USAF 70 Years preview

AT THE HEART OF THE UNITED STATES AIR FORCE ARE ITS PEOPLE. THE PILOTS AND AIR CREW, THE GROUND TECHNICIANS, SERVICING TECHNICIANS, LOGISTICAL SUPPORT STAFF AND ALL THE SUNDRY JOBS REQUIRED TO OPERATE THE WORLD’S LARGEST GLOBAL AIR POWER COME TOGETHER IN PERFORMANCE AND A CONSTANT STATE OF READINESS, EPITOMISED HERE BY THE CREW OF AN F-15E STRIKE EAGLE AS VIEWED FROM THE AFT WINDOW OF A KC-135A REFUELING TANKER. USAF

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Chapter 1 Uncertain Prelude The Americans were the first to fly a piloted aeroplane, but very late in putting it into service for the military.

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Chapter 2 War! 1917-1918 When President Woodrow Wilson sent the Army to Europe, America’s first military aviators went with them.

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Chapter 3 Rebirth 1919-1935 New designs turned wooden planes into war machines of metal, for new wars on the horizon.

Chapter 4 A Global Force 1935 -1941 As Europe tipped toward conflict, the Army built new warplanes for the coming conflagration.

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Chapter 5 A Taste of War 1941 Shocked by Japan’s violent adventures in China, America reeled under an attack at Pearl Harbor.

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Chapter 6 Preparations 1941-1942 From an “arsenal of democracy”, American warplanes poured out the factory gates in unprecedented numbers.

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Chapter 8 Combined Offensive 1942-1943 Teaming up with Britain’s Royal Air Force, the Army sent flyers to support a bombing campaign on Germany.

Chapter 13 Cold War Arms Race The Air Force enters the age of strategic nuclear missiles, supersonic bombers and spy planes.

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Chapter 9 Maximum Effort 1943-1944 Supporting an invasion of continental Europe the Army Air Forces bring crushing defeat to the Nazis.

Chapter 14 Getting Stealthy New technologies give US combat aircraft the edge in the war against the radar sites.

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Chapter 15 Gulf War The biggest air operation since the Second World War evicts an aggressive invader and frees an occupied country.

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Chapter 16 21st Century Air Force New challenges and a global peace-keeping role supplement humanitarian efforts and relief operations.

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Chapter 17 Future Force New generations of aircraft combine smart weapons, stealthy aircraft and the promise of hypersonic strike.

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Chapter 7 Crushing the Axis 1941-1943 With North Africa first, then Italy, American air power joined an escalating conflict in Europe.

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USAF: 70 YEARS OF THE WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL AIR FORCE

Chapter 10 Supreme Endeavours 1944-1947 A strategic bombing campaign against Japan ends a war and creates an independent Air Force.

Chapter 11 Cold War Challenges 1948-1960 Soviet aggression and proxy wars bring clashes between the Air Force and communist jet fighters.

Chapter 12 Vietnam A long and bloody war brings supreme challenges and an effort constrained by political meddling.

Conteents AUTHOR: David Baker DESIGN: atg-media.com PUBLISHER: Steve O’Hara PUBLISHING DIRECTOR: Dan Savage REPROGRAPHICS: Jonathan Schofield and Paul Fincham PRODUCTION EDITOR: Dan Sharp ADVERTISING MANAGER: Sue Keily, skeily@mortons.co.uk MARKETING MANAGER: Charlotte Park COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR: Nigel Hole PUBLISHED BY: Mortons Media Group Ltd, Media Centre, Morton Way, Horncastle, Lincolnshire LN9 6JR. Tel: 01507 529529 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: The author would like to thank the United States Air Force for help and assistance over 50 years of a close working cooperation in research and associated activities in many locations around the world, the sum total of which has formed the basis for some of the material used in this publication. Secondarily, the assistance of the US Department of Defense over a similar period has contributed greatly to gathering historical material which has also contributed to the information on these pages. In particular to Bettie Sprigg at the Pentagon so many years ago and who opened so many doors.

Thanks are also due to Steve O’Hara at Mortons for having published this book, suffering the vagaries of the author along the way, and to the production editor, Dan Sharp, with whom it has been a pleasure to work.

