In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the legislation that formally established the Air Force Academy. One year later, the school—setting up a temporary home at Denver’s Lowry Air Force Base—swore in its first class of 306 cadets. Since its founding, the academy has provided students with the academic, military, and physical training required to become Air Force officers.  Its high academic and military standards, combined with its connection to aviation, made the academy a popular addition to the national military education system, a role it continues to play in the twenty-first century.

The United States created an independent Air Force in 1947, which served as a driving force behind the creation of an Air Force Academy.  In 1949 Secretary of Defense James Forrestal appointed Eisenhower, then president of Columbia University, and University of Colorado president Robert Stearns to a commission tasked with studying the future of the nation’s military service academies.  Whereas previously Air Force officers received their education from the Military Academy at West Point, the board concluded that the United States should train students interested in a career in the Air Force at a separate academy.

The Korean War temporarily absorbed the funds needed to build the academy, but planning continued apace, even during the delay.  The Air Force Academy Planning Board, headed by Lt. General Hubert Harmon (who would also become the Air Force Academy’s first superintendent), developed a plan for the academy’s curriculum in consultation with academics from Columbia, Stanford, Purdue, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Because the traditions of the Air Force were closely linked to those of the Army, the Air Force Academy’s initial curriculum and faculty closely mirrored those of the Military Academy at West Point.  Most instructors were either graduates of West Point or had served on its faculty.  Like West Point, the curriculum designed for the Air Force Academy offered no electives, set a goal of 12 students per class, and challenged students across a wide variety of academic disciplines.

Another committee, with members that included General Carl A. Spaatz and Charles Lindberg, assumed the task of selecting the site for the academy. The committee narrowed the sight of the Air Force Academy to three locations: Alton, Illinois; Lake Geneva, Wisconsin; and Colorado Springs, Colorado.  In June 1954, the Department of the Air Force chose the Colorado Springs site because of the area’s longstanding military traditions and the availability of land; Colorado Springs was home to Ent Air Force Base and Fort Carson, and the site offered more than 18,000 acres of former cattle ranches set in the foothills of the Rampart Range of the Rocky Mountains.  The Air Force Academy received its first students at the Colorado Springs campus in 1958.  The new academy soon boasted two dormitories, an architecturally innovative chapel with facilities for several religions, a library, classroom facilities, and state of the art athletic facilities. 

The Air Force Academy inherited its command structure and basic organization from West Point.  A lieutenant general serves as superintendent with brigadier generals serving as academic dean and commandant of cadets.  Colonels serve as heads of the academic departments and as director of athletics.  The department heads, called Permanent Professors, are removed from the line of the Air Force and normally retain their positions for the duration of their military careers.  The faculty initially consisted exclusively of military officers with master’s and doctorate degrees who served for fixed three-year tours of duty.  A military captain or major, called an Air Officer Commanding, headed each of the 40 (later downsized to 36) cadet squadrons, which formed the basic military and social unit of the academy.

In the late 1950s, under the direction of the academic dean, Brig. General Robert McDermott, the Air Force Academy became the first service academy to reject the rigid and uniform academic program.  In its place came a wide range of elective courses, academic majors, and interdisciplinary programs such as the Foreign Area Studies program, although the core curriculum remained unusually heavy compared to non-military colleges.  The academy’s focus on engineering and science, moreover, meant that all graduates, regardless of major, received a bachelor of science degree.  This curriculum received the necessary approval from accreditation boards in time for the members of the first graduating class to receive their degrees and military commissions in Colorado Springs.

To complement the academic program, the Air Force Academy developed athletic and military programs to build the “whole man.”  All cadets participate in intercollegiate or intramural athletics.  All cadets must also complete rigorous physical education requirements. A wide variety of summer programs, including language training, advanced military training, and visits to active Air Force bases worldwide complete the process.

The traditional “fourth-class” system, a disciplinary training program, sharply divided incoming students from upperclassmen. Upperclass cadets ran the cadet squadrons under the general supervision of air officers commanding and third-class cadets (sophomores) bore the primary responsibility for the military training of fourth-class cadets (freshmen).  The fourth-class cadets retained a subordinate status until they were “recognized” en masse in the spring of their first year.  They then became upperclassmen who assumed the primary responsibility of training the next incoming group.  The Air Force Academy has since replaced the “fourth-class” system with an Officer Development System designed to identify leadership roles for cadets at all stages of their academy careers.

In 1976, all of the military academies accepted their first female cadets.  This decision came after a 303 to 96 vote in the House of Representatives and a voice vote in the U.S. Senate in favor of the admission of women.  Although the senior officers of the Air Force, Army, and Navy had all initially opposed the admission of women to the service academies, the transition went more smoothly than many expected.  A sexual assault scandal at the Air Force Academy in 2003 came as a special shock to many people close to the academy because the Air Force Academy had traditionally enjoyed better gender relations than either West Point or Annapolis. 

Unlike the faculty of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, which included a number of civilian professors, the teaching staff at West Point and Colorado Springs remained almost exclusively military throughout most of the twentieth century.  Departments had limited access to visiting professorships designed to bring in one civilian specialist per department for a one-year appointment.  In the 1990s, however, Congress directed West Point and Colorado Springs to hire full-time civilians for their faculties in the interests of deepening and widening the qualifications of the academic departments.  The dean and department heads remained active-duty officers, but the faculty at both institutions are now one-quarter civilian.

Despite its relative youth, the Air Force Academy has produced senior-level leadership for the Air Force, the nation, and its allies.  The academy has produced more than 350 generals, 194 officers for foreign air forces, 140 CEOs of major corporations, 36 astronauts, two Air Force Chiefs of Staff (General Ronald Fogelman, 1994 to 1997 and General Michael Ryan, 1997 to 2001), and one member of Congress (Representative Heather Wilson, R-NM).  Its graduates serve around the world in a variety of civilian and military roles, underscoring the importance of the Air Force Academy and its mission.

The Colorado Springs site also is important in its own right. The campus, which contains more acreage than Manhattan in New York City, is unusually large for an institution whose student body rarely exceeds 4,400 cadets.  Consistent with its role in producing pilots, the academy also hosts an airfield for flight training and parachuting.  The altitude of the Air Force Academy varies from 6,380 to 8,040 feet, making it one of the highest elevation college campuses in the world and provides unusual challenges for flight training. Measured by the number of takeoffs and landings, the airfield has become one of the busiest airports in the western United States in the twenty-first century. The academy’s novelty, picturesque location, and proximity to other tourist destinations has made the Air Force Academy a popular tourist attraction.  A new visitor’s center in 1986 helped to make the Air Force Academy one of Colorado’s most visited man-made sites.

Fagan, George.  The Air Force Academy: An Illustrated History.  Boulder: Johnson Books, 1988.

Landis, Lawrence.  The Story of the U. S. Air Force Academy.  New York: Rinehart, 1960.

Cambell, Donald, and Thelma McCormack, “Military Experience and Attitudes Towards Authority: Evidence from the U. S. Air Force Academy,” American Journal of Sociology, LXII (March 1957), 480-492.

Lovell, John P.  Neither Athens Nor Sparta: The American Service Academies in Transition.  Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979.

Stiehm, Judith Hicks.  Bring Me Men and Women: Mandated Change at the U. S. Air Force Academy.  Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981.

Michael S. Neiberg