United States Military and Naval Aviation World War I
Although America was actually the birthplace of the airplane, many years passed after the first flight of the Wright Brothers before there was any real consideration of the military or civil values of aviation. That aviation did progress at all in its early years was due to the efforts of a few fledgling military fliers, a group of barnstormers, and a handful of aircraft builders.
Working closely together, these men flew and experimented with our first flying machines. They risked their lives time and again in order to learn everything possible about flying and the flying machine. As a result of crashes and hairbreadth escapes, these men discovered many faults and set about correcting them.
Each make of plane had a different control system, and an all-around flier had to master several varieties of levers and wheels in order to be able to fly all types of machines. A pilot originally was forced to fly his plane while sitting on an exposed and uncomfortable perch at the edge of the wing. Just back of his seat was mounted the heavy engine ready to topple over on him in case of a crash.
The first step in correcting some of the faults of the early airplane came with the development of a body, or fuselage. The first fuselages were built of spruce frames covered with fabric and strengthened with wire. They were mounted between the wings and braced to them. The engine and propeller were housed in the front of the fuselage. Farther back an enclosed compartment, or cockpit, was provided for the pilot. Thus he was moved from his perch on the wing with the engine at his back into a safer and more comfortable location.
The development of the fuselage caused the elevators to be taken away from the front of the machine. These were combined with the stabilizer and rudder attached to the rear of the fuselage. The Wright method of wing warping to produce lateral control was dispensed with and the Curtiss type of aileron was moved up from the wing struts and hinged to the trailing edge of the wings. This established the ailerons as part of the lift surfaces of the wings, giving them a more direct influence on the lateral movements of the airplane.
With the new positions of the control surfaces came the second important step, the standard control system. This system made use of a single control column, or stick, and a rudder bar. The stick was attached by means of cables and pulleys to both the ailerons and the elevators. A hinged arrangement allowed the stick to be moved forward and backward, and to the right or to the left. The forward and backward movement of the stick controlled the up and down position of the elevators. The right and left movement of the stick raised or lowered the ailerons. Steering to right or left was accomplished by pressure of the pilot’s feet on a bar that was attached to the rudder by cables. All positions of the airplane were caused by gently pressing the control stick and rudder bar in the direction of the flight movement desired by the pilot.
By 1915, American airplane builders had adopted a standard biplane design with an enclosed fuselage and a two-wheel and tail-skid landing gear, typified by the Curtiss Jenny at the left.
The beginning of World War I, in Europe, saw the first use of the airplane by the military. At first, warring pilots flying over the battle lines actually exchanged friendly waves in passing. This was the expression of brotherly feeling among men who already had risked their lives to conquer the flying machine.
But this knightly feeling did not last long. One belligerent flier carried a rifle aloft. This rifle inspired the thought of the machine gun, and war in the air, as in the trenches, became a survival of the fittest.
In the United States, the Aviation Section, Signal Corps, U. S. Army, was just two weeks old. When it was created on July 18, 1914, the Aviation Section had an authorized personnel of 60 officers and 260 enlisted men, and a few airplanes. In Europe, every major power boasted of hundreds of planes.
The year 1916, two years after the start of World War I, saw Army aviation in its first offensive action. Eight low-powered planes engaged in a punitive expedition against Mexican bandits. The chief result of this expedition was the severe newspaper criticism of the poor showing made by our fliers and America’s lack of improved types of combat planes.
As the result of the criticism created by the Mexican expedition, Congress, in June, 1916, voted funds for the expansion of Army aviation. But aviation development required time and, actually, when the United States went into World War I on April 6, 1917, Army aviation consisted of but 65 officers (including only 35 fliers), 1,087 enlisted men, and 55 airplanes. All of the planes were obsolete and none carried machine guns.
Thus, with no military planes suitable for use against a well-equipped enemy, no fliers trained in the use of high-powered fighting planes and aërial machine guns, and with few factories that had had any previous experience in the production of airplanes, America plunged into the midst of World War I.
Although a little late, America went to work. Having no good combat designs of our own, our fliers fought in British and French airplanes. We developed the best training plane in the world, the Curtiss JN-Jenny (page 32), and trained 15,000 flying cadets. By March, 1918, our Army Aviation strength was 11,000 officers and 120,000 enlisted men. At the time of the Armistice we had 757 pilots, 481 observers, with 740 planes at the front and 1,402 pilots and 769 airplanes in the Zone of Advance, ready for combat. Our pilots were credited with the destruction of 491 enemy airplanes, of which 462 were accounted for by 63 airmen. We had produced 26 aces, each of whom had destroyed five or more enemy aircraft.