Flying "Anything, Anywhere, Anytime"
Operation "Noah's Ark"
Taloa Academy was the first division created by Transocean. The year was 1946. It was established to provide ground
and flight training for the airline's flight and operations personnel. As the school grew, so did its reputation. It achieved
acclaim from airlines around the world and from foreign governments for the quality of flight crews it graduated.
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Headquartered in a barracks building at the north end of the field at Oakland International, the academy became one of the largest flying schools in America. In 1950, it purchased the assets and name of Moreau Flying Service, one of the oldest commercial flying services on the West Coast, and merged it with its own.
The Taloa Academy established branch offices and training facilities at Minter Field in Bakersfield, California. This school was licensed by the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) to operate with the following ratings: primary flight, commercial flying, and basic and advanced ground school.
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The academy was first directed by retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Roger Q. Williams, author of Half Way to the Moon and Back,
Many of those cadets who were trained at Taloa Academy were later ranking senior officers in the Indonesian Air Force. Several were among the first pilots hired for Indonesia's Garuda Airways, which is still in operation today. Other contracts from foreign countries included the training of fifteen pilots for Japan Air Lines- all of whom were Japanese air veterans who had been grounded since the end of World War II; pilots and flight engineers for Lufthansa; and helicopter pilots for South Korea. By the end of its first six years of operation the school had trained more than 1,400 students from ten nations. At its peak, the academy employed more than thirty-five on its staff and had a fleet of fifty-six airplanes.
a book written about space travel at least ten years before John Glenn circled the earth. Later Taloa Academy was directed by Herber Webb. Many of its students were military veterans who qualified under the G. I. Bill of Rights for the government to pay for their schooling. The school offered a wide range of aviation-related courses so that upon graduation, its students would be certified for either flight crews, ground crews, or flight operations.
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The first major training contract won by the Taloa Academy was from the government of Indonesia for the training of sixty cadets, who were to serve as
the nucleus of that country’s newly established military and civilian flight programs. Their training at Minter Field began with "classrooms in the air,"
sixty hours of flight training in Aeronca aircraft. The Taloa Academy was the first division created by Transocean. The year was 1946. It was established to
Herbert Webb, director of the Taloa Academy of Aeronautics, Oakland, California
provide ground and flight training for the airline's flight and operations personnel. As the school grew, so did its reputation. It achieved acclaim from airlines around the world and from foreign governments for the quality of flight crews it graduated.
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Headquartered in a barracks building at the north end of the field at Oakland International, the academy became one of the largest flying schools in America. In 1950, it purchased the assets and name of Moreau Flying Service, one of the oldest commercial flying services on the West Coast, and merged it with its own.
Stearman training planes in formation Minter Field, Bakersfield,. CA
In 1951 the Taloa Academy began classes for pursers, stewardesses, and flight attendants, under the direction of Gwendolyn Raymond and Kayle Halley, both registered nurses. The curriculum included aeronautical indoctrination, international documentation, inflight meal service, flight emergency procedures and medical care, inflight service, professional etiquette, appearance, charm, poise, and airline operations.
Above: "Coffee, tea or milk?". Stewardesses in training at Taloa Academy of Aeronautics
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Below: TAL wet ditching drill in San Francisco Bay . The ditching trainer is ex-TALOA aircraft, N93061. It was burned in a hanger fire at Southwest Airways' SFO hanger on Dec 30, 1955. The fuselage was painted orange and floated with barrels in the lagoon off the Coast Guard Air Station at SFO
Above: TAL stewardesses participating in wet ditching drill, San Francisco Bay
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Below:"Down the chute" Training drill
U.S. Coast Guard personnel on flying status were trained for wet ditching at the Taloa Academy at Oakland. This instruction
included taking aloft a crew of four or five pilots to 1,500 or 2,000 feet so that they could observe the pattern of the swells on
the surface. The plane would then descend to ten or fifteen feet above the water to show the Coast Guardsmen the flat
spots between the ocean swells where they could "dunk" safely in an emergency.
In August 1958, the U.S. Army completed a two-year training program conducted by the Taloa Academy that involved more than 2 million miles of instrument flying. Under contract to the Sixth Army, the academy trained more than 200 commissioned aviators as instrument-rated pilots; they received both flight and ground school instruction from Emmett Fall, Joe Pruszynski and other academy instructors.
Because of the airline's many DC-4 flights over the Pacific route to the Orient, TAL's training division saw the necessity for a flight simulator which would duplicate flight emergencies and procedures while safe on the ground.
Operating under Transocean's "can do" creed, Frank Grinnon saved the company much of the million-dollar purchase price of a flight simulator by building one. Assisted by Burt Elliott and Harry King, it still required 2,500 man-hours and the cost of surplus parts and instruments. Their efforts produced a working mock-up of a DC-4 cockpit with standard layout and instruments.
In addition to training TAL's crews, the academy also provided Link Simulator training for the flight crews of other airlines such as Overseas National Airlines, U.S. Overseas Airways, and California Eastern Airways, as well as private and executive pilots. The simulator was referred to by the pilots as The Monster. A newspaper reporter once said of the machine: ". . . it'll do anything except fly and tell your mother-in-law her age."
Above: U.S. Army graduates
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Below:Graduation ceremony for Indonesian cadets at Taloa Academy of Aeronautics, Minter Field, Bakersfield, CA, 1951
Above: Robert Lang congratulates Republic of Korea graduates
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Left: TALOA Academy Roster of 60 cadets
from the Indonesian government, 1951
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Right: Cadet Ignatius Dewanto
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Below: Cadet Iman Soekotjo
