“As the Military and Naval Academies are the backbone of the Army and Navy, so must the Aeronautical Academy be the backbone of the Air Service,” wrote Lieutenant Air Service Officer Colonel A.J. Hanlon in 1918, when air power was still widely regarded to be suitable only for transport and reconnaissance. Hanlon’s dream of an academy for future pilots had a long gestation, through two world wars and into the early period of the Cold one with the Soviet Union, until the U.S. military leaders finally realized the need for a separate academy.

On this day, August 29, in 1958 the U.S. Air Force Academy, modeled after West Point (for the Army) and Annapolis (for the Navy) opened in Colorado Springs, Arizona.

Before Colorado Springs, pilots mostly came from several small training schools, paling in comparison to the comprehensive programs of the other two branches. As the military began to feel a distinct shortage of qualified pilots, discussions on launching an officer-training school began to take on more weight. As Hanlon himself put it, forty years before the opening,  “No service can flourish without some such institution to inculcate into its embryonic officers love of country, proper conception of duty, and highest regard for honor.”