...It's a wonderful sensation, riding around up there in the clouds, and I wouldn't have missed it for anything in the world...As for fatalities, there hasn't been one here for eight months, and there are always ten or fifteen machines in the air. Gee! I certainly do like it!"

His arguments prevailed and he was learning to fly at Pensacola Airbase in September 1918. At this time Det wrote to his mother, "I've been up in the air nearly three hours now and drive the plane alone, of course with an instructor in the machine with me...

He stated that he would not go against their wishes but hoped they would see the matter from his viewpoint. He promised to take a long vacation at home before going to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for ground training.

... to stay through next year. I suppose a young man feels the call of country more and while cold logic may point to a continuation of college, I have found few red blooded men who were willing to do so."

Perhaps this uncertainty derived from Detlev's urge to participate in the war effort. However, as more of the older students enlisted, he wrote to his father, "I can't quite agree with you on the proposition of enlisting and leaving college I most certainly would never have been content...

..do not know what I am going to do I suppose I might just as well go on and prepare myself for physics or electrical engineering. It seems a shame sometimes that I cannot decide what to do and then go ahead and fit myself for that work."

During his college years at Swarthmore, Detlev wrote constantly to his parents. In January 1918, he wrote to his father "I took the differential equation training although I never may need them, and as far as the general training resulting from mathematics goes I have had quite enough. But since...

According to Detlev’s account of his early education, he studied under guidance of his father until the age of ten. He graduated from the eighth grade in Bayonne in 1911, then enrolled in the Troy high school, graduating in 1915.

The Bronk family moved to Bayonne, New Jersey in 1900, where Detlev’s sister, Isabelle, was born in 1903. His later youth (1912-1919) was spent in Troy, New York.

Detlev Wulf Bronk was born in 1897 in New York City. His father Mitchell Bronk, was pastor of the Ascension Baptist Church at 160th Street and Park Avenue. Detlev received his unusual names through his mother, Marie Wulf, whose father was Detlev Wulf, a businessman in New York City.