ADAPTING FLYING MACHINES TO MILITARY SERVICE

by Guy Miller, Vice Chair Emeritus, Chennault Aviation and Military Museum

The month of August has one of the most important anniversaries of American aviation. On August 1, 1907, the Chief Signal Officer, U.S. Army Brigadier General James Allen sent out a memorandum establishing the Aeronautical Division of the United States Army Signal Corps. Under Allen’s order, the division had charge of “all matters pertaining to military ballooning, air machines, and all kindred subjects” with a goal of “stud[ing] the flying machine and the possibility of adapting it to military purposes.”

The Army Signal Corps had actually been associated with aeronautics since the American Civil War. The Union Army Balloon Corps had been established during the war to observe Confederate deployments and movements and use signals to send that information back to Union commanders on the ground.

In 1906, the commandant of the Army’s Signal School was Major George O. Squier, a student of aeronautical theory who gave lectures on aircraft. When Squier was subsequently made executive officer to General Allen in July, 1907, he successfully pushed for creation of a separate aviation department within the Signal Corps.

The Aeronautical Division was initially a very small outfit with one officer and two enlisted men. In 1908, with the help of President Teddy Roosevelt, it was able to purchase and train men on a small dirigible and a Wright Flyer airplane. The corrosive effects of weather and hydrogen gas cut short the life of the dirigible service. The Wright Flyer crashed when the propeller broke loose and damaged a wing. Pilot Orville Wright was hospitalized and his observer was killed. Regardless, the Signal Corps was able to purchase a second, improved plane and the Army finally accepted it as “Airplane No. 1,” on August 2, 1909.

The first flight training school was established on July 3, 1911 and by October the Signal Corps was operating with nine of its acquired eleven aircraft- one plane had been destroyed and “Airplane No. 1” had been donated to the Smithsonian. The Division adopted the Rules of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) and its standards for pilot certification, and Congress approved flight pay and accelerated promotion for pilots in 1913.

In early 1913, all aviators were ordered to Galveston, Texas where on March 3 the Chief Signal Officer designated these men and their equipment the “1st Provisional Aero Squadron”; the first military unit of the U.S. Army devoted exclusively to aviation. General orders later redesignated the unit as the 1st Aero Squadron effective December 8, 1913. This squadron became the first air combat unit of the Army when it participated in the Punitive Expedition of the Mexican border in 1916.

These early days of military aviation were very dangerous. Of the 33 planes purchased by the Aeronautical Division between 1908 and early 1914, at least 25 were destroyed or determined unfit for service after crashing. (The actual number could have been as high as 28- there are no records as to the fate of three aircraft.) 51 pilots were trained but 13 more were killed in crashes.

Despite the crashes and casualties, the Aeronautical Division did indeed prove the worth of military aviation and Congress enacted a law to establish an Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps on July 18, 1914. The Aviation Section was allowed 60 officers and 260 enlisted men to train “officers and enlisted men in matters pertaining to military aviation” and to operate and supervise “all military [Army] aircraft, including balloons and aeroplanes, all appliances pertaining to said craft, and signaling apparatus of any kind when installed on said craft.” The Aeronautical Division continued to exist in name but only as the Washington office of the Aviation Section.

As World War I raged in Europe, aviation played an incrementally greater role. Noting this, the U.S. Congress awarded $500,000 to the Aviation Section on March 31, 1916, then on August 29 a further $13,281,666 for military aeronautics and $600,000 for the purchase of land for airfields. The National Defense Act of 1916 increased the number of officers authorized in the Aviation Section from 60 to 148 and gave the President the power to set the enlisted personnel number. The act further authorized a Reserve Corps of 297 officers and 2000 enlisted men to be trained by the Section.

President Woodrow Wilson issued an executive order on May 20, 1918 that transferred aviation from the Signal Corps to two agencies under the Secretary of War: the Bureau of Aircraft Production and the Division of Military Aeronautics. Four days later the War Department officially established the two merged agencies as the U.S. Army Air Service.

The Air Service flew in World War I combat for only nine months- from February to November 1918. Its final number of 740 aircraft comprised only 11 percent of the total aircraft strength of Allied nations at the armistice. Despite its smaller size the Air Service conducted 150 bombing attacks, dropped 138 tons of bombs and downed 756 enemy aircraft and 76 balloons. 289 American airplanes and 48 balloons were lost during the war.

Although demobilized to peacetime strength after the armistice, the Army Reorganization Act of 1920 reaffirmed the Air Service as a combatant arm of the Army with a major general as the Chief of the Air Service. Included in the Air Service roster was a young pilot named Claire L. Chennault. But that is a story for another day. Or one which can be discovered today at the Chennault Museum.