I'd like to know more about how draftees were selected for officer school to become 2nd Lt's .

Other than those Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) students who progressed their education such that they were able to graduate before induction into the Army or otherwise obtained diplomas, and who constituted the bulk of officer candidates in late 1943 and early 1944 (and also, contractually, needed to be put through officer candidate schools or equivalent), there was “No formal educational requirement…ever set for OCS applicants. War Department directives suggested that for certain technical schools (e.g., Engineer, Ordnance, Finance) academic degrees would be desirable, but they were held not to be essential. The educational standard was merely the possession of 'such education or civil or military experience as will reasonably insure…satisfactory completion of the course…'"

The head of the Army Ground Forces (AGF), General Lesley McNair, desired that, as an ideal, 50% of his officers be college graduates and 25% have at least some college experience.

During 1942, a limited number of civilians exclusive of Medical Department officers (i.e., trained doctors or veterinarians), were directly commissioned by the Army with or without college degrees; these men mostly went to Ordnance and Signal Corps units, responsibility for which had been delegated to the AGF:

From civilian life, during the period of shortage, Army Ground Forces commissioned, mainly for antiaircraft units, about 600 men who had formerly been officers or who had graduated from ROTC or CMTC....For certain signal and ordnance units activated by Army Ground Forces, civilians were commissioned directly, with no requirement of military experience. This was accomplished by the process of affiliation, by which a group of employees of an industrial concern were organized bodily as a military unit, the higher employees in the civilian group becoming officers in the military unit. The relation of officers and enlisted men under this system did not prove altogether satisfactory. Direct commissioning of civilians for other purposes was negligible in the Ground Forces.

For admission to OCS, soldiers were required to have, at a minimum, an Army General Classification Test (AGCT) score of 110 (a proposal to raise this to 115 was rejected). They also had to meet the criteria of an examining board, which varied, but always included determination of proven leadership ability, “age, physique, citizenship, [and] learning ability.” An Officer Candidate Test (OCT) was under development in 1941 but did not enter widespread use until late 1944. It was found that scores on the OCT correlated with scores on the AGCT.

An AGCT score of 110 or above was found to be correlated most closely with a man who had completed high school, or had attended or completed college.

TABLE II

THE AGCT ARMY GRADE PERCENTAGE DISTRIBUTION BY EDUCATIONAL CATEGORIES FOR COLORED AND WHITE SELECTEES PROCESSED JUNE 1941 TO FEBRUARY 1942

Education	Race	I (130+)	II (110+)	III (90-109)	IV (70-89)	V (69 and below)	No. of cases
Some school	White	0.3%	3.5	18.9	42.9	34.4	81,033
"	Colored	0.2	1.1	4.9	20.7	73.1	24,456
Completed grade school	W	2.0	21.8	42.8	27.6	5.8	212,949
"	C	0.3	3.6	19.4	43.4	33.1	22,343
Completed high school	W	15.1	50.5	28.5	5.4	0.5	177,556
"	C	1.6	16.5	41.5	32.6	7.8	8,404
Completed college	W	47.5	45.0	7.1	0.4		19,580
"	C	6.4	34.9	44.3	12.9	1.5	776
Completed college - post-grad	W	53.3	40.2	6.0	0.4	0.1	2,533
"	C	12.5	56.3	25.0	4.2	2.1	48

During the period of rapid expansion of the Army climaxing in late 1942, many officer candidates needed to be found. As a result, criteria were compromised to obtain the required number of candidates, and failure rates correspondingly increased. The AGF found itself at a significant disadvantage when obtaining qualified officer material, since the Army Air Forces and Army Service Forces, on principle, utilized applicable civilian skills much more so than did the combat arms, and in the case of the Army Air Forces, received preference in the most intelligent men for a period of time. When the Army troop basis was amended for 1943, the need for officer candidates decreased significantly. The Army had initially contemplated allowing graduates of the "advanced" course of the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP), a program where soldiers were sent to civilian colleges for academic and technical training, to attend OCS, but this never came to pass and no quotas were ever allotted for them. Deemed a waste of manpower, the program was drawn down significantly in spring 1944, with most attendees being sent in their rank (junior enlisted men) to replenish depleted lower-priority AGF divisions being stripped for replacements.

"The ROTC problem, observed G-1 AGF on 15 July 1943 ‘is, with the possible exception of ASTP, one of the most sensitive administrative problems we have at this time.’”

