Embry-Riddle School of Aviation is founded in Florida
Photos clockwise from left: Embry-Riddle seaplane base on MacArthur Causeway, ca. 1939 (photo courtesy Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Archives); the former Fritz Hotel on NW 27th Avenue, repurposed as an Embry-Riddle Aviation School, circa 1942 (photo courtesy Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University); the former Coral Gables Coliseum, an Embry-Riddle training school circa 1940 (photo courtesy Florida Memory State Archives); aerial view of Carlstrom Field in Arcadia, Florida, where British pilots were trained (photo courtesy From Skyscrapers to Air Power – Lift Magazine); British cadets at Riddle Field, Clewiston circa 1942; Embry-Riddle School of Aviation, Daytona Beach campus, view of Student Union (photo courtesy Daytona Beach | Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University).
Florida’s prominence in U.S. aviation history is enhanced by its being the longtime home of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, widely recognized as one of the leading aviation and aerospace institutions in the world. Embry-Riddle’s main campus has been located in Daytona Beach since 1965 but the school originally set up shop in Florida in 1938 in Miami, where it built a seaplane base on MacArthur Causeway. That base had two planes, one instructor and one maintenance man.
The creation of a new wartime federal program, the Civilian Pilot Training Program, in 1940, brought prosperity to Embry-Riddle. The school arranged to partner with the University of Miami to provide flight training to civilians and leased a hangar at Miami Municipal Airport. By 1941 it was operating with 26 aircraft and had graduated 250 students. The Technical Division of the Embry Riddle School of Aviation was experiencing rapid growth and allowed the company to purchase the former Fritz Hotel, on NW 27th Avenue in Miami for all of its non-flying operations. Embry-Riddle renamed it the Aviation Building.
Between 1939 and 1941, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Technical Division acquired and set up classes in the Coliseum on Douglas Road, in Coral Gables. This expansion included flight training for civilians as well as training for military cadets.
During World War II, German Luftwaffe attacks on Britain made flight training too dangerous for the RAF on its home soil. As part of the Lend-Lease Act signed by President Franklin Roosevelt on March 11, 1941, seven different training facilities were erected throughout the United States. Embry-Riddle Mackey Aero College operated two of them, graduating 1325 cadets from Riddle Field in Clewiston and the supporting unit at Carlstrom Field in Arcadia. Clewiston became known as No. 5 BFTS (British Flying Training School). Over the years, Clewiston has also seen several reunions of WWII RAF veterans who’ve returned to relive the days they spent learning how to fly in Florida’s tropical skies. To this day, on every Memorial Day, a service is held at the British Plot in Oak Ridge Cemetery in Arcadia to honor 23 RAF pilots who perished during training exercises there.
Just seven years after its founding, Embry-Riddle had become the world’s largest private aviation school. In 1965, citing the need to consolidate all its activities in a single location, Embry-Riddle relocated its headquarters and fleet of training aircraft from Miami to Daytona Beach. Today, Embry-Riddle enrolls over 34,000 students annually at its stunning Daytona Beach campus and offers more than 100 associates, bachelors, masters and doctoral degree programs.