To celebrate National Aviation Day on Sunday, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) is displaying a 1943 Link Trainer flight simulator in its advanced flight simulation center, located at its Daytona Beach, Florida campus. The WWII-era trainer purchased from a private owner went on display last year to support the university’s Heritage Initiative. The Link trainer reflects the program’s intentions to echo ERAU’s history with an original yoke, components, instructor station, and Army Corp maintenance log.
“There are few names in aviation that go to the very core of who we are. Cessna is one; Link is another,” said Dr. Tim Brady, former dean of ERAU’s College of Aviation. “The Link trainers helped make pilot trainees into skilled professionals capable of safely flying the airplane when all outside visual references were lost.”
ERAU used the devices to instruct Army Air Corps, Naval, Royal Air Force, and French pilots at South Florida airfields during WWII. The trainers were also used throughout the 1940s and 1950s at the Embry-Riddle School of Aviation in Miami.
“As our World War II veterans in particular will testify, we have come a long way from sitting in a non-air-conditioned ‘blue box’ powered by a series of air-driven bellows to the advanced computer-driven flight simulator technologies of today,” said Dr. Leo F. Murphy, professor of aeronautical science at ERAU.
