During World War II, the military services sought to recruit college students for the various branches of service. After Pearl Harbor, the Army, Army Air Forces, Navy and Marine Corps descended upon the college campuses making all out effort to enlist college men . The Army Air Force believing they had to have the best of the best for their Aviation Cadet Program and launched an intensive program to recruit the college students. To beat the other branches to the college educated personnel, they recruited far more men than their training facilities could handle and placed the excess in the Army Air Force Reserve. By the first of 1943, they had a backlog of 93,000 men, college students, high school students, and men in the Army that had passed the qualifying exams, waiting to commence training.In the meantime, the War Manpower Commisssion, the Selective Service, and a few Senators took note of the college men not on active duty. They put pressure upon General Hap Arnold, head of the Air Force to get the reserve personnel into the war. The Air Force could not use the men at the time; however, General Arnold did not want to lose them and hastily dreamed up the College Training Detachment program. He sold his plan to the War Department on the spurious ground that some of the recruits were not college educated and that it was necessary to give them college training to make up their educational deficiencies. The War Department approved and the Army Air Force College Training Detachment program was born.Dr. Shelton Phelps, President of Winthrop College, South Carolina's college for women, heard about the government using colleges and universities for the specialized training of military personnel and thought that WACS or WASPS would fit well into the girl's school. Accordingly, he requested one of the programs. Winthrop College was offered one of the military programs, however, it was not for the training of women soldiers. It was one of the more than 150 colleges chosen by the Army for an AAF College Training Detachment, an enterprise to give college training to young, male, Air Force flyers. Dr. Phelps knew that the fathers of the young college girls would not be happy, but the school needed the money so, he threw all caution to the wind and accepted. Winthrop College became the unlikely site of the 41st College Training Detachment.On the first of February, 1943, the Army Air Force began calling the 50,000 college men in the reserves into active duty. They were sent to a basic training center for processing and assignment to a CTD. In March 1943, 320 Aviation Cadets marched upon the campus of Winthrop College, now Winthrop University, then an all girl's school, with 1540 students. This Air Force project of placing Aviation Cadets on the campus of Winthrop College is a unique part of Winthrop's history and this site is dedicated to Winthrop University and their contribution to World War II through the the 41st College Training Detachment. 
