AIRFIELDS TELL HISTORY OF AVIATION

They flew through the air with the greatest of ease -- those courageous cadets in their flying machines. They came to Southeast Missouri, trained to be pilots, and left for Europe to help make the world safe for democracy during World War II.

Terry Irwin of Cape Girardeau has developed an intense interest in the history of these cadets and their training fields and is attempting to gather information on the institutions. To date he has corresponded with several instructors and cadets in the area and has accumulated numerous pictures and facts.

Irwin, who is a flight instructor, has been interested in airplanes since he can remember. His interest in World War II training developed several years ago when he was training for his pilot license at Sikeston Municipal Airport.

"I was vaguely aware that Sikeston had some kind of training facilities during the war," he said. "One day I saw some small pieces of metal sticking up out of the ground at the airport. I learned this metal was part of surplus planes kept there after the war. The instruments, engines, radios, etc. had been stripped out. The planes were then crushed and buried to get rid of them. When I heard that, I realized there was lots of history there. Thus began my study of the training fields."

From his innumerable hours spent researching the topic, Irwin has resolved to preserve the oral history of this part of World War II.

In 1938, a year before the war broke out in Europe, there were about 2,500 pilots in the Army Air Corps, which later became the Air Force. The maximum capacity for military training was about 550 pilots a year.

With tension mounting in Europe, Hap Arnold, commander of the Army Air Corps, met with three prominent civilian flying school operators, Oliver Parks from Cahokia, Ill., C.C. Mosley from Oklahoma, and Theopolis Lee from California. Arnold had a plan for training pilots and asked for their help. Cadets were to be selected by the Air Corps, and their course of study was to be mapped out by the Air Corps, which would also furnish textbooks. The civilian schools were to furnish housing and meeting facilities. Air Corps supervision was to be exercised through a commandant and other officers, but flying instruction was to be carried out by civilians.

These three flight school operators brought in six more operators, and the plan was under way.

Irwin finds it interesting that Arnold could not promise the instructors that they would be paid. Congress had been told they needed to develop a plan to step up flight training, but they had not made any move in that direction. Although the government had the facilities to train only 550 pilots a year, Congress had already adopted a plan to fund the construction of 10,000 war planes a year.

Essentially, the men put together a plan and put it into operation in late summer of 1939 without guarantee of being reimbursed.

Parks Air College, near East St. Louis, was one of the first training sites. Oliver Parks also operated the Alabama Institute of Aeronautics in Tuscaloosa, where he had another training facility. With the war in Europe escalating and the threat of U.S. involvement, Parks received permission to open the Mississippi Institute of Aeronautics at Jackson, Miss., and the Missouri Institute of Aeronautics at Sikeston.

Alden B. Woodbury, manager of Parks School at Tuscaloosa was selected as manager of the Sikeston facility. He was instructed to acquire the land and build the facilities, and in September 1940, a year and three months before the United States became involved in the war, the training school opened.

"Harvey Parks Memorial Airport, named after Oliver Parks' brother who was killed in a training flight at St. Louis Lambert Field, had no hard surface runways," Irwin said. "It was just a big grass field with three hangars and several barracks and administrative buildings. There were auxiliary fields near Morley, Salcedo, Kewanee and Bertrand."

At the height of its operation, 440 students were being trained at the facility. The cadets came from around the country to train to protect their nation.

Several of the cadets who trained at Sikeston went on to make names for themselves in aviation history. Pete Everest, a director of the X-1 Project, trained there in 1941-42. The X-1 was the plane in which Chuck Yeager first broke the speed of sound. Later Everest flew the Bell X-2 at twice the speed of sound and became the fastest man alive at that time.

A classmate of Everest, Robert Johnson, went on to become the second highest ranking U.S. ace in the European war. In his book, "Thunderbolt," Johnson describes his military experiences and devotes a chapter to his training days at Sikeston.

The five Parks schools graduated 10 percent of the Aviation Cadets. About 8,000 of those were trained locally, in Sikeston and Cape Girardeau.

"With both airports being located in Scott County, that county probably produced more pilots than any one county in the United States," Irwin said. "We need to remember our aviation heritage."