In a war (say WW2) where a compulsory draft is in place, are all disciplines in the Army / Navy / Air Force equally filled (in proportion to the regular personnel) with ‘volunteers’, or do the vast majority of drafted troops become general field soldiers? Can volunteers decide on their placement?
In terms of training, how long would it take to train up a draftee to be a helicopter / airplane pilot? How long would it take before a draftee would be trusted with a $50M plane?
Would it be easier to ‘convert’ a member of the professional army (pre-trained before war began) to take over the highly-skilled positions, or could new pilots be trained in a reasonable time?
Thanks.
( I’ve been re-reading Catch 22 and was curious as to how Yossarian, with his attitude and outlook, could have ended up as a pilot at all.)
If you are a referring to the U.S. armed forces today, then a draftee would never become a pilot. All pilots are highly trained officers that commit to extended duty just for the privilege of being trained to fly those expensive beasts. Even if you become an officer, you can’t just sign up for flight training. The competition is fierce and the available slots are few.
What Shagnasty said. A draftee would be enlisted, not commissioned as an officer. Only officers fly (Warrant Officers in the Army) and, AFAIK, all must both volunteer for the duty and pass physical and aptitude tests. FWIW, once you’ve passed these tests, it can (in the Navy) take around 1-2 years to qualify in a particular aircraft.
Back during Vietnam (that was the last time I was interested enough to check) an enlistee could request what type of duty he could get, but the military was not obligated to comply.
Reading memoirs from WW2 soldiers, I got the impression that draftees could apply for pilot training, but only those who had some college were accepted.
There were advantages to volunteering, except for having to serve for longer. In the 50’s if you were drafted, you served a 2 year tour of duty, but if you volunteered it was 4 years. So, there was no way you had time to learn to fly and then serve in a squadron. Nothing is impossible, but it was extremely unlikely that a draftee could become a pilot.
In answer more generally to your query, if there were a draft I suspect most of the draftees wuld become support personell. On the other hand, its not impossible for draftees to become pilots if there were a truly major war.
