Other Schools That Provided Language Training

While Yale/IFEL was the primary educational institution providing training in Asian languages to the Air Force in the early 1960s, requirements were so great that other schools were used to close the gap.  Under contracts with the Air Force, the Yale/IFEL textbooks and teaching methods were used by Indiana University's Intensive Language Training Center in Bloomington, Indiana, and the Sanz School of Languages in Washington, D.C., to train airmen in Chinese, with 80 student at IU and 50 students at Sanz School.  IU also trained Air Force students in Russian, Albanian, Hungarian, and Egyptian-Arabic, while the well known Syracuse University program trained many more in Russian.  Like the Yale/IFEL graduates, these airmen subsequently went through technical training at Goodfellow AFB, Texas and then on to mission assignments.  Sanz and IU alumni can see additional information in the Alumni Restricted area.

Other airmen had language training at the Foreign Service Institute and Lacaze Academy of Languages in Washington, D.C. , as well as other schools.

In July, 1963 the Department of Defense consolidated the total DoD language effort in the Defense Language Institute.  This action combined the language teaching efforts of the U.S. Army Language School, the Language Department of the U.S. Naval Intelligence School, and the Air Force contract programs of the Universities of Indiana, Syracuse, and Yale.  Some contract language teaching continued; for example, in 1964 the Berlitz Language School began teaching Vietnamese to airmen in Washington, D.C.

Sanz School area Site Map

Indiana University USAF training information