PRINTED BY: William Gibbons and Sons, Wolverhampton ISBN: 978-1-911276-32-6 © 2017 Mortons Media Group Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage retrieval system without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

USAF: 70 YEARS OF THE WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL AIR FORCE

5

CHAPTER 1 – 1907-1917

Uncertain Prelude T

he call for Americans to take to the skies over future battlefields came in 1783 when Benjamin Franklin observed a hot-air balloon ascending over the rooftops of Paris.

Impressed by their free-floating disregard for boundaries and borders, he foresaw invading armies using balloons to cross land dominated by enemies to place troops at the rear of combat units.

That capability achieved plausibility when JeanPierre Blanchard crossed the English Channel in a balloon less than two years later.

The French concurred with Franklin and set up the world’s first military air unit – the Aerostatic Corps – in 1794 but Napoleon disregarded the balloon as an observation post, disbanded the Corps and some say, lost the battle of Waterloo as a result.

A year earlier, in 1793 Blanchard had taken his balloon to the United States from where he made the first ascent from North American soil watched by George Washington, who disagreed with Napoleon and encouraged development of the unpredictable devices. But the Army apparently sided with Napoleon and thought

ABOVE: One of the most notable early balloonists was Pierre Henri Blanchard who made his first ascent in a hydrogen balloon from Paris in March 1784, heralding a new age of flight and a potential military use of the new science of aeronautics. DAVID BAKER 6

USAF: 70 YEARS OF THE WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL AIR FORCE

them a frivolous distraction, avoiding requests for their use during the war with the Seminole Indians in 1840 and against the Mexicans at Vera Cruz in 1846. Just 15 years later they came into their own when hydrogen balloons were deployed first by the North in the American Civil War, and then by the South, from 1861. But it was a short-lived romance with lighter-than-air flight; by the following year both sides regarded them as superfluous.

In 1892 Brigadier General Adolphus W. Greely, Chief Signal Officer, set up a balloon section and shipped one to Cuba for the war against the Spanish. Operating from the region around Santiago, it directed artillery fire at the famous Battle of San Juan Hill. This came to an inglorious halt when bullets riddled the envelope and brought it down near to enemy lines.

But the potential for balloons had been emphatically set down when besieged Parisian dignitaries during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71 sought a means of evacuation across encircling enemy lines by making good their escape by air. Unfortunately the plan went askew when the prevailing winds lifted them up only to deposit them in the ranks of enemy troops laying siege to the capital!

Undaunted by such embarrassing episodes, the British took balloon troops to Africa during the campaign in the Sudan during 1885 where they were used at Mafeking among other places.

They subsequently played a major role in the Boer War where they were handled and exploited with military precision and great success, enabling drawings of enemy positions sent to the ground in message bags sliding down the retaining cable. It was all a bit Heath Robinson but it worked and the Army quickly gained respect for its ‘balloonatics’.

Waves of change were on the way, however.

What was really required was a lighter-than-air craft capable of liberated flight but in a controlled direction. That became possible with the advent of the airship during the 1890s, placing propellers powered by reciprocating engines on gas envelopes and directing them through the air at will using rudders and elevators. Most notable were the dirigibles of Count von Zeppelin and the Brazilian Alberto Santos Dumont shortly after the dawn of a new century. The Brazilian would be the first to make significant contributions to both lighter-than-air and heavier-then-air flight but not before two Americans had become the first to take a flying machine into the air.

Inspired by the logic of scientific principles, Wilbur and Orville Wright had thought through the engineering necessary to use a lightweight reciprocating engine to provide the forward motion and accelerate the passage of air across a lifting surface. That would, in turn allow an aircraft to ascend from the ground and fly at will, devoid of the complexity of a large gas bag. They built their Wright Flyer No. 1 and powered it into the air for the first time on December 17, 1903.

But the brothers were difficult to work with, reclusive and suspicious that the secrets of their aeroplane would be stolen by competitors. In fact the majority of Americans would not discover this

ABOVE: US troops inflating the balloon Intrepid in 1862 during the American Civil War. Aerial reconnaissance and gun laying was a new use for balloons and served to demonstrate the many ways in which both they and aeroplanes would be valuable for future military applications. DAVID BAKER LEFT: Blanchard signalled the end of England’s isolation from the European continent when he became the first person to cross the English Channel in a balloon in 1785, making his first balloon flight in America in 1793.

DAVID BAKER

ABOVE: The world’s first ‘aircraft carrier’, the George Washington Parke Custis was acquired by the Union Navy during the Civil War of 1861-65 as a platform from which to spy on Confederate forces. US ARMY world-changing feat, which had been achieved

by Americans on US soil, until several years later.

