Bombs Away (7 page)

The physical testing of the candidate is now over but the mental testing is about to begin. The Air Force must have men above the average in mentality and in co-ordination. By now all movements about the post are executed in formation. The candidates march to the long narrow room in which the intelligence tests will be given. Each man has a desk which is a little stall, whose sides and front are raised above eye level. A man may look over his barrier at the instructor at the front of the room but he cannot see sideways at the other men being tested. This semiprivacy has a tendency to make the man being tested less nervous. First the instructor explains the tests and how they are to be taken. Forms and questions are printed on the examination paper. The answers are given by checking one of a number of possible boxes. There is enough metal in the pencils to make an electrical contact, so that when the tests are finished they are put in a machine and graded automatically and mechanically. This not only makes it impossible for any favoritism to be shown, but also is much quicker and more accurate.

Each section of these intelligence tests has been set down to determine some separate quality of the mind. Thus forms nearly alike are checked to determine judgment of eye and mind, meter readings on blind gauges are used to test the sense of interval, parallel and nonparallel sentences and figures are included to test the judgment and imagination. The tests do not determine the amount of education the candidate has but the quality of his awareness. If his mind is alert, he will have noticed things all his life which have not been noticed by a duller mind; and if his mind is alert, he will notice things in these tests that a duller mind would not perceive. The intelligence test is really an awareness test showing whether the eyes see and the ears hear and the brain correlates what is going on about a man, and since a member of the Air Force in the course of his duty must be extremely aware, these tests indicate the threshold of his awareness.

The aware brain which suffers from sensitiveness, from self-consciousness, from nervousness, need not be afraid of these tests, for such factors are taken into consideration. No likely candidate is thrown out because he happens to be nervous or worried. These basic intelligence tests establish whether the candidate is a fit prospect for the Air Force; but when he has passed his basic tests, there are others designed to show what branch of the Service he will do best in.

The manual and mental aptitude tests are extremely interesting and they are not taken once but a number of times; for a first good score is not nearly so important as the improvement shown in a second over a first and in a third over a second. These tests are designed to show the speed with which a man can learn mental and physical techniques, and it sometimes happens that a candidate who makes a first good score does not improve. The bad beginner who learns rapidly is much more desirable in the Air Force.

These tests are of many kinds, from the simple manual co-ordination test which consists of rapidly turning pegs over in holes, the manual concentration test of plunging a stylus into holes set in a rapidly revolving cylinder, the maintaining of contact through a wire with a small metal plate set eccentrically on a revolving disc, to a rather complicated two-hand co-ordination test where each hand must act independently to achieve a desired end. But always it is not the first cleverness of the candidate which counts, but his ability to improve. From all these tests a fairly clear picture is arrived at concerning the mentality, the co-ordination, the judgment and speed of making decisions, the versatility and reaction time of each individual applicant for the Air Force.

The Air Force has drawn on the best psychologists in the nation in devising these tests. Many men who recently were conducting researches in our universities are now commissioned in the Service to devise and to supervise the testing of young men. Never before in our Army have such rigid examinations been used, and if a great deal of time and effort are given to this phase of induction there is a very good reason for it. A young man, otherwise perfect, may have some block in his nervous response system which is not at all apparent. If such a condition were not discovered by tests, he would go on to his instructors. He might indeed be well along in his training before some emergency showed up his trouble. In such a case a great deal of valuable time would have been wasted on him. He could perhaps even go so far that his difficulty might endanger the ship and the crew or a mission. The rigid tests are set up to find such difficulties in the candidates before they have used up the training time of instructors. And so for several days the candidates go into little rooms where the testing devices are. There they sit or stand with only a technical sergeant present and there the secrets of their nervous responses are unfailingly brought out and recorded. After the war the wealth of material from these thousands of tests will be invaluable to research in psychology by the men who search for causes of various nervous reactions. But now, when the tests are completed, the candidate who has passed will not be likely through some unknown quirk to fall down on the job given him to do.

