Benjamin Foulois
Benjamin Delahauf Foulois was a United States Army general who learned to fly the first military planes purchased from the Wright brothers. He became the first military aviator as an airship pilot, and achieved numerous other military aviation "firsts". He led strategic development of the Air Force in the United States.
Early life
Benjamin "Benny" Delahauf Foulois was born on December 9, 1879, in Washington, Connecticut, to a Franco-American pipe-fitter and a Boston-born nurse.Early military service
At age 18, he used his older brother's birth certificate to enlist in the Army to support the Spanish–American War, but arrived in Puerto Rico just weeks before the armistice was signed. As an engineer, he fought off the rampant tropical diseases, and after five months, was shipped home and mustered out. On June 17, 1899, Foulois enlisted again, using his own name, as a private in the Regular Army and was assigned to the 19th Infantry, where he ultimately achieved the rank of first sergeant, with service in the Philippines on Luzon, Panay, and Cebu. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant on July 9, 1901. Foulois returned to the United States in 1902 and transferred to the 17th Infantry. This regiment served in the Philippines from 1903 to 1905, and Foulois served in Manila, Cottabato, and Mindanao, where he participated in engagements against the Lake Lanao Moros, successfully hunting down and defeating combatant tribal leaders, and as topographical officer for the regiment, participated in surveying and mapping expeditions.Foulois attended the Infantry and Cavalry School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, from September 1905 to August 1906. In 1907, he married Ella Snyder van Horn, the daughter of Colonel James Judson van Horn. Assigned to attend the Army Signal School in the class of 1906–1907, he was recalled to his regiment in September 1906 for duty with an expeditionary force in Cuba during the Second Occupation of Cuba. His experience in surveying in the Philippines led to reassignment to the chief engineer of the force to perform military mapping. He was commissioned as a first lieutenant in the Signal Corps on April 30, 1908, assigned to the office of the Army's chief signal officer, Brig. Gen. James Allen, and sent to complete Signal School, which he did in July 1908. His final thesis was The Tactical and Strategical Value of Dirigible Balloons and Aerodynamical Flying Machines, within which he demonstrated prescience in such statements as this:
He forecast the replacement of the horse by the airplane in reconnaissance, and wireless air-to-ground communications that included the transmission of photographs. As a result, the CSO selected Foulois for the aeronautical board designated to conduct the 1908 airship and airplane acceptance trials. After having selected the Thomas Scott Baldwin airship as the winner of the trial, Foulois was selected as the first military crewman. He took his first flight on August 18 as engineer-pilot, while Baldwin controlled the rudder at the aft end.
Aviation duty with the Signal Corps 1908–1916
Aeronautical Division
Foulois' first aviation assignment was duty with the Aeronautical Division, U.S. Signal Corps, where he operated the first dirigible balloon of the U.S. government. The crash of the Wright Military Flyer, procured at the same time by the Army on its final test flight, September 17, 1908, claimed the first US military airplane fatality, First Lt. Thomas E. Selfridge, and also injured Orville Wright. After one year, Foulois had concluded through his experience, understanding of military dirigibles in Europe, and talks with Tom Baldwin, that no military future existed for lighter-than-air aircraft. In expressing this opinion to the Army General Staff, Foulois recommended no more purchases of dirigibles, the first of his many disagreements with the military establishment.The Wright brothers spent 10 months following the fatal crash in making engineering improvements to the airplane. By July 1909, Orville was ready to complete the acceptance test for the Signal Corps. On July 30, 1909, Foulois' first flight in an aeroplane was the evaluation test flight from Fort Myer to Alexandria, Virginia. Pilot Orville Wright and navigator Foulois broke previous speed, altitude, and cross-country duration records, flying at 42.5 mph, 400 feet, and for. The Army purchased this Wright Model A Military Flyer, which became "Signal Corps No. 1". The final condition of the contract was to train two pilots.
Foulois and Lieutenant Frank P. Lahm were initially designated to take direct instruction from the Wright brothers, but the CSO instead sent Foulois to Nancy, France, in September 1909 as a delegate to the International Congress of Aeronautics, possibly as a result of resentment of his outspoken criticism of the dirigible. He returned on October 23 to College Park, Maryland, where Wilbur Wright had begun training Lahm and Lieutenant Frederick E. Humphreys. Humphreys made the first military solo in an airplane on October 26, 1909, followed by Lahm. Although not contractually obligated to do so, Wilbur took Foulois up and allowed him to handle the controls, then turned him over to Humphreys for instruction. Foulois totaled 3 hours and 2 minutes at the controls, virtually equaling the flight time of Humphreys and Lahm, but did not make any landings, nor did he solo. On November 5, Humphreys and Lahm cartwheeled S.C. No. 1 during landing, damaging the rudder and necessitating replacement of a wing, at a time when neither Wright brother was available. In addition, both officers were recalled to their branches of service.
