Recently the Army released a short showing Clark Gable, with his ears and wings, and the Air Forces O.C.S. down at Miami. Captain Gable gave a long spiel about the toughness of the course, stating that the bottom ten per cent fail, so the Air Forces officer has to be good. What he forgot to add was that the top ten come to Harvard to the A.A.E. Stat School.
The Army Air Forces Statisticians School is the only one of its kind in the nation. Graduates of the school become statisticians control officers and are shipped to every Air Forces base in the world. Of all the service schools at Harvard, the Stat School has the largest percentage of its men overseas.
Statisticians control officers are a new breed; a product of this war. As the Air Forces moved overseas into every nook and cranny of the four corners, a new method had to be devised to keep G.H.Q. informed of the conditions in every field. To meet this need the scientists devised the statisticians control officer and the A.A.F. Stat School.
A new class enters the school every four weeks to take the eight week course in logistics, business methods, and reporting. When the men graduate they are commissioned and sent overseas to fields which as yet have no control officer. By the end of the fiscal year the Army hopes to have two statisticians control officers at every field.
The school was organized in June of 1942 as one of the most hush-hush of all Harvard's war activities, but news about it began to leak out around the end of the year, and Time Magazine told the complete story of the school in January of this year. The commander officer of the school is Lieutenant-Colonel John Hoflin.
Read more in News
Twist and Shout