Airplane Pilot Training

Military Impetus

From the earliest days of machine-powered flight, flying enthusiasts have sought ways to share knowledge, test new designs, and refine approaches to piloting. At the same time, the quest to reduce accidents, fatalities or injuries, and property loss has been a constant. Rapid and sophisticated advances were made during World War II, as national governments provided the impetus, personnel, and funding for research and development of military combat and support aircraft flight training devices and procedures. Innovation led to the design of a variety of celestial navigation simulators as well, some so large they were constructed inside 45-foot-high silos, to provide crew training in nighttime navigation by the stars.

As other technologies related to aviation leaped ahead, the engineers crafting flight simulators had to keep pace and adopt appropriate mock-ups and stand-ins into their own designs. Radar research and development, for one example, led to the need for training devices that incorporated systems to simulate visual contact, enemy aircraft identification and apparent course, target acquisition and lock-on pathways, and other factors. In the United Kingdom, the use of synthetic radar trainers, as they were called, was estimated by the Royal Air Force to have saved as much as $50 million in aviation fuel over the course of the war.

In the years following World War II, pressures to innovate were intense, and the momentum in flight simulator design and production, rather than slowing down, actually accelerated. Both military and commercial endeavors expanded at full speed all around the aviation sphere; the development of flight simulators grew along with this general burst of industrial aeronautical experimentation and enterprise.

As military aircraft grew in terms of size, mission distance, payload, and endurance capacity, the flight simulators also expanded and diversified. Many of these training units dropped the use of motion simulation in favor of a focus on the myriad newly developed electronic switches, controls, communications devices, and other systems that flight crews had to master. Human trainers became expert at inventing ways to simulate emergencies, whether derived from extreme weather, equipment malfunction, misunderstood commands, enemy actions, or other sources. The movements, decisions, and communications of the trainees were observed live and up close, typically through open-backed installations, via mirrors, or through frosted window glass.

A U.S. Navy F/A-18 pilot training in a flight simulator at a naval air station in Lemoore, California. Flight simulator training can cost as little as 2 percent of the expense of training in aircraft.

The growth of civilian flight simulators also boomed during this period, with aviation manufacturer Curtiss–Wright taking the lead. The simulators from this production resource incorporated an enhanced measure of feedback in the sense that some of the instrumentation would respond or change appearance in reaction to the actions of the trainees. This type of improved feedback, along with the earliest real tri-axis cockpit movement simulation, became widely adopted by commercial aviation training instructors and flight schools.

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