A few years back I offered a draft article to Air Power in which I suggested that the RAF should radically change its approach to cadet flying. I pointed out that a couple of self build programmes where sponsors (Boeing UK, ReAS etc) had purchased kit aircraft for a school or ATC Wing in order that they build there own LAA approved aircraft. This had worked rather well and I thought it should be extended to all cadet wings in the hope that cadets might discover STEM can be fun, interesting and the completed aircraft used for air experience flights..
I also pointed out that the hero of the Hudson River Captain Sullenberger had been a keen member of the gliding programme at the USAAF Academy 40 years ago and that continues to run today I believe. So why did the Americans set up a gliding programme at their Air Force Academy? Perhaps because the best Luftwaffe pilots had started as glider pilots, examples include Eric Hartmann the top scoring ace of WW2 who was taught to glide in the 1930s aged 14 by his Mother thanks to (NAZI) government funding. Hanna Reich another example.
Then there are the STEM aspects of Germany's glider programme examples include the Horten Brothers whose work on a flying wing glider morphed into first a jet fighter bomber and plans for a large flying wing bomber capable of reaching the USA. The B2 stealth bomber owes some of its design features to work carried out by the Horten Brothers in 1944 including radar adsorbent paint.
Needless to say while the examples were perfectly valid the idea of the UK copying 1930s Germany was so alarming to the editor that the draft was rejected.
Today many of us are concerned about the quantity and quality of air cadet flying, the poor STEM skills in our teenagers and the lack of women pilots......
https://www.aerosociety.com/careers-...build-a-plane/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesley_Sullenberger
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Hartmann
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horten_Ho_229