What is an "R. M. A."

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Hello,

I have some letters written by a relative who was in the United States Army Air Service in WWI. In one of his letters, written April 23, 1918, he makes the following statements:

"I am almost through now and am sure having a picnic. I passed my R. M. A. Saturday afternoon and started stunts today at noon."

Can anyone tell me what the letters "R. M. A." stand for? I've been searching all over the Internet without success.

Thanks in advance for any help.

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Type: Question • Score: 2 • Views: 516 • Replies: 6

[+3] - engineer - 08/18/2020My guess would be Reserve Military Aviator. [url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Air_Force_aeronautical_rating[/url]

View best answer, chosen by Tom47

@Tom47,

I can only guess. Could it be something like routine medical assessment or something like that?

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@izzythepush,

Thanks for the reply. I should add that a newspaper article contained the following:

"The people of El Centro and Imperial valley are to be given a practical demonstration of present day aviation. Word has just been received that Lieut. T. O. Paine, R. M. A., is to visit the valley in a high powered Curtiss plane today."

From the above, it seems to me that "R. M. A." was some sort of classification.

1 Reply

@Tom47,

It does, people don’t normally put letters after their name for passing a medical.

Over here R would normally mean royal, but not in America. I suppose the A could stand for aviator or aviation. Maybe master aviator or something like that.

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@Tom47,

My guess would be Reserve Military Aviator.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Air_Force_aeronautical_rating

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@engineer,

That’s a lot better than anything I could manage.

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@engineer,

Thank you. For some reason, my searches never turned up the Wikipedia article you cited. Having read the article, I think your "guess" is most probably correct.

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What is an "R. M. A."

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