Aerial Navigation as Applied Mathematics

Abstract

In the fall of 1942 at the urgent request of the federal government, as an incentive to interest in piloting and navigating airplanes, many of the secondary schools of our country set into operation classes in aerial navigation, aerodynamics and meteorology. The navigation courses were in the main, the responsibility of the teachers of mathematics. They have been preparing youth including a few young women now for three years. The motive of these young folk in selecting the course is either the wish to pilot soon or that of understanding a timely subject. Many of the young men of the earlier classes are flying missions now “down under” in the South Pacific.* Some are flying their own planes from England for furloughs and then new assignments. Now the Army Air Corps is closed to admissions, and moreover, many men classified in that branch of the service for months, “on the line,” awaiting anxiously their transfer to preflight have been notified officially that they will not be needed as pilots or navigators or even bombardiers. One wonders what the effect will be on elections to a high school course in navigation. Will it develop that aerial navigation is an emergency subject, incident to the war, in secondary schools, to vanish from the curriculum in a few years, parts of it to be taken over into the courses in so-called pure mathematics? Or will navigation continue as a course optional in high school? At the moment options are holding up well.