivisions, are not opposing an eventual Department of Aeronautics or a National Aviation Academy.

Edward Pearson Warner, onetime (1926-29) Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Aeronautics, now editor of Aviation, leading air weekly, said last week: “That probably will eventually become desirable, but it would be unwise while the air force remains interlocked with the Army and Navy as closely as now seems advisable. In another ten or 20 years the outlook may change very greatly.”

*Editor Mitchell and Col. Mitchell are no kin.