Civilian Pilot Training Program (U.S)
Historical Information
The United States' Civilian Pilot Training Program was begun in 1938. President Franklin D. Roosevelt supported the program's plan to train 20,000 civilian pilots a year, so the country would be prepared for the number of military pilots that would be needed for the impending war. By 1939, the number of newly Army-trained pilots grew from about nine hundred to approximately eight thousand in 1940. The year 1941 saw 27,000 pilots trained, but it was deemed necessary to train many more, as the United States' involvement in World War II seemed imminent. The Army desperately needed help to train the number of pilots needed. The United States Army Air Forces drew fliers from the Civilian Pilot Training Program, from an additional network of civilian schools under contract to the United States Army Air Forces, as well as from their own training schools.
The Civilian Pilot Training Program CPTP) reached the point where it operated out of 1,132 colleges and universities and 1,460 flight schools. The program trained approximately 435,165 pilots from 1939-1944. Purdue University was one of the universities which ran a CPTP.