New book chronicles Embry-Riddle’s role in WWII flight training

In a new book, “Embry-Riddle at War: Aviation Training During WWII,” Dr. Stephen Craft tells the story of the Embry-Riddle Co., a small Miami-based operation established in 1939 by pilot and businessman John Paul Riddle that developed into one of the nation’s largest aviation training centers for the U.S. military, its allies, and civilians.

In just four years the company, which later evolved into Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, trained 26,000 pilots, flight instructors, mechanics, and aircraft factory workers at several airfields and a seaplane base in South Florida and at an airfield in Union City, Tenn.

Craft, the associate chair of the Humanities/Social Sciences Department at Embry-Riddle’s Daytona Beach campus, was assisted in this five-year research and writing project by Dean Bob Rockett, coordinator of Embry-Riddle’s Heritage Project, and Kevin Montgomery, director of the University Archives. The book draws upon personal memoirs and interviews of the men and women who graduated from wartime Embry-Riddle.

The 344-page hardcover book was published in February 2009 by the University Press of Florida as part of its Florida History and Culture Series.
For more information: UPF.com or EmbryRiddle.edu.