An Officers Administration Course was another training mission that AAFMTC picked up on I February 1946. This was a new three-week course, given by OCS, to retrain company-grade officers returning from wartime service and preparing for peacetime active duty. After being revised and extended (to eight weeks) on 19 July, it was renamed Officers Training Course. Before this program's termination on 9 November 1946, a total of 898 officers had graduated.

Preflight Training. Reflecting the American public's desire "to bring the boys home" and the American government's policy of arming its allies to defend themselves, the AAF Pre-Flight School that returned to AAFMTC had become an orientation course for allied officers and cadets. The classes that moved from Maxwell consisted mostly of Chinese and Brazilians. By August 1946, Chinese students dominated the school, constituting 138 officers and 509 cadets in training.

Military training no longer occupied the school, the cadets either having commissions or having been indoctrinated by their own military services. Instead, PFS curriculum concentrated on technical terminology and aeronautical concepts, while making students aware of the American military discipline, tradition, and bearing that they would encounter while in flying training. Instruction in spoken and grammatical English, perforce, became an increasingly formal part of the preflight curriculum. English language deficiency was the primary cause for foreign military pilot trainees "washing out." The Air Training Command (ATC) decided on I July 1946 to discontinue the AAF Pre-Flight School but to retain its curriculum with the title of Foreign Students Orientation Course. Presumably, the Officer Candidate School was responsible for the course until ATC ordered the course terminated after the last class's graduation on I I January 1947.

Officer candidate Training. For years after World War II, Air Force leaders pondered the wisdom of producing officers from the ranks of aviation cadet washouts, warrant officers, and the enlisted force. Meanwhile, the AAF Officer Candidate School at AAFMTC survived the hectic postwar transition and went on to develop into a valuable source of professional and dedicated officers.

The OCS that had returned to San Antonio in February 1946 was a shell of its previous self. It consisted of two classes (1946-B and 1946-C) that would graduate a total of 33 men. Candidates even conducted some of their own training, because of a shortage of instructors. Classes during the second half of 1946 (i.e., 1946-G to 1946L) averaged 48.5 enrollees per class. [See Appendix 2 for course production figures.]

5