After 9 weeks of Primary Flight Training, the graduates were sent on to Basic Flight Training.

Modified excerpts from The Army Air Forces in World War II:

It was the mission of the basic schools to make military pilots out of primary graduates. The student at basic learned to operate a plane of greater weight, power, and complexity than the plane which he had mastered in primary. In addition, the student was introduced to new aspects of airmanship, learning to fly by instruments, at night, in formation, and cross-country. The military instructors emphasized precision and smoothness of airplane operation, and a large portion of flying time was devoted to repetition of maneuvers to develop proficiency.

The basic stage was accomplished in from 70 to 75 hours of flying. It was divided into a transition phase, involving familiarization with the plane and fundamental operations, and a diversified phase, which included accuracy maneuvers and acrobatics, and formation, instrument, navigation, and night flying. Link (simulation) training was also included.

Instrument training was doubtless the most important part of the basic curriculum. Experience in combat underlined the necessity of flying at night and under all weather conditions, and such missions required operation of aircraft by instruments. The AAF system relied almost exclusively upon the three rate instruments: the needle, or rate-of-turn indicator; the ball, or bank indicator; and the airspeed indicator. Gyroscopic instruments were practically ignored.

The traditional basic curriculum had always been confined to training on single-engine aircraft; differentiation of students for single-engine or two-engine instruction did not normally occur until advanced training. But during 1943 and 1944 an attempt was made, in the interest of improving the proficiency of multiengine pilots, to begin two-engine training for them in basic. Although the majority of students continued to receive the standard single-engine curriculum, small numbers were entered into one of two experimental curricula. The first of these was a combination course; after transitioning on the single-engine basic trainer, the student received familiarization instruction on a two-engine plane. The second course was conducted exclusively with two-engine aircraft. Although the experimental curricula showed some promise, they were abandoned in 1945 The combination course allowed too little time for the student to gain more than familiarization with either type of plane; the second course proved impracticable because of the shortage of appropriate two-engine aircraft. The experiment indicated, however, that if adequate numbers of satisfactory trainers were planned for and provided, differentiation of instruction at the basic stage would prove more efficient than the conventional curriculum.33