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When the United States entered World War II, the nation desperately needed men and women in the armed forces. Many joined various branches of service. As a result, many Americans in their late teens and early twenties were not enrolling in colleges and universities. The University of North Carolina itself experienced low enrollment and consequently lost $100,000 in enrollment revenue. The Pre-Flight schools, then, served two linked purposes, primarily to offer a rigorous training for budding aviators and secondarily to keep open the doors of participating universities. The University of North Carolina was one of five universities selected in the U.S. to have a pre-flight school.
Chapel Hill was an attractive location for such a school for several reasons. The small town of 3,500 offered few distractions for the soldiers. The campus had what the military needed such as classrooms, mess halls, sport fields, an airfield, libraries, and dormitories that otherwise could not be built in a short time. Prominent and nationally influential North Carolinians lobbied for a pre-flight school in North Carolina. In particular, former Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, based in nearby Raleigh, had the attention of the then Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox. Frank Graham, president of the university, knew Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Senator Robert Reynolds and Governor Melville Broughton consequently asked Knox to consider Chapel Hill and had their plea answered positively. The Pre-Flight School was commissioned on May 23, 1942, and the first students arrived shortly thereafter on May 28.
The goal was to build a superior fighting force with the mental determination and physical fortitude to outclass any other fighting force, so the schools demanded rigorous training in various departments. Students were awakened at 5:30 AM and were training by 7 AM. After a 45-minute lunch, training resumed at 1:45 PM and ended at 8:50 PM. All had to be in bed by 9 PM. This structured routine included various training regimens. Cadets had academic work in fields such as physics, meteorology, gunnery, and naval history and participated in military drills, including survival skills and small arms proficiency. Physical training comprised a major part of the curriculum, including boxing, wrestling, and the all-important swimming skills that could help pilots survive when needed. Sports was another major component. Through various sports the budding pilots would learn wartime virtues such as teamwork, alertness, and aggressiveness. The pre-flight schools were intended to be “the most intense, rigorous, comprehensive program of physical and mental training the world has ever seen.”
At any given time present on campus would be 1,875 cadets, the maximum allowed number. To keep morale high and to provide energy, the cadets were allotted up to 5,000 calories a day. In particular, they were given milk three times a day and ice cream six nights a week.
Several celebrities or soon-to-be famous cadets attended the Pre-Flight School. Among them were future U.S. Presidents Gerald R. Ford and George H.W. Bush. Others included future football greats Charlie “Choo Choo” Justice and Otto Graham, and future Alabama football coach Paul (Bear) Bryant. At the time, the most famous cadets were professional baseball players who gave up their salaries to serve in the armed forces, including Johnny Sain of the Boston Braves, and Johnny Pesky and Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox.
On October 15, 1945, the Navy Pre-Flight School at Chapel Hill was decommissioned. From May 1942 until the end of the war, the Pre-Flight School and the V-12 programs had trained 18,700 cadets. In addition, 360 French cadets, 78 French officers, and 1,220 Navy V-5 officers went through the programs at Chapel Hill. As a result, an economically faltering university received much needed funds. The number of officers trained at the University of North Carolina is far greater than any of the other college or university-hosted military training programs in the state, with Duke University the closest, having trained about 4,000 Navy ROTC reserves in a much smaller program.
After the war, the university boasted over $1 million worth of new buildings. The state contributed only $127,000 to that amount. Enrollment increased to 6,802, the majority of whom were veterans who had postponed their education because of their military obligations.
References:
Sarah McCullough Lemmons and Nancy Smith Midgette. North Carolina and the Two World Wars (Raleigh: North Carolina Office of Archives and History), 2013.
Julian M. Pleasants. Home Front: North Carolina During World War II (Gainesville: University Press of Florida), 2017.
The Naval Armory Preservation Committee. “The Historical and Practical Significance of the Naval Armory at The University of North Carolina, 1942-2021”, available at www.uncnrotcaa.org.
Donald W. Rominger, “From Playing Field to Battleground: The United States V-5 Preflight Program in World War II.” Journal of Sport History, Volume 12, Winter 1985, pp 252-264.
Mary Layne Baker. “The Sky’s the Limit: The University of North Carolina and the Chapel Hill Communities’ Response to the Establishment of the U.S. Naval Pre-Flight School During World War II” Training Programs, A Nursery of Patriotism, UNC Library. Available at https://exhibits.lib.unc.edu/exhibits/show/patriotism/wwii/training.
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