Duty in Texas
While waiting to repair the airplane, the Signal Corps decided to seek a more favorable climate location for flying during the winter. Foulois was directed to report to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, where he was directed by CSO Allen to "teach yourself to fly." He did so, and at 9:30 a.m. on March 2, 1910, on the Arthur MacArthur parade field made four flights on S.C. No. 1, which included his first solo takeoff, first solo landing, and first crash. Over the next 15 months, Foulois modified S.C. No. 1's elevators at the instructions in correspondence from Orville Wright, and demonstrated the use of the Wright B aircraft for aerial mapping, photography, and reconnaissance, and the use of the radio while airborne. To end the requirement of using a 60-foot launch rail to take off, he drew up plans for and installed wheels in place of skids, and equipped the S.C. No. 1 with the first seat belt, using a four-foot leather cinch obtained from the cavalry saddlery. According to Foulois: "The second flight I made after crashing the first time I took it up I got almost thrown out; landed; the artillery officer came up there and I told him, Fred, I wanted to get a belt to keep me in that damn plane. He said, whaddya want? and I said a strap about four feet long, something I can lash myself to the seat with. That was the first safety belt invented." As the result of repeated crashes and repairs, many caused by Foulois being "ground shy", S.C. No. 1 became unflyable, and in February 1911 the Army leased a Wright Model B from Robert Collier. Because Foulois was unfamiliar with the type, the Wright Company sent Philip O. Parmalee to instruct.In early 1911, the United States gathered much of the Regular Army in South Texas as a show of force to Mexican revolutionaries, forming the "Maneuver Division". On March 3, 1911, Foulois and Parmalee made the first official military reconnaissance flight, looking for Army troops between Laredo and Eagle Pass, Texas, with a ground exercise in progress. Two days later, returning from a cross-country flight, they accidentally shut off the engine, and in trying to restart it, crashed into the Rio Grande. Neither was injured and the airplane was eventually repaired and returned to Collier.
Foulois was joined in April by three students from the Curtiss Aviation School in San Diego, including Capt. Paul W. Beck and Second Lt. George E. M. Kelly, to form a provisional "aero company" created April 5, 1911, by the Maneuver Division in anticipation of training 18 more pilots. Beck, like Foulois, was dual-commissioned in the Signal Corps and being senior, took command of the company, an action that Foulois resented. Friction and mutual rivalry with the new pilots also existed because they had no experience on the Wright machine, instead being trained on the Curtiss Military biplane. On May 3, 1911, Beck crashed the Curtiss machine after its engine failed at 300 feet. A week later, flying the same airplane after its repair, Kelly was killed trying to land minutes into his qualification flight.
Foulois blamed Beck for improper repairs to the craft, and also questioned his ability to command, but the investigating board, of which both Foulois and Beck were members, ruled that Kelly's death resulted from landing at too high a speed. In any event, the army shut down all aviation training at Fort Sam Houston and sent pilots and airplanes to College Park, Maryland, where its first aviation school was about to commence. Beck was ordered there as the instructor on the Curtiss machine in June, but Foulois remained on duty with the Maneuver Division until July 11, when he was reassigned to the Militia Bureau in Washington, DC.
Return to aviation
Foulois was assigned as Officer In Charge, Signal Corps and Corps of Engineers Units in the Organized Militia. On April 29, 1912, his Signal Corps commission was discharged and he was nominally returned to the Infantry, but remained with the Militia Bureau, where he was able to continue flying periodically at the aviation school in College Park. In July 1911, the Army adopted as its standard to be a military pilot the licensing requirements of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, which ruled on June 26, 1912, that he met, issuing FAI Certificate No. 140. In the meantime, the Army published its own pilot qualification standards on April 20, 1912, and Foulois became the third army pilot to be rated a military aviator, on July 13. In October 1912, Foulois was returned to infantry troop duty under requirements of the "Manchu Law", otherwise known as the congressionally-mandated "Detached Service Law," and assigned to Fort Leavenworth with the 7th Infantry.Foulois was returned to aviation duty in November 1913, and detailed the next month to the Signal Corps Aviation School at North Island, San Diego, California, where the 1st Aero Squadron was officially constituted as a unit of the Signal Corps. In January 1914, the organization of the squadron was approved by the CSO and Foulois became commanding officer of its 1st Company, comprising three Burgess aircraft and 26 enlisted men. Later in 1914, Foulois became squadron commander. The Aeronautical Department experienced a spate of fatal accidents in 1912 and 1913, most involving the Wright Model C airplane, and convened a board of aviators to investigate safety concerns and make recommendations. Foulois, along with Captain Townsend F. Dodd and Lieutenants Walter R. Taliaferro, Carleton G. Chapman, and Joseph E. Carberry, condemned not just the Wright C, but all "pusher" aircraft as unsafe on February 16, 1914, and those remaining in the Army inventory were ordered to be immediately grounded. The following month, the board drew up specifications for a tractor-configured training airplane.
On November 19, 1915, Foulois led the 1st Aero Squadron cross-country flight of six Curtiss JN3s from Post Field, Fort Sill, Oklahoma, to Ft Sam Houston, San Antonio, Texas, intended as the site for the first permanent base of the Aviation Section, the San Antonio Air Center. In 1916, Pancho Villa crossed into New Mexico and killed 17 Americans. In response, Brig. Gen. John J. Pershing was directed to pursue Villa into Mexico, and Foulois was ordered to take eight airplanes to provide reconnaissance and communication. On 15 March 1916, Foulois and the 1st Aero Squadron arrived at Columbus, New Mexico, for duty. On 16 March, Foulois flew as the observer with Dodd on the first American military reconnaissance flight over foreign territory. Within eight weeks, six of the aircraft had been destroyed, as the airplane could not contend with the high altitude, severe weather, and dry atmosphere.