Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps
The Aviation Section, Signal Corps, was the aerial warfare service of the United States from 1914 to 1918, and a direct statutory ancestor of the United States Air Force. It absorbed and replaced the Aeronautical Division, Signal Corps, and conducted the activities of Army aviation until its statutory responsibilities were suspended by President Woodrow Wilson in 1918. The Aviation Section organized the first squadrons of the aviation arm and conducted the first military operations by United States aviation on foreign soil.
The Aviation Section, Signal Corps, was created by the 63rd Congress on 18 July 1914 after earlier legislation to make the aviation service independent from the Signal Corps died in committee. From July 1914 until May 1918 the aviation section of the Signal Corps was familiarly known by the title of its administrative headquarters component at the time, seen variously as the Aeronautical Division, Air Division, Division of Military Aeronautics, and others. For historic convenience, however, the air arm is most commonly referred to by its official designation, the Aviation Section, Signal Corps, and is the designation recognized by the United States Air Force as its predecessor for this period.
The Aviation Section began in turbulence, first as an alternative to making aviation in the Army a corps independent of the Signal Corps, then with friction between its pilots, who were all young and on temporary detail from other branches, and its leadership, who were more established Signal Corps officers and non-pilots. Despite the assignment of Lieutenant Colonel George O. Squier as chief, to bring stability to Army aviation, the Signal Corps found itself wholly inadequate to the task of supporting the Army in combat after the United States entered World War I on 6 April 1917. It attempted to expand and organize a competent arm but its efforts were largely chaotic and in the spring of 1918 aviation was removed, first from the jurisdiction of the Office of the Chief Signal Officer where it had resided since its inception, and then from the Signal Corps altogether. The duties of the section were not resumed following World War I and it was formally disestablished by the creation of the Air Service in 1920.
Establishment
1914
The Aviation Section, Signal Corps, was created by the Act of 18 July 1914, Chapter 186, 38 Stat. 514, to supersede the Aeronautical Division, an administrative creation of the Signal Corps within the Office of the Chief Signal Officer, as the primary agency for military aviation. Earlier legislation to make the aviation service independent from the Signal Corps died in committee after all officers connected with aviation save one, Captain Paul W. Beck, testified against it. Later provisions of the National Defense Act, 3 June 1916, and the Aviation Act, 24 July 1917, permitted aviation support functions to be gradually transferred from the Aeronautical Division to newly established aviation section organizations. The new law established the purpose and duties of the section, authorized a significant increase in size of U.S. military aviation to 60 officers and 260 enlisted men, increased the size of the Signal Corps by an equal number of personnel to provide them, stipulated that pilots be volunteers from branches of the line of the Army, and detailed them for four years. The Aeronautical Division then became the administrative component of the Aviation Section until its abolition in 1918. The first funding appropriation for the Aviation Section was $250,000 for fiscal year 1915.The new law also decreed restrictions that only unmarried lieutenants of the line under the age of 30 could be detailed to the section, provisions which encouraged a lack of discipline and professional maturity among the aviators that handicapped the growth of the service, hampered retention of pilots, and prevented flying officers from commanding flying units. Officers on aviation duty who were promoted to permanent captain in their branch arm were automatically returned to the line. Aggravating the situation, the 11 remaining pilots of the 24 previously rated as military aviators all had their ratings automatically reduced to junior military aviator when requirements were changed to include three years experience as a JMA before qualifying for the higher rating. This placed them on the same level as newly graduated pilots, and none of those so reduced regained their ratings before 1917.
At its creation, the Aviation Section had 19 officers and 101 enlisted men. The Aeronautical Division, a quasi-headquarters with three officers and 11 enlisted men, issued orders in the name of the chief signal officer. All other personnel of the aviation section were organized on 5 August 1914, by Signal Corps Aviation School General Order No. 10 into the:
- Signal Corps Aviation School,
- 1st Aero Squadron,
- 1st Company, 1st Aero Squadron
- 2nd Company, 1st Aero Squadron,
Most of the air service had just returned to San Diego from detached service in Texas for the second time in as many years to support Army ground forces in a possible war with Mexico over the Tampico Affair. The impending war was defused by the resignation of Victoriano Huerta on 15 July.
By December 1914, the Aviation Section consisted of 44 officers, 224 enlisted men, and 23 aircraft.
1915–1916
Chief Signal Officer Brigadier General George P. Scriven announced on 9 April 1915 that following the establishment of an aero company at San Antonio, three additional companies would be sent overseas, to the Philippine Department for station on Corregidor, to Fort Kamehameha in the Hawaiian Department, and to the Panama Canal Zone. The 1st Company, 2nd Aero Squadron was activated on 12 May 1915 at San Diego but not manned until December.A small detachment with S.C. 31, a Martin T tractor airplane, returned from San Diego to Texas for the fourth time in five years, in April 1915, led by 1st Lieutenant Thomas D. Milling and 2nd Lieutenant Byron Q. Jones, as the Army massed around Brownsville in response to civil war between the forces of Pancho Villa and the Carranza government. On 20 April, Milling and Jones became the first American military airmen to come under fire from a hostile force.
Beginning in August 1915, the 1st Aero Squadron spent four months at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, training at the Field Artillery School with eight newly delivered Curtiss JN-2s. After a fatal crash on 12 August, the pilots of the squadron met with squadron commander Foulois and declared the JN-2 unsafe because of low power, shoddy construction, lack of stability, and overly sensitive rudders. Foulois and Milling, now also a captain, disagreed and the JN-2 remained operational until a second crashed on 5 September. The aircraft were grounded until 14 October, when conversions of the JN-2s to the newer JN-3 began, two copies of which the squadron received in early September.
