In October 1939, just twenty-two years after the Wright brothers' first flight, a tiny civilian operation calling itself the Embry-Riddle Company appeared on Miami's Biscayne Bay. The facility consisted of only two planes, one flight instructor and one maintenance man. In just four years,this fledgling company would become one of the largest civilian and military pilot training organizations in the United States, key to the training of aviation professionals in World War II. Embry-Riddle cornered the professional aviation training market during the war years and became the standard for pilots as well as instructors, mechanics and aircraft factory workers. This book examines the many components of aeronautical training, the evoluation of a civilian company contributing to the war effort, the experiences and lives of those who participated in the school, and the crucial role Florida played in the war. This military and social history also examines the lives of women trained to work in aircraft factories, to become pilots, or to serve as flight instructors. By 1944, twenty-six thousand people received training from Embry-Riddle. But in the years after the war, lucrative government contracts dried up and a large hurricane sparked a fire that damaged untold amounts of property and planes, leaving the company struggling to adjust to peacetime civilian aeronautics.

1. The Embry-Riddle Company of Miami--2. Civilian pilot and mechanic training, 1939-1941--3. American and British Cadet pilot training, 1940-1941--4. Wartime technical training and aircraft overhaul--5. The Miami flight division at war--6. Training American pilots for war--7. Wartime RAF flight training--8. Contraction--Epilogue.