Made in 1950, this U.S. Navy recruitment film focuses on the training of naval aviators at Pensacola, Florida. It exposes new recruits to the training process and day to day activities for a Navy flier. They go over the general over view of the training and list the individual components of the program. It is aimed at encouraging new recruits to take the program seriously so that they can reap the rewards or risk being grounded. Fairly straight forward, non-technical intro to training style film.
The film starts with newspaper headlines from May 1942 and the Battle of the Coral Sea, newsreels about WWII, and the narrator Philip speaks about his personal motivation to avenge his brother’s death by joining the military.
Phillip is shown with buddies from college in Naval classes followed by physical conditioning. Military training, swimming and lots of playing sports.
Navy regulation texts, Engineering, meteorology, and latest technologies to simulate flight prior to actually flying. Octants and sextants, crash landing techniques and survival training.
Crash landing practice. Naval pilot is a valuable man and no expense is spared. Blind folded training for learning the cockpit panel. Ground control trainer to learn break pressure. After preflight, the airborne training begins (7:58) Trained by a Navy combat veteran, pre-solo dual instruction stage in an SNJ. Students are encouraged to fly alone, instructors are there just in case. Philip’s 19th flight is his solo (9:50) Further training for radioing and controls. Instructions are Skip laughing off error, but flight trainer take training and instrumenting flying seriously, it matters in the Link trainer Acrobatics begins. Maneuvers are a definite part of the training syllabus. Formation flying for team work. Echelon join ups are rehearsed. Gunnery, affixed gunnery, get or get got. Fighter tactics: training films to visualize offense and defense. Flight course is fair but tough: cadet Skip gets booted. Pilots practice carrier landing on a runway and prepare to go to the next step, advanced training at Corpus Christie and then on to graduation.
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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD and 2k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com
