PDA

View Full Version : Book background question?



FastEd
9th November 2000, 06:50
Hi all,
I recently purchased an old WW2 hand to hand combat manual, and I was wondering if someone in teh know could give some background on it...such as who authored it, where the technical background may have come from, if it was widely used etc.
The book in question is part of the Navel Aviation Physical Training Manuals series on Hand to Hand Combat. Prepared by the training division of the bureau of aeronautics for the U.S Navy. It is dated 1943, and was probably published in Annapolis, Maryland for the United States Navel Insitute.
Anyway any info you can provide on this book would be interesting, thanks.

Joseph Svinth
9th November 2000, 10:22
The V-5 program began in 1942. From "Kronos," http://ejmas.com :

1942: At the urging of Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, the United States Navy introduces a 12-week physical fitness program for naval aviators. Known as the V-5 program, its trainers used tackle football to teach teamwork, running and swimming to build endurance, boxing for aggressiveness, and a kind of wrestling called "rough and tumble" for self-defense. Students were taught vital points of the human body, and urged to forego fair play in order to win. While a well-designed curriculum, the program’s chief fault was that it taught more than anyone could hope to master in 12 weeks. Of course, individual mastery was never a major goal for V-5 trainers. Instead, their job was only to convert pleasant, well-mannered college students into disciplined killers as quickly and inexpensively as possible.

As to why the Navy decided to introduce some judo into naval aviation training, see my article on Mas Tamura and Karl Pojello in Furyu.

Though their names escape me, the writers included various college football and wrestling coaches, and the V-5 manual fairly represents WWII-era US thinking on the subject of H2H. When compared to the notions of 1918 -- see Jacombs' boxing text for comparison -- you can see enormous increase in sophistication in just 25 years. Even better, the program was also simpler than what currently existed. See, for example, the 1942 Army program outlined in FM 21-150 at "JNonLethal" at EJMAS.

There are at least two academic articles on the V-5 program. Unfortunately neither is online, but any university with a decent football program should have the journals. (I found them at University of Washington, for instance.)

Bennett, Bruce. "Physical Education and Sport at Its Best -- The Naval Aviation V-5 Pre-Flight Program," Canadian Journal of History of Sport, 21:2, December 1990

Romminger, Donald W. Jr. "From Playing Field to Battleground: The United States Navy V-5 Preflight Program in World War II," Journal of Sport History, 12:5, Winter 1985