Journal of the Company of Military Historians The Sailmakers Detachment: Italian American Tailors in the Air Service in World War I
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Maj. Peter L. Belmonte, USAF (Ret.)
W
orld War I was the first major war in which the fledgling U.S. Army Air Service (USAS) was engaged. By the war’s end, the Air Service was using many different types of fixed-wing aircraft and balloons in the European theater. The development of this new service required not only the rapid acquisition of many different types of aircraft, but also the equally rapid expansion of manpower to operate and maintain those aircraft. The Air Service needed men with new skills: airplane engine and propeller mechanics, airframe experts, avionics maintenance men, armorers and bomb loaders, and radio telegraph technicians. But there was another, much older, occupation whose skill set was vitally needed by the Service. The aircraft of that long-ago era were built of fabric-covered wooden frames. That fabric, integral to the airworthiness of each aircraft, required skilled workmen to install and maintain. In addition to the skin of the aircraft, fabric was also used for aerial tow targets, machine gun ammunition belts, and various types of web equipment. Balloon companies, too, used a great deal of fabric. In addition to the gasbags themselves, parachutes for the balloons’ crewmen, the observers, also were made
of fabric that often required repair. The Air Service found men with the skills needed to maintain all this fabric among those who plied the trades involved with needle and thread. Key among these were, of course, tailors.1 An unknown number of tailors served in the U.S. military during the war. The U.S. Navy specifically recruited tailors, often waiving physical requirements to induce tailors to enlist. These Navy tailors were enlisted at a higher rank and pay than basic seamen enlistees; many were recruited as firemen first class. Their duties involved making, altering, and repairing the thousands of uniforms and pieces of cloth equipment required by the rapidly growing Navy.2 Other tailors were, of course, drafted into the Army; most, no doubt, simply served wherever they were sent, in whatever capacity the Army desired. Perhaps some of them performed informal tailor duties for their unit. But other tailors were specifically assigned duties within the Air Service. A group of these men sailed for the European theater as part of the “Sailmakers Detachment, Air Service.” The detachment left from Hoboken, New Jersey, aboard the Missanabie on 15 August 1918 (FIG 1).3 Two Air Service
FIG 1. Detail of a page of the manifest for the Missanabie, showing members of the Sailmakers Detachment, Air Service. Ancestry.com.
