Army Air Force School of Applied Tactics

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The Army Air Force School of Applied Tactics (known as AAFSAT) was created October 9, 1942, as a military training organization for the rapid expansion of the Army Air Forces during the Second World War. Its function was to teach combat operations under simulated field conditions to cadres of Air Force aircrews as the cores around which new combat groups would be formed. The first AAFSAT unit to reach the field was the 390th Bomb Group (Heavy), based in England with the Eighth Air Force. Commandant of AAFSAT was Brig.Gen. Hume Peabody.

Headquarters USAAF originally intended that four tactical schools be developed across the United States, one for each of the four major military aviation functions. However "to save administrative costs and physical outlay" (Army Air Forces Historical Study 13) and to facilitate coordination between the schools, all four would be consolidated at a single location. Orlando was chosen November 1, 1942, primarily because it was already the location of Fighter Command School, which would be subordinated to AAFSAT, and because of its large geographical area. The school officially opened November 12, 1942.

AAFSAT was organized into three directorates: Tactical Development, School Activities, and Demonstration Air Force, with three combat groups acting as both school units and demonstration air force units. The Directorate of School Activities was divided into four departments, each headed by a colonel or brigadier general as Assistant Commandant and containing a "command school": Air Defense Department (Fighter Command School), Air Service Department, Air Support Department, and Bombardment Department (Bomber Command School).

The AAFSAT school bombardment unit was the 9th Bomb Group, from October 31, 1942 to March 9, 1944, when it was re-designated a B-29 group and moved to Nebraska to train for combat operations. (Ironically, its new cadre were themselves trained at AAFSAT in June 1944.) The Fighter Command School unit was the 50th Fighter Group from March 23, 1943 to March 13, 1944, when it transferred to Ninth Air Force as a P-47 fighter-bomber group. The close air support school unit of AAFSAT from February 1943 to April 1944, when it was disbanded, was the 415th Bomb Group (Dive).

With a ground school in Orlando, Florida, presenting a two-week academic course, AAFSAT also taught a two-week field course utilizing eleven training airfields in Florida representing all conditions likely to be found in combat, from bare fields to prepared bomber airbases having 10,000-foot runways:

AAFSAT also had a bombing range at Ocala, a service center at Leesburg, and an air depot at Pinecastle. The bases were situated throughout an 8,000 square mile area of north central Florida designated a mock "war theater" stretching roughly from Tampa to Titusville to Starke to Apalachicola in which war games were conducted.

In addition to training cadre, AAFSAT also became a tactics development center, testing new tactics and disseminating their conclusions and procedures to combat theaters around the world. Between November, 1942 and September, 1945, AAFSAT trained 54,000 personnel and the cadres of 44 bombardment groups.

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