Aviation Safety Innovations

1917–1920
Fleet’s reforms saved countless pilots’ lives and reshaped the standards of American military aviation.

Aviation Safety Innovations

1917–1920

A Crisis in Early Military Aviation

When the United States entered World War I, military aviation was still in a primitive and dangerous state. Aircraft were fragile, underpowered, and often poorly constructed. Pilots—many barely trained—were sent into the air in machines that failed far too often.

According to period accounts, two out of every three American trainee pilots died in accidents, most of them caused not by enemy action but by structural failures, design flaws, or catastrophic spins from which their aircraft simply could not recover.

Reuben H. Fleet, placed in command of America’s military flight training program, confronted a grim truth: the country was losing pilots faster than it could train them.

Fleet’s Mission: Make Aviation Safer

Fleet’s leadership during this period focused relentlessly on improving aircraft safety and training standards. Working with designers, mechanics, and officers, he pushed for:

stronger, more reliable airframes
improved control systems
standardized pilot training methods
consistent maintenance protocols
better documentation and checklists
safer procedures for takeoffs, landings, and formation flying

He demanded that aircraft sent to training fields be properly inspected and that known defects be corrected—not ignored. Many of these principles, common today, were revolutionary at the time.

Discovering the Spin Problem

One of the most lethal dangers pilots faced was the flat spin—a spiraling descent from which early airplanes often could not recover. Investigators and instructors noted that the problem worsened as aircraft burned fuel during flight. The imbalance made the wings behave unpredictably in a stall.

Pilots called it “the silent killer.”

Fleet understood that until this problem was solved, no training system could hope to be safe.

The Fuel-Balancing Breakthrough

During his time overseeing training schools and later while working with engineering teams, Fleet championed and refined a remarkable solution:

a method of distributing fuel between wing tanks so that centrifugal force in a spin would automatically help the airplane recover.

This idea—a combination of physics, intuition, and hands-on experimentation—dramatically improved safety. Aircraft so equipped could often recover from spins without pilot input. Instructors called it “Fleet’s quiet invention,” because it worked invisibly, without adding weight or complexity to the aircraft.

This innovation, documented in period reports and later recollections, became a critical step in making American training aircraft safer during and after World War I.

Cultural Reform: Safety as a Mindset

Fleet also changed the culture of military aviation. Under his leadership:

pilots trained with stricter evaluation
weather conditions were taken more seriously
maintenance logs were formalized
fields adopted uniform safety standards
instructors documented accidents and shared information

Where earlier commanders saw crashes as inevitable, Fleet believed most were preventable—and he proved it.

Results That Spoke for Themselves

By the time Fleet completed his service in military training, accident rates had dropped sharply. The measures he implemented continued long after the war and became part of the foundation for modern aviation safety.

One aviator later remarked that Fleet “saved more pilots in training than any pilot could on the battlefield.”

A Lasting Legacy in Flight Safety

Fleet’s safety innovations shaped:

U.S. military training doctrine
the design philosophy of early Consolidated aircraft
engineering practices at McCook Field
the standards adopted by the first civilian aviation authorities

His insistence that engineering serve the pilot—not the other way around—remained central to every aircraft Consolidated ever built, from trainers to the B-24 Liberator.

Today, many of aviation’s early safety reforms trace back to the period when Fleet refused to accept needless risk as “part of flying.”