This post was written by Michelle Cadoree Bradley, a Science Reference Specialist in the Science, Technology and Business Division.
In the collections of the Library of Congress, there are thousands of books in red buckram binding. These fairly innocuous exteriors can sometimes hide unique items. One such item from the stacks is the book Model Aircraft Project from 1942. This book is a collection of materials that was made specifically for the Library of Congress and given by the U. S. Office of Education to then Acting Librarian, Dr. Luther Evans.
I am…transmitting to you two complete sets of plans, specifications, and instructions issued to secondary schools…for the construction of 500,000 scale model aircraft requested by the Secretary of the Navy in his letter of December 3 to the U. S. Commissioner of Education.
This book evokes a time in the war effort when schoolboys in shop class came to the fore for the national effort. The miscellaneous correspondence inserted in the book details the plans for the project, but they don’t tell of the blood, sweat and tears that ordinary high-school students put into building model aircraft.
On December 3, 1941, Mr. William Frank Knox, the Secretary of the Navy, sent a letter to Dr. John W. Studebaker, the U. S. Commissioner of Education, stating the need for a large number of model planes. “Spotter” or “Recognition” plans were needed to teach aircraft recognition to airmen. On December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. By January 1942, a memorandum of understanding was signed to outline a joint project to produce to scale approximately 10,000 each of 50 model airplanes of both Axis and Allied types, to be used for “recognition, gunnery training, and observation training.”
The United States needs scale model planes for the emergency…This program gives the youth of the United States a definite responsibility in the war effort, a responsibility which should not be underestimated…It is doubtful if any greater privilege has been accorded to the schools of this Nation than that represented by this all-out effort in the making of model aircraft.
– Hambrook, Scale model aircraft production procedure, p. 1.
Boy’s Life magazine in April 1942 exhorted “…the United States Navy is depending on the boys of America to furnish these models, and furnish them swiftly.” By August 1942, over 280,000 models had been made, and a call went out for 300,000 more.
Some of the more complex designs took over 50 hours of shop time for one model. Some jurisdictions, such as the New York State Education Department, came up with plans for a production line system. Modelers whose aircraft passed inspection were awarded a certificate and rank of ‘Cadet Aircraftsman’ for creating one plane and on up the ranks. In the collections of the Library of Congress is this photograph of Willard DiSantis of Oswego, New York, a sixteen-year old high school boy who made seventy-six model planes for the U. S. Navy, and was awarded the honorary rank of admiral.
Resources:
United States. Office of Education. Model aircraft project. Washington, 1942.
https://lccn.loc.gov/43004532
New York (State) Bureau of industrial and technical education. More planes, easier, faster; a production plan for the Scale model aircraft project. Albany, the University of the State of New York, the State Education Dept., Bureau of Industrial and Technical Education, 1943. https://lccn.loc.gov/43053594
Available full-text from HathiTrust: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/101794416
Hambrook, Robert W. Scale model aircraft construction procedure. Federal Security Agency, Washington, D.C., 1942.
Available full-text from University of South Carolina, University Libraries: http://digital.tcl.sc.edu/cdm/ref/collection/gdp2/id/2899
Further reading:
Zimmerman, R. “How we won the war (with tools commonly found in the shop), the model aircraft project.” Journal of American Culture, Winter 1985, v. 8, p. 51-58.
Comments (6)
During WWll my father taught machine shop courses in a vocational high school in the Pittsburgh, PA district of Turtle Creek. He also invented a device for lathes that allowed blind machinists to work on war production.
My father in law dale owens was a model maker i have the cerificate that awards him an honorary rank ” model” from the department of the navy bureau of aeronautics.
Yes, I made one of these as a junior in High School in 1942. It was a model of a C-47 or whatever it was called then. My shop teacher told me I would be given an “A” for the course if my model was accepted, which it was.
I found a certificate that shows my Dad, Melvin S. Breyfogle (1926 – 2016) was awarded honorary Lieutenant (JG) that had the signature by Rear Admiral J. S. McCain, USN as well as the school superintendent L.A. Clark. I would like to find more information on the program if there is anyone that knows how the honorary rank was determined.
Nice article … Life Magazine featured the project in it’s cover & the storyin March 1942 … 2/22/2022
My 97 year old friend, Albert H. Demchak, has two of the models constructed about 1942 for this program, plus a certificate like the one Mr. Garvon mentioned. He carved one (a ME-109 I believe) and the other was a commercially made printed ‘paper’ plane that was sent flat, which then opens at folds to complete an aircraft (a P40 Warhawk I believe). The latter was brought home by a friend or relative who removed it from a barracks in which he was housed. Al also has a molded P51 Mustang in black ‘plastic’ or Bakelite that was cast in one piece. Finally, Al also has wooden parts for another model that was never finished, but remains in the cardboard box he put it in when a teenager. He believes all three finished pieces were part of this Navy model aircraft identification program.