When America declared war on Germany in April, 1917, the Army Air Service was virtually non-existant. At the time, there was no military training program capable of producing the number of aviators required at the front and no plans existed to create one. In the relatively short time span of just less than two years, the American training program was born and became arguably the finest program in the world. This transformation from nonexistence came about by adopting and combining the training methods of our European allies, who's programs were well established upon U.S. entry into the war. Issodun, the "finishing" school for America's pursuit pilots, was the largest aviation training center of its time and the crown jewel of the American military aviation training program.
