Wartime Career As A Test Pilot
The Air Corps needed engineering-trained pilots and, instead of being sent into an operational combat unit, Ridley was ordered to the Consolidated Vultee plant in Fort Worth, Texas, where his initial assignment was to conduct acceptance tests on four-engine B-24 Liberator bombers. Soon thereafter, he was named as engineering liaison officer on both the B-24 and B-32 programs. Even at that early date, the Air Corps was developing the mighty six-engine B-36 intercontinental bomber, later to become the mainstay of the postwar Strategic Air Command, and Ridley found himself assigned to that program as well.
Two years later, after the tide of battle had turned to the Allies' favor, Ridley was sent off to further his education. The technological revolution spawned by the war had demonstrated that the postwar Air Force's success would be dependent upon having a corps of officers with first-rate technical training. After attending the Army Air Forces School of Engineering at Wright Field (later renamed the Air Force Institute of Technology), Ridley was sent to the California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena, California where he received his Master of Science degree in aeronautical engineering in July 1945.
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