At the time of his graduation from West Point in 1907, Henry H. Arnold, the future commander of US Army Air Forces had no knowledge that aircraft existed. Two years earlier the Wrights had offered the Flyer to the Army Board of Ordnance of Fortification which all but questioned the very existence of an aeroplane.

With justifiable reason, for the US government and the informed citizenry were sceptical about powered heavier-than-air flight after the exploits of Samuel Pierpont Langley, an astronomer and inventor who built models of flying machines.

Langley sent them successfully down the Potomac River at a height of 80ft, powered by a flash boiler using steam. But attempts to get a man in the air with bigger aircraft were unsuccessful, despite getting the attention of the US Navy who set up a board to study the concept using funds appropriated by the War Department. On two attempts, at the end of 1903 and in early 1904, the Langley contraption got

ABOVE: In the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, Parisians besieged by Prussian forces sought a way of escape by taking to balloons, most of which came down in the ranks of the encircling army with some being swept out to sea!

DAVID BAKER fouled by its launch catapult and collapsed into the river.

By 1905 the Wrights had responded to overtures from the British to buy Wright flying machines by offering the design to the US Army, so as to keep the invention in America, they said. But when asked by the Wrights to present their requirements, the Board of Ordnance and Fortification refused to issue a specification.

By the end of the year the Wrights had been approached by the French too and on hearing about the overseas interest aroused by the Wright Flyer, President Theodore Roosevelt intervened.

He had already heard about the invention from the Aero Club of America, from whence things moved quickly.

On August 1, 1907, the Signal Corps set up its Aeronautical Division to govern “all matters pertaining to military ballooning, air machines

and all kindred subjects” with Captain Charles de F. Chandler in charge together with two enlisted men. They were to examine the advancing science of ‘aeronautics’ as well as radiotelephony for communications to and from the ground. Finally, in December, and in response to President Roosevelt’s directive, Secretary of War William H. Taft requested bids for a flying machine capable of carrying two people at 40mph for 125 miles. Only the Wright brothers responded by producing an aeroplane.

Suddenly, almost overnight it seemed, the Army was talking about aviation. The industrialists, businessmen and sportsmen who populated the Aero Club, founded in 1905 to promote all forms of flying, encouraged debate about the uses of flying machines. One Captain William ‘Billy’ Mitchell lectured on the uses of aeroplanes for reconnaissance and for dropping !

USAF: 70 YEARS OF THE WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL AIR FORCE

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CHAPTER 1 – 1907-1917

ABOVE: Samuel Pierpont Langley made heroic attempts to propel a powered flying machine into the air but failed, his name immortalised in one of the first aeronautical laboratories in America. NACA

ABOVE: The world’s first heavier than air powered flight took place at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903, when Orville Wright flew a distance of 120ft in 12 seconds at an average speed of 6.8mph in a freezing wind gusting to 27mph. NACA

ABOVE: Orville Wright prepares to demonstrate the vicissitudes of the Wright A flying machine as the reclusive Wright brothers seek a contract with the US Army. US ARMY LEFT: The Wright A Flyer at Fort Myer near Washington, DC, on September 9, 1908, where the Army Signal Corps would make its first purchase of a powered flying machine. US ARMY

bombs. As part of his examination and portfolio of submissions for the rank of captain, Mitchell had studied aeronautical theory at Fort Myer, greatly influenced by the enthusiasm for such applications from General Greely.

Despite the growing interest in heavier-thanair machines, there was still discussion about the higher weight-lifting capabilities of airships and the Army decided to offer $25,000 for a winning dirigible. Seeking backing for his airship, Thomas Baldwin offered to sell his design for a mere $6750, hoping to secure sales and recoup his money on volume deliveries. His airship was accepted and made some impressive appearances throughout 1908.

But it was the Wright Brothers who benefitted most from this new interest in flying, which would soon gather popular support as American citizens got a glimpse, for the first time, of what aircraft really were and how they could perform. Rejected a year before and dismissed

by Army traditionalists, the order for a Wright flying machine, the first government contract for an American aeroplane, was placed on February 10, 1908.

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THE WRIGHT STUFF

Wilbur and Orville Wright had made considerable progress since making their first flight in December 1903, their improved designs retaining the tried and tested pusher layout with chaindrive between the engine and the propellers set across a biplane configuration with a foreplane stabiliser in front and twin vertical rudders aft.