ROTC students first became available in large numbers between the spring of 1943 and the spring of 1944. Coincident with the reduction in OCS output, “requirements for officers were so low and pressure to commission the ROTC so high during late 1943 and early 1944 that OCS quotas were allotted almost entirely to the ROTC, soldiers getting very little chance at officer candidate school....During the period beginning with the reduced OCS quotas...for July 1943 and lasting through May 1944 with the exception of October and November 1943, ROTC students formed a large majority of candidates admitted to OCS."

It was concluded that it took at least a year from when a man entered the Army to when he became "usable" as an officer in a combat zone: selection of candidate, 2 months; OCS course, 3 months; required service in ZI unit, 3 months; in depot, leave, etc., 1 month; movement overseas, 1 month; in overseas depots, 1 month.

With the reduction in the troop basis for 1943 and fears of surplus, several schools were drawn down or suspended entirely. The Coast Artillery School was discontinued in November 1943, and the Antiaircraft Artillery School in February 1944. To deal with an “embarrassing” surplus of Antiaircraft Artillery officers estimated between 5,000 and over 10,000, a Special Basic Course was conducted at the Infantry School to convert officers of other arms to Infantry. Between February 1944 and 31 August 1945, 10,877 officers had been converted. Between February 1944 and the end of 1944, 5,220 of the 8,678 attendees had previously been Antiaircraft officers.

Branch	Number
Antiaircraft Artillery	5,220
Coast Artillery	284
Tank Destroyer	1,102
Field Artillery	792
Armored Force	243
Infantry [refresher]	12
Volunteers (all branches)	1,025
Total	8,678

The Armored School closed from June-October 1944, and the Cavalry and Tank Destroyer Schools between December 1943-October 1944; in November 1944, these schools reopened as a consolidated course at the Armored School. The finding of suitable OCS candidates as input was increased or restarted in 1944 soon became an extremely severe problem in the continental United States as units, which were ideal sources of candidates with military experience, departed for overseas service. Personnel in units were "frozen" from usually one to three months before departure, as Army regulations prohibited the taking of officer candidates from units that were alerted for overseas movement.

Circumstances that were less propitious for releasing large numbers of well-trained enlisted men could scarcely have been imagined than those in which units, especially divisions, found themselves during the latter half of 1944. Since late 1943, divisions had been plucked repeatedly to provide enlisted replacements. In March and April [1944], climaxing nearly complete turnovers of personnel, they had received infusions of new blood from the disbanded ASTP and from the replacement centers. Forming these recruits into tactical teams was a major preoccupation...during the summer of 1944. The few experienced men left in the divisions were badly needed to conduct this essential training; they could ill be spared....It was no wonder that commanders did not respond readily to pleas that even men whose "work was critical or whose replacement was difficult" be sent to officer candidate school.

As a result of this heavy turnover in units, and resultant poor response from unit commanders unwilling to give up their most experienced men, 40% of officer candidates during the fall of 1944 had to be enrolled from replacement training centers. AGF disliked taking officer candidates from this source, as the men were "generally young, [and], it was thought, would be less useful for immediate use as combat replacements than men of greater maturity and military experience." Failure rates in the fall of 1944 reached nearly 45% in officer candidate schools of the various branches; a failure rate of 20% had been used as a baseline.

TABLE IV

AUTHORIZED MONTHLY QUOTAS AT AGF OFFICER CANDIDATE SCHOOLS 1943-1945

Month	AA	ARMD	CAV	CA (HD)	FA	INF	TD	TOTAL
Jan-Apr 43	2,000	466	166	57	1,333	2,000	333	6,555
May-Jun	"	300	100	50	900	1,200	300	4,850
Jul	500	100	50	"	300	1,000	100	2,100
Aug-Sep	210	80	40	54	400	700	80	1,564
Oct-Nov	50	40	25	25	75	135	40	390
Dec	182	140			314	647		1,283
Jan 44	147	134			289	612		1,182
Feb	119	126			270	725		1,240
Mar		105			252	712		1,069
Apr		"			250	780		1,135
May		136			50	800		986
Jun					"	510 (1,600)		560 (1,650)
Jul-Oct					"	3,200		3,250
Nov		60	68		150	2,000	22	2,300
Dec		100	114		200	"	36	2,450
Jan-Sep 45		"	"		"	"	"	2,450
Oct		15	15		65	200	5	300