With football pitches seen as testing grounds, the military fielded teams that faced the best college programs during WWII. The Fort Knox Armoraiders, Iowa Pre-Flight Seahawks, and other service teams have played against players like Notre Dame, Michigan, and Ohio State. Military teams have sometimes skyrocketed past perennial powers in the national rankings.
With its tactical formations, fierce turf battles, and the use of military terms such as “blitz” and “bomb”, football was believed to instill tenacity, leadership and teamwork. “Football! Navy! War! At no time in history have those words been more closely linked and interwoven than they are now,” said Commander Thomas J. Hamilton, training program chief. US Navy physics and pre-flight and former Naval Academy football coach.
Distinct from the teams representing the West Point and Annapolis academies, the WWII military service teams boasted a collection of top players and coaches. Otto Graham, Marion Motley and Elroy “Crazylegs” Hirsch were part of the future Professional Football Hall of Fame to play for military installations. Before becoming a legend in Alabama, Paul “Bear” Bryant was an assistant coach with the Georgia Pre-Flight Skycrackers and the North Carolina Pre-Flight Cloudbusters. Future Oklahoma coach Bud Wilkinson was Iowa’s pre-flight assistant.
While the players on the service team endured training in addition to the grueling physical conditioning that prepared them for battle, coaches had to contend with constantly fluctuating rosters. “We never knew week to week what our roster would be because someone was always on the go,” said Tony Hinkle, who had guided the Butler University basketball team to a national championship before moving on. coach the football team representing the Chicago Great Lakes Naval Station.
The Marine Corps siphoned off players, including Notre Dame star Angelo Bertelli (back row left), from the ranks of college football during World War II.
National Archives
College coaches faced different challenges. After losing many of their best players in military service, more than 50 colleges gave up varsity football in 1942 and about 200 others, including Alabama, Michigan State and Stanford, followed suit in 1943. De many college teams that played also relied on freshmen. young people to enlist and those exempted from military service due to medical conditions.
With rosters including NFL and All-Americans players, service teams often had advantages in size and speed. In 1942, Georgia Pre-Flight toppled Auburn and Alabama, and the Great Lakes Bluejackets recorded six straight shutouts before tying Notre Dame to end the season. The aspiring Iowa Pre-Flight aviators beat Kansas, 61-0, in their first game before defeating Michigan and defending national champion Minnesota. Even greater success awaited the Seahawks the following year.
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Iowa Pre-Flight Almost Beats Notre Dame For 1943 Title
While service teams had separate rankings in 1942, the Associated Press in 1943 combined military and college teams in its weekly Top 20 poll.
“College football was at an interesting crossroads. Some schools put less emphasis on athletics to focus on the war effort while others had military camps stationed on their campuses, ”says Jeremy Swick, historian and curator of the College Football Hall of Fame. “There is rationing of gasoline, so small teams that depend on people traveling long distances to get to games are also affected. I think this is an important reason why military installations were included in the ranking.
With a roster studded with NFL veterans such as Dick Todd, 29, a double All-Pro fullback for the Washington Redskins, the Iowa Pre-Flight Seahawks climbed the Associated Press rankings in 1943 behind the innovative split-T. training of former Missouri coach Don Faurot.
After crushing their first eight opponents, including a victory over defending national champion Ohio State, the second-seeded Seahawks traveled to South Bend, Indiana, to face Notre Dame, also 8-0, in the biggest game of the season.
Even before kick-off, the war left its mark on the game when the Seahawks quarterback and five teammates transferred to other training bases and the Marines activated Irish quarterback Angelo Bertelli, who would win the Heisman Trophy that year.
From his barracks on Parris Island, Bertelli joined millions listening to the national radio show of the showdown between the nation’s top teams on November 20, 1943. A 20-point underdog, the Seahawks took a lead 13-7 in the fourth quarter on a touchdown pass. (The extra point attempt failed.) Led by sophomore quarterback Johnny Lujack, who would win the Heisman Trophy in 1947, the Irish scored a late touchdown to win, 14-13, in front of 45,000 fans.
The only team standing between Notre Dame and an unbeaten season was another service team, the Great Lakes. Captain David Hanrahan, Iowa’s pre-flight commander, sent a note to his Great Lakes counterpart before the game: “We’ve sweetened them for you, now it’s your boys to decide. “
In front of a crowd of 25,000 enlisted men in a stadium built on a quadrangle of the Great Lakes, the Sailors sank Notre Dame’s perfect season when Steve Lach, selected fourth in the NFL Draft in 1942 by the Chicago Cardinals, drew threw a last-minute 46-yard touchdown. pass to give the Bluejackets a spectacular 19-14 victory. The Associated Press called the game the “sporting surprise of the year.” After beating five top 10 teams, Notre Dame still finished the season at the top of the standings. But for an extra point missed, the Iowa Pre-Flight would have been the national champion.
Military service teams end with WWII
The following season, service crews made up half of the teams in the final Associated Press Top 20 poll, and that does not include the fourth-ranked Army and Navy. The San Antonio Randolph Field Ramblers finished third in the standings.
Just months after tying Texas in the Cotton Bowl on New Years Day, the Ramblers routed the Longhorns, 42-6, between the shutouts of Rice and Southern Methodist. They ended a 12-0 season by defeating March Field in front of 50,000 fans at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and shooting down the Second Air Force at the Polo Grounds in Manhattan six days later.
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When World War II ended a few weeks before the start of the 1945 college football season, many service teams such as the Iowa Pre-Flight canceled their seasons and disbanded. With military personnel redeployed elsewhere after the victory in Europe, several west coast service teams fielded teams in 1945. In a battle for the unofficial national service title at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the naval training station of Fleet City beat the El Toro Marines Leathernecks, 48-25, in what the Los Angeles Times called it the “wildest scoring duel the Colosseum has ever seen”.
Before retiring from football altogether, the service teams won one final triumph over the collegiate bluebloods. With their stadium due to be taken down the next day, the Great Lakes Bluejackets last played on December 1, 1945, against Notre Dame. Led by Paul Brown, the coach often referred to as the “father of modern football,” in his last game before taking the helm of the Cleveland Browns, the three-touchdown underdogs scored 26 points in the fourth quarter en route to a triumph. 39-7 on the Irishman. The victory served as a farewell salute to the military service teams that boosted college football during the war years.
“College football is definitely able to change when it needs to be,” said Swick. “College football has always been a sport that manages to play games under unusual circumstances, which I think is a testament to the strength of the game.”