The machine they brought to Fort Myer, Virginia (named after the man who disbanded the balloon section after the Civil War!), across the Potomac from Washington for initial trials on August 20, 1908, had a wingspan of 40ft. It was slightly modified over the Wrights’ standard A-model airframe powered by a four-cylinder Wright engine of 25hp set on the lower wing to the right of the centreline. The pilot sat in the centre, with the passenger to his right on cushioned seats next to the engine. The cylindrical fuel tank was above the lower wing to the left of the engine with a thin narrow, vertical radiator set to fill the space between upper and lower wings.

Skids were provided to satisfy an Army requirement for the aircraft to be capable of flying from rough ground but the method of getting it

USAF: 70 YEARS OF THE WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL AIR FORCE

into the air was still by catapult along a prepared rail, a heavy falling weight pulling a running cable to launch the aircraft. In a favourable headwind it could get into the air under its own power, however. Once in the air, the pilot used levers to his left to control the aircraft. Forwards and backwards movements operated the elevator for pitch control and the wings were warped to go left or right.

The first flight demonstration took place on September 2 and over the following two weeks various flights were conducted including some with a passenger. On what was supposed to be the final preliminary demonstration flight on September 17, 1908, Orville Wright took to the air carrying Lt Thomas Etholen Selfridge. The propeller cracked, snagged a flying wire and the aircraft crashed to the ground from a height of 125ft. Orville was severely injured, but survived, while Selfridge died a few hours later, the first casualty to flying. On impact his head hit a strut, fracturing his skull. From then on, Army pilots wore head protection.

It had fallen to Lt Selfridge to be the first US Army officer to fly solo, when he had flown the White Wing, designed and put together

by Alexander Graham Bell’s Aerial Experiment Association (AEA). Sponsored by Baldwin, White

Wright B

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A development of the Wright Flyer which could trace its origin to the aircraft in which Wilbur and Orville Wright first flew, the Wright B was purchased by the US government and attached to the Aeronautical Division of the Signal Corp in 1911. The aircraft was also built by Burgess under license and a modified version became the first aircraft to cross the United States. The flight began on September 17, 1911, from Brooklyn, New York, and ended at Long Beach on December 10 after a total flying time of 84 hours. Another version of the Wright B was built under licence by Curtiss as the Model F. L E N G T H .......................................2 6 f t W I N G S PA N ..................................3 9 f t H E I G H T ....................................8 . 7 5 f t G R O S S W E I G H T ..................1 2 5 0 l b M A X I M U M S P E E D ............. 4 5 m p h C R U I S I N G S P E E D .............. 4 0 m p h R A N G E .............................. 1 1 0 m i l e s Wing was the second aircraft developed by the AEA with considerable contributions, including engine, from Glenn Curtiss, who would very quickly achieve fame for his progressive aircraft designs. Selfridge had been assigned by the government to work with the AEA and helped design Red Wing, the AEA’s first aeroplane, which

flew for the first time on March 12, 1908, but was destroyed on its second flight.

An improved aircraft was brought to Fort Myer in June 1909 with observers assigned by the Army to record and to evaluate its performance.

On July 27, Orville Wright kept his machine and his passenger, Lt Frank Latham, aloft for one hour, 12 minutes and 40 seconds, achieving a record in the process. Three days later an ebullient crowd of 7000 spectators at Alexandria, Virginia, watched President Taft welcome Orville Wright and Lt Benjamin D. Foulois, back from a 10-mile cross-country flight at an average speed of 42.5mph. This achievement gave the Wrights a bonus of $5000 on top of the $25,000 contract price.

The Army formally accepted the Wright Model A on August 2, 1909, with the historic number '1' in the list of aircraft serials that began a sequence which today runs into the several hundred thousand. Aeroplane No 1 was used extensively and by 1911 was in seriously poor condition through many landing accidents and repair cycles. It was finally retired on May 4, 1911, but is now in the custody of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. Military aircraft serial numbers ran consecutively until a complete revision of the system in 1921 which awarded numbers contained within the financial year of the contract award. Starting each fiscal year at 1 and running to conclusion at the end of that fiscal year, it was prefixed with the last two digits of the financial

year. The highest number reached by the date of transition (June 30, 1921) at the start of fiscal year 1922, was 68,592, the accumulated number of aircraft ordered by the Army to that date. The system exists to the present day.