During these days of induction much has happened to the candidates besides their examinations. They have begun to learn military formations, the basic evolutions of soldiers, the manual of arms which all soldiers must know; and although they may be very tired at night, so tired that they fall into their cots and sleep profoundly, a change has begun to be apparent in them. Their bodies are straightening, their heads are held a little higher, a spring has come into their steps. This change has taken place so rapidly that it is astonishing. The bad posture, the sloppy bearing of the riders in the truck to the induction centers disappears and the old saying becomes true that you do not fit a uniform to a soldier but a soldier fits his uniform. The play on the athletic fields is incessant. There are obstacle tracks with hurdles to go over and under with high walls to clamber over. Baseball teams sprout from the fields and the tired muscles of the first days are growing firm. The work and play are so hard that food is taken in enormous quantities and the cadet mess has become famous in the whole Army. In many camps officers pay their way to eat at the cadet mess. Milk is consumed in unbelievable amounts. In most messes a quart of milk is placed between each two men for each meal. The cadets are ravenous and the food is good. And very soon the men begin to gain weight. At first they lose the soft flesh, but almost immediately it is replaced with hard, firm flesh and the formations on the drill fields begin to look soldierly. Quickly these young men begin to prove that they are highly selected. They learn the simple formations and the manual of arms much more quickly than the average soldiers. The extra alertness of their minds and bodies responds to training as it might be supposed to. The little overseas caps are worn at a jaunty angle.

By now, the testing and appraising are completed. Perhaps a large proportion of the candidates, actuated by romantic tradition, have asked to be trained as pilots. But the tests have indi cated that some would make better navigators and bombardiers. They are assigned to the jobs for which they are best suited. Men in these three positions—pilots, navigators, and bombardiers—will be commissioned when their training is completed. But now they are assigned from the induction centers to the schools which will train them for their highly specialized jobs. Perhaps from the truck which pulls up to the induction center the boy from Idaho will be trained as a bombardier, the university student from Indianapolis has the mathematics and the scholastic background which will make him a good navigator, while the tests have shown that the farmer from South Carolina has the best qualifications for a pilot. Gunners and radio men and engineers will come from another source. They will not be commissioned officers and they need not have either the scholastic training nor the theoretical training required by the other three. It would be impossible to pick out a cadet in the Air Force and say that he is typical of all cadets. There would be no true way of doing this. There is no typical cadet. They are as different, one from another, as any other group of Americans. In spite of some of the poster painting of Arrow Collar pilots, there is no Air Force face or figure. Only two things are typical of cadets—they are above the average mentally and physically. But among them there is nothing typical in economic background, racial stock, or experience. They may come from homes where the father was a working man, a bank clerk, a railroad man, a farmer, a cattle rancher. They may have gone to public or to private schools, to great universities, small colleges, or junior colleges. They need not have been privileged boys in a money sense at all, in fact, most of them are not; but because of their mental endowment they will have done well in school and have had no difficulty with their technical studies. Because of their physical alertness, they will have had considerable training in the team sports of their schools. They will have played football or basketball, have competed in the field or on the track. Many of them will have been ardent hunters and fishermen. Because they are healthy young men they will like girls very well indeed. Because their co-ordination and sense of timing and rhythm is acute, they will generally be good dancers and will like to dance.

Because their ears are highly aware in pitch and range they will like music, and because of all these things they will be good-looking without necessarily being handsome. In their schools, because of their qualities, they will have given evidence of some leadership. They will not be more or less courageous than other young men, but good nervous co-ordination will have given them the ability for self-discipline which passes for fearlessness because fear is controlled. Tendencies toward panic or hysteria will have been discovered by the psychological tests they have undergone and the cause found and corrected or the candidate eliminated. In a word the cadets are drawn from a cross-section background of America but they are the top part of the cross section. They represent the best we have.

In training it has been found that boys from farms and from small towns, because of a familiarity with machines and because their individual judgments have oftener been exercised, are a little easier to train for the Air Force, but not enough so that applications from the great cities are not readily accepted. That the cadets are very attractive is easy to demonstrate. Wherever they are posted they very quickly monopolize the time and the thought of the personable young women of the neighborhood.

In trying to assemble a typical bomber crew, one cannot pick a type. The members must be chosen at random. Their training will be identical and rigid, but except for their training they will emerge as officers as individual as they went in; and since, once their training is completed and they are assigned to their units, a great deal of their work will depend on individual judgment, leadership tendencies will be developed in the Air Force rather than stultified by unquestioned orders and control. For it is the principle of the Air Force that men shall know the reasons for orders rather than that they shall obey blindly and perhaps stupidly. Discipline is in no way injured by such an approach. In fact, it is made more complete, for a man can eventually trust orders he understands. The cadets are instructed now and assigned to their positions. They are ready for their individual training.

THE BOMBARDIER

Bill was born and grew up in Idaho. His father was a railroad engineer and their home was a comfortable one. In the town where they lived the family was liked and respected. Bill’s father was a product of the alert democracy of the West. His job was dignified and his position in his town and in the Railroad Brotherhood was the result of a sober, controlled life. Bill’s mother belonged to the Altar Guild of the Episcopal Church and was a permanent member of the local Red Cross.