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98under Lend8Lease.26 Although the instructors would be Americans, training at each school would be overseen by an RAF wing commander and a small staff and conducted against the standard RAF syllabus. The first BFTS was commissioned on 13 July 194127 and all six were functioning before the end of August. A student would progress from a Stearman primary trainer via (until 1943) a BT813 for the basic phase to complete the course on an AT86 %u2013 the Harvard. Following America%u2019s entry into the war, some of the capacity of the BFTSs was given over to the US Army, the total output of the six schools eventually amounting to 6,921 pilots for the RAF and 558 for the USAAF.28*%u0017%u0006%u0004%/%u0013+-%u0006%u000c&*%u0017%u0014%u0017? In the course of a visit to the UK in April 1941, only a month after he had announced the BFTS scheme, General Arnold made the RAF the astoundingly generous offer of one third of the US Army%u2019s pilot training capacity %u2013 the so8called Arnold Scheme. The first cohort of RAF students started training on 10 June, just one day after the first BFTS courses began %u2013 and just eight weeks after the offer had been made. As with the BFTSs, although the aeroplanes North American AT?6s %u2013 mainstay of the Arnold Scheme.