Part of the contract awarded to the Wrights was that they should train two Army officers to be pilots and in October 1909 Wilbur trained Lieutenants Lahm and Frederick E. Humphreys at a field adjacent to College Park, Maryland.

Both men soloed and with only three hours flying time apiece were officially inducted as the first Army pilots on October 26. Because an Army regulation restricted the amount of time an officer could be called to ‘special duties’, Lahm returned to his cavalry unit and Humphreys rejoined the Engineers, leaving the Army without pilots.

Neither did it have a serviceable aeroplane, No 1 having been damaged in a crash landing on November 5.

While No 1 was in repair, because the wood, canvas and wire-braced aeroplanes of the day were unsuitable for the wintry weather of DC, the Army moved operations to Fort Sam Houston, Texas, and received No 1 in February 1910. The only candidate for pilot duty was Lt Foulois.

On March 2 he took to the air to teach himself to fly, of necessity each ascent being a solo on instructions by letter from the Wrights! Eventually someone from the Wrights turned up to give practical advice and Foulois made 61 flights between March and September but still the Army had only one pilot and one aeroplane.

RIGHT: American publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst offered a $50,000 prize to the first man to fly across the US coast-to-coast. The most flamboyant flight attempt was made by Calbraith Perry Rogers who named his Wright EX after a sponsor, the manufacturer of the grape drink Vin Fiz. DAVID BAKER BELOW: A contrast of flying devices as the Wright ‘Military Flyer’ is moved at Fort Myer alongside a gas balloon used for reconnaissance.US ARMY

USAF: 70 YEARS OF THE WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL AIR FORCE

9

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CHAPTER 1 – 1907-1917

ABOVE: A progressive development of the early Wright aeroplanes, the Wright B, seen here as a replica at the National Air and Space Museum, Washington, DC, incorporated a wheeled undercarriage and modified controls, a considerable improvement on the Wright A. DAVID BAKER When Aeroplane No 1 was retired in May 1911 and delivered up to the Smithsonian in October it went in parallel with the first funding awarded

by Congress for Army aviation, the Signal Corps having previously awarded contracts from its experimental fund and from readjusting payments from other sectors. During 1910, Fort Sam Houston had a meagre $150 for fuel, oil and repairs, while Foulois had funded himself through pilot ‘training’. That all changed on March 13, 1911, when Congress appropriated $125,000, whereupon Chief Signal Officer James Allen ordered five new aircraft at about $5000 apiece.

In April a Wright B and a single-seat Curtiss Model D arrived with a 60hp engine, the latter being Army Aeroplane No. 2.

After a brief period away from heading up the Aeronautical Division, Captain Chandler resumed his position in June 1911 and presided over an expansion of the inventory and the facilities. Long

duration flights of 42 miles were accomplished, achieving altitudes of more than 4000ft and investigations began into the use of aerial photography and new bombsights, the latter developed by Riley E. Scott. But when the Army had no money to develop it further, Scott took his invention to Europe and returned richer by $5000.

To avoid the winter weather, activities moved to Augusta, Georgia, returning to College Park in April 1912.

During the year a further dozen pilots were trained up and visits were made to manufacturing plants for shop and flying courses, their training now expanding to the mechanics of flight and the more sophisticated nuances of flying. In August 1912 Foulois took two aeroplanes to Connecticut to determine the advantages of reconnaissance from a prescribed altitude of 2000ft during exercises. By the end of the year College Park had 14 flying officers, 39 enlisted men and nine

COMMANDERS 1914-1917 • Captain Charles deForest Chandler • Captain Arthur S. Cowan • Captain Charles deForest Chandler • Major Samuel Reber • Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Reber • Lieutenant Colonel George O. Squier 10

USAF: 70 YEARS OF THE WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL AIR FORCE

Aug 1, 1907 – June 30, 1910 July 1, 1910 – June 19, 1911 June 20, 1911 – September 9, 1914 September 10, 1913 – July 17, 1914 July 18, 1914 – May 5, 1916 May 6, 1916 – February 19, 1917

aeroplanes, including one hydroplane from the Burgess Company, the first tractor biplane bought by the Army.

