Civilian Pilot Training Program

The Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP) was a flight training program (1938–1944) sponsored by the United States government with the stated purpose of increasing the number of civilian pilots, though having a clear impact on military preparedness.

In the years immediately preceding World War II, several European countries, particularly Italy and Nazi Germany, began training thousands of young people to become pilots. Purportedly civilian in nature, these European government-sponsored programs were, in fact, nothing more than military flight training academies.

In October 1938, General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold brought in the top three aviation school representatives to request they establish an unfunded startup of CPTP schools at their own risk. These were Oliver Parks of Parks Air College, C. C. Moseley of the Curtiss-Wright Technical Institute, and Theopholis Lee of the Boeing School of Aeronautics; all agreed to start work. The CAA headed by Robert Hinckley,created the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938 that contained language authorizing and funding a trial program for what would evolve into the Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP). President Franklin D. Roosevelt unveiled the program on December 27, 1938, announcing at a White House press conference that he had signed off on a proposal to provide a needed boost to general aviation by providing pilot training to 20,000 college students a year.

Following the precedent established by the Europeans, the CPTP was established as a civilian program but its potential for national defense was undisguised. The program started in 1939 with two laws passed by Congress in April and June, with the government paying for a 72-hour ground school course followed by 35 to 50 hours of flight instruction at facilities located near eleven colleges and universities. It was an unqualified success and provided a grand vision for its supporters—to greatly expand the nation's civilian pilot population by training thousands of college students to fly.

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