File:1st Aero Squadron - North Island California 2.jpg|thumb|Members of the 1st Aero Squadron and a Burgess Model H trainer at North Island, San Diego, California, 1915
Between 19 and 26 November 1915, the six JN-3s of the 1st Aero Squadron at Fort Sill made the first cross-country squadron flight, to a new airfield built near Fort Sam Houston, Texas.
The Texas base became the "first permanent aeronautical station" on 6 January 1916, designated as the San Antonio Air Center. The first "permanent" base was abandoned after several months and its remaining funding allocated to the establishment of a new training school on Long Island, New York. Signal Corps Aviation Station, Mineola opened on 22 July 1916.
On 12 January 1916, the strength of the Aviation Section stood at 60 officers and 243 enlisted men, which figures were 100% and 93% respectively of its authorized totals. It was now organized into four subordinate organizations:
- the Aeronautical Division
- the Signal Corps Aviation School
- the 1st Aero Squadron
- the 1st Company, 2nd Aero Squadron
On 1 November 1915, the first aviation organization in the National Guard was created, the "Aviation Detachment, 1st Battalion Signal Corps, New York National Guard", later called simply the "1st Aero Company". Consisting of four officers and 40 enlisted men, it used two leased aircraft to train until five aircraft were purchased for its equipment in 1916.
Punitive expedition
Following Villa's raid on Columbus, New Mexico, on 9 March 1916, the 1st Aero Squadron was attached to Major General John J. Pershing's punitive expedition. It consisted of 11 pilots, 84 enlisted men, a civilian mechanic, and was supported by an engineer officer and 14 men. Eight Curtiss JN-3s were disassembled at Fort Sam Houston on 12 March and shipped the next day by rail to Columbus, along with half of the squadron's motorized transportation: ten Jeffrey trucks, one automobile, and six motorcycles. Two other trucks were received in Columbus and all of the trucks assigned to the expedition's quartermaster. The JN-3s were reassembled as they were off-loaded on 15 March, the date the first column marched into Mexico. The first observation mission flown by the squadron, and the first American military reconnaissance flight over foreign territory, was flown the next day and lasted 51 minutes with Dodd at the controls and Foulois observing.On 19 March, Pershing telegraphed Foulois and ordered the squadron forward to his advanced base at Colonia Dublán, 230 miles from Columbus, to observe for the 7th and 10th cavalry regiments. Half of the ground echelon moved forward by truck, while the remaining half and the entire squadron engineering section remained in Columbus to assist the quartermaster in the assembly of new trucks. Because of coordination difficulties, the eight JN-3s were unable to take off until 17:10. One aircraft developed engine problems immediately and turned back. Four, led by Captain Townsend F. Dodd and Foulois in No. 44, flew more or less in formation at a lower altitude for better navigation. Three flew at a higher altitude and soon lost sight of the others.
None of the eight aircraft made Dublán that evening, all were forced down by darkness: in addition to the aircraft that turned back, one crash-landed and was destroyed by scavengers after a forced landing near Pearson, Mexico, and six others landed intact. Four that landed together at Ascensión flew on to the advanced base in the morning, where they arrived an hour after the plane that had been forced to return to Columbus with engine trouble, and after another that had waited out the night on a road at Janos.
The squadron returned to Columbus on 22 April for new aircraft, where it expanded to a roster of 16 pilots and 122 enlisted men. It flew liaison missions for Pershing's force using detachments in Mexico until 15 August 1916. The 1st Aero Squadron flew a total of 540 liaison and aerial reconnaissance missions, traveling with a flight time of 345 hours 43 minutes. No observations were made of hostile troops but the squadron performed invaluable services maintaining communications between Pershing's headquarters and ground units deep inside Mexico. During this expedition, a solid red star on the rudder became the first national insignia for United States military aircraft.
Their airplanes did not have sufficient power to fly over the Sierra Madre Mountains nor did they perform well in the turbulence of its passes, and missions averaged only distance from their landing fields. The planes were nearly impossible to maintain because of a lack of parts and environmental conditions, and after just 30 days service only two were left. Both were no longer flight worthy and were condemned on 22 April. Congress in a deficiency bill voted the Aviation Section an emergency appropriation of $500,000, and although four new Curtiss N-8s were shipped to Columbus, they were rejected by Foulois after six days of flight testing. Foulois recommended condemnation of the N-8s but they were instead shipped to San Diego, modified, and ultimately used as training aircraft.
A new agency was also created within the Aviation Section, the Technical Advisory and Inspection Board, headed by Milling, and staffed by pilots who had completed aeronautical engineering courses at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and civilian engineers, including Donald Douglas. The board recommended the squadron be equipped with new Curtiss R-2s, which used engines.
The first two were delivered on 1 May 1916, and the remaining 10 by 25 May. They were assigned Signal Corps numbers 64 to 75. The R-2s were equipped with Lewis machine guns, wireless sets, and standard compasses, but their performance proved little better than that of their predecessors. Pilots were quoted by name in both The New York Times and New York Herald Tribune as condemning their equipment, but Pershing did not pursue the issue, noting they had "already too often risked their lives in old and often useless machines they have patched up and worked over in an effort to do their share of the duty this expedition has been called upon to perform".