For winter the Wright aeroplanes went to Georgia while the Curtiss machines were taken to San Diego, California, where Glenn Curtiss had a facility. This would become the Army’s first permanent aviation school. In February 1913 the group at Augusta were ordered south to join the 2nd Army Division in Texas City where they prepared to support military operations against General Victoriano Huerta, who had seized power in Mexico on February 23. While he was there, Chandler organised his men into the 1st Aero Squadron which began the formal recognition of an active military aviation unit.

A STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE

The crisis in Mexico never did develop into a war with the US but considerable time was spent in the air exploring how flying could best assist an army in the field. There was deep dissatisfaction among the aviators however, who were becoming increasingly frustrated by what they saw as the heavy-handed leadership of ground-hugging staff officers at the top in Washington – oblivious to the unique nature of this new adjunct to the Signal Corps. The aviators became vocal, writing with their complaints to senior military figures in the

ABOVE: Henry H. Arnold graduated from West Point in 1907, when he had never heard of aeroplanes, and would progress through the ranks of the US Army and command the largest assembly of combat aircraft of all time during the Second World War. US ARMY ABOVE: One of the greatest challenges in the first decade of aeronautical flight was the low power of aircraft engines, maintenance being frequent and repairs common. This engine is undergoing attention at the Curtiss hangar at San Diego in 1914. US ARMY nation’s capital. The seeds of autonomy had been sown and were enshrined within those letters, which had the desired effect and began a process of change that would take 34 years to complete.

By 1913 the San Diego school, fast becoming the core facility for Army aviation, was supplemented by two other schools, one in the Philippines and another in Hawaii, which was not yet a State of the Union. Gradually aviation slipped away from College Park and the home of Army aviation was returned to more conventional forms of military training amid idyllic surroundings, a welcome respite for those seeking to escape the summer humidity of Washington.

In 1912 qualified military pilots had first been awarded badges denoting their affiliation as Army aviators and the following year, with 30 regularly assigned to flying duties, there was an appeal for volunteers to join the new group of elite young men who made up their ranks.

Some were of the opinion that their organisation should be separated from the Army, to become an independent force in its own right, but not everyone agreed. Among the pilots, few thought they had the established credentials, or the necessary experience for full independence.

A bill was presented in Congress calling for separation but it failed to pass. Even so, special legislation enacted on July 18, 1914, afforded special recognition to Army aviation, an act which changed the name of the Aeronautical Section, US Signal Corps, to the Aviation Section of the Signal Corps – with an authorised strength of 60 officers and 260 enlisted men to take charge of all military aircraft, balloons and related flying equipment. But it also limited officers to unmarried lieutenants of the line and most of the volunteers would come from branches other than the Signal Corps. Despite this new sense of heightened recognition, the Aviation Section remained a very small component of an Army that now boasted 98,544 officers and men.

By 1914 the Signal Corps had five years of reasonable experience with both pusher and

tractor configurations but the Signal Corps condemned the pusher types since they had accounted for almost all fatalities experienced up to that point. When pusher types crashed nose down, as they usually did, the engine was rammed forward into the pilot and his passenger, often resulting in fatal injuries. Aircraft design was moving away from the Wright Flyer generation to a new breed of aeroplane that was faster, more powerful and with much improved performance.

Flying was becoming an all-weather pursuit too, and was developing capabilities that would see the emergence of flying fighting forces.

Just as war was breaking out on eastern and western fronts in Europe, in September 1914 the 1st Aero Squadron was reorganised on a more formal basis at the order of the War Department.

Now consisting of 16 officers and 75 enlisted men

with eight aeroplanes, the squadron was under the command of Captain Foulois. As the sole tactical strength of the Aviation Section, it would form the cornerstone of expansive growth when America entered the First World War in April 1917.

Before then, there were other battles to fight.

Trouble with Mexico broke out again in 1915 when Francisco ‘Pancho’ Villa threatened to send attacking bandits across the border and on March 9, 1916, he raided Columbus, New Mexico.

President Woodrow Wilson asked Brigadier General John J. Pershing to assign 15,000 troops to suppressing the Mexican revolutionaries and the 1st Aero Squadron arrived at Columbus on March 15. Four days later they began flying operations but struggled to make the overland flight to the forward position at Casas Grandes, Mexico. One aircraft had to turn back, one was damaged on a forced landing and the remaining six had to make a night landing. Moreover, they were unable to climb over the 12,000ft mountains.!

ABOVE: Alexander Graham Bell played a significant role in the development of aviation, seen here (bearded) with Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge who became the first fatal casualty to an air crash on September 17, 1908.

US ARMY

ABOVE: Captain Charles deForest Chandler holds a Lewis gun in a Wright B with pilot Lieutenant Roy C. Kirtland. Chandler fired the gun in flight for the first time on June 7, 1912, a portent of air-to-air dogfights to come. US ARMY USAF: 70 YEARS OF THE WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL AIR FORCE

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CHAPTER 1 – 1907-1917

Curtiss JN ABOVE: While aviation was taking leaps into the future during the war of 1914-18, American aircraft were adopting the latest design trends, evidenced by the Curtiss Jenny. This JN-4 is on display at the Museum of Aviation, Robins Air Force Base, Georgia.

In a series of almost comical episodes, Foulois was forced to land, taken prisoner, jailed, then set free when the recognised Mexican authorities came to his rescue, while other aircraft were set upon by over-enthusiastic supporters of the rebel cause, stealing bits of aircraft which then proceeded to shed various parts as they attempted to fly! By April 20, six of the eight aeroplanes had been condemned as unusable while replacements fared no better, unable to cope with the extreme temperature and altitude conditions prevalent.

While US Army aviation progressed on a series of stuttering steps, the US aviation industry was falling behind its European counterparts and manufacturers looked across the Atlantic to the technical developments which were already dramatically outpacing anything available in the United States. The aircraft taken to Mexico included Curtiss JN types, designed by B. Douglas Thomas, formerly an engineer with Avro in Britain. He had been commissioned by Curtiss to come up with a tractor biplane using the established techniques then becoming standard practice in European design and layout.

The JN types – very quickly dubbed the ‘Jennies’ – were designed as trainers and orders were soon being taken from Britain as the demand there outstripped production capacity.

Curtiss had turned a pre-war flying boat, the America (designed by another Englishman, John C. Porte), into a successful export to Britain 12

where the Royal Navy put them to good use as maritime patrol aircraft. They sponsored development in Britain into the even more successful Felixstowe flying boats, originating from the basic Curtiss design.

Orders from the UK underpinned a major growth in US manufacturing capability but it was a demand-based industry responding to requirements from foreign buyers and did little to produce the kind of equipment the Aviation Section called for. The Jennies were ideal for training, stable and easy to control. But they lacked the power performance, agility and adaptability that characterised most European aircraft built for fighting or for protracted aerial reconnaissance duties.

While the industry was experiencing a modest upsurge in demand, subsidising the building of new factories, Congress recognised the need for more direct access to aircraft being produced for overseas orders and in March 1916 gave the Aviation Section a budget of $500,000 for the year – twice what it had before. By this date the JN-4 was being introduced on the Mexican campaign and there was some improvement in overall performance. Deals were being done with European engine builders, Wright developing an engine with Hispano Suiza which powered some of the JN-4 types, aircraft which now had a top speed of 75mph and a range of 250 miles.

Despite progress, there was better news to come. With war in Europe and the Middle East

USAF: 70 YEARS OF THE WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL AIR FORCE

★

Designed by Englishman Benjamin Douglas Thomas, the Curtiss Jenny series aeroplanes appeared in 1915. The type was bought by the Aeronautical Division as a trainer for new pilots. Several versions and variants were produced for the Army and the Jenny became popular after the war for ‘barnstorming’ displays at fetes and air shows across America. The 1st Aero Squadron received its first JN-2 in July 1915. The aircraft became so popular that it was eventually manufactured by six different companies and continued to be flown regularly into the 1930s.

L E N G T H ...................................2 7 . 3 f t W I N G S PA N .............................4 3 . 6 f t H E I G H T ...................................... 9 . 9 f t G R O S S W E I G H T ..................1 9 2 0 l b M A X I M U M S P E E D ............. 7 5 m p h C R U I S I N G S P E E D .............. 6 0 m p h R A N G E .............................. 1 2 0 m i l e s taking on a new technological dimension the US Congress recognised the need for action and the National Defense Act of June 1916 significantly increased the size and manpower invested in the Aviation Section and provided, through a budget act of August 29, the unimaginable sum of $13 million for military aeronautics in the Signal Corps and the National Guard. General Pershing took a personal interest in the potential of aviation and recognised the extraordinary growth in aircraft applications for military purposes on the Western Front in the war in Europe.