Frank Purdy Lahm (November 17, 1877 – July 7, 1963) was an American aviation pioneer, the "nation's first military aviator", and a general officer in the United States Army Air Corps and Army Air Forces.
Lahm developed an interest in flying from his father, a balloonist, and received among the first civil qualification certificates issued. He met the Wright Brothers in 1907 and used his interest in powered flight to become the Army's first certified pilot in 1909,, Appendix 14 followed four years later by becoming its 14th rated Military Aviator. In 1916 he became a career aviator, serving in the United States Army Air Service and its successors until his retirement in 1941 at the age of 64, rising to the rank of brigadier general.
Lahm reached mandatory retirement age on the eve of United States participation in World War II but contributed to the growth of the Air Force both during and following the war. Because of his leadership and administration during its construction, Lahm is also known as "the father of Randolph Field," and because of his lifelong devotion to aviation and aeronautical science, "the father of Air Force flight training".
Childhood and early career SOURCE NOTE: All dates of rank and dates of Permanent Change of Station where shown are from AFHRA, Biographical Data on Air Force General Officers, 1917–1952, Volume 1 – A through L, entry "Lahm, Frank Purdy"
Lahm was born on November 17, 1877, in Mansfield, Ohio, to Adelaide Way Purdy and Frank Samuel Lahm, owner of a hat shop. He was the grandson of Samuel Lahm, a Canton lawyer and Ohio congressman, and related through his grandmother to Daniel Webster. His mother died unexpectedly in March 1880 while giving birth to a third child, which also died shortly after. His father had been in poor health for five years, and on the advice of doctors, undertook a trip to Southern France, Italy, and Switzerland in October to improve his condition. Lahm, then two, and his four-year-old sister Katherine were left in the care of relatives. Soon after culminating his recovery by scaling the Matterhorn in August 1881, Frank S. Lahm became the European agent for the Remington Typewriter Company. He resided in Paris until his death in 1931. The elder Lahm kept his family connected to one another through frequent correspondence, visits, and educating each child for a year in France.
Lahm's father made annual summer visits to a home he had purchased in 1877 in Summit County, Ohio, crossing the Atlantic Ocean fifty times to remain close to his children. Katherine lived with their aunt, Helen Lahm Greenwood, in Canton, Ohio, studied in France and at Smith College, and married an Army officer, Frank Parker, who retired as a major general in 1936. Lahm lived in Mansfield with another aunt, Mary Purdy Welden, who was a widow with two children, and became devoted to her as his surrogate mother. In high school, he excelled as an athlete, lettering in both football and baseball, until his father brought him to France in 1893.
There he attended Albert-le-Grand, a Dominican school near Paris, France, where he played rugby and participated in gymnastics and mountain climbing. Between 1895 and 1897, Lahm spent two years at Michigan Military Academy preparing for West Point. There he was Lieutenant of the Corps and valedictorian of his class. He entered the U.S. Military Academy in June 1897. Although he graduated in the top fifth of his class, he found time for athletics. He held the rope climbing record at West Point, and his enthusiasm for horse riding led him into the cavalry on his graduation in 1901, ranked 23rd in merit in his class of 74 cadets. While at USMA he quarterbacked the football team and was captain of the baseball team. He set several records in gymnastics.
He was commissioned second lieutenant, 6th Cavalry, and campaigned in the Philippines for two years. He toured China, Korea, and Japan during his return to the United States in 1903, where he was assigned to West Point as an instructor in modern languages for three years.Lahm was instructor in French to Cadet Henry H. Arnold. He spent his summer leaves in France with his father, who taught him to fly balloons in the summer of 1904. In 1906 he was assigned to attend the Saumur Cavalry School.
Lahm's father joined the Aéro-Club de France in 1902 (at the age of 56), purchased a balloon he named the Katherine Hamilton in honor of his daughter, and qualified for his balloon pilot's certificate in November 1904. The elder Lahm made frequent flights and initiated his son during a night ascension in stormy weather. In the summer of 1905, 2nd Lt. Lahm completed the requirements of six ascensions, including one at night and one alone, to earn Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) certificate No. 4 as a balloon pilot. On July 15 of the same summer Lahm was promoted to first lieutenant.
In 1906, while awaiting entrance to Saumur, Lahm won the first Gordon Bennett Cup international balloon race against competitors from seven nations, all of which had a military officer as a crew member. The race, commencing at the Tuileries Garden in Paris, was actually a distance competition across the English Channel. His father had planned to pilot the balloon United States himself but desired to return to America for Katherine's wedding, and so recruited his son to fly in his place. Accompanied by Major Henry Blanchard HerseyHersey, a graduate of Norwich University and a Rough Rider during the Spanish–American War, was in France to be an observer on a dirigible flight planned from Norway to the north pole. of the United States Weather Bureau, who had studied the storm tracks and prevailing winds, Lahm started 12th in a field of 16 late in the afternoon of September 30. Under a full moon they reached the Channel before midnight and a lightship off the coast of England three hours later, where fog obscured the surface. The morning sun slowly burned off the fog and caused the balloon to ascend to 3,000 meters altitude. Lahm and Hersey established their position over Berkshire around 07:00 and continued north, gradually descending to avoid drifting out over the North Sea. They landed near Fylingdales in Yorkshire after covering a distance of 641 kilometers and more than 22 hours aloft.
Personality Lahm's son Lawrence, himself a career officer, described his father's traits and characteristics in an essay he wrote in 1995: He was five feet nine inches tall and was always very slender so that he appeared taller than he was actually…he had been a gymnast and the muscles of his arms and back stood out like ropes. He was soft spoke and agreeable, yet, there was always a certain reserve. He was modest, honest, and true. He spoke well of others. As a boy he had gone to church twice on Sundays, once in the morning and once in the evening. He visited the sick and aged. He loved games. He was an avid hunter and fisherman. He was first a cavalryman before he became a flyer and he enjoyed riding and polo. In San Antonio, he had three polo ponies. I was never allowed to ride them, presumably because I would spoil them. He did, however, teach me to ride other horses, to swim, to golf, and to play baseball. He enjoyed music and we sang on long automobile trips when he changed station from one Army post to another, my father and mother in the front seat and my sister, Barbara, and I in the back. His posture was firmly erect and he possessed a cold courage that was remarkable. Beneath the calm exterior lay the competitiveness and combativeness fostered by the severe training at West Point.
Aviation duties with the Signal Corps
Aeronautical Division The Army detailed Lahm to the fledgling Aeronautical Division, a section in the Office of the Chief Signal Officer (OCSO), on September 17, 1907, while he was still in Europe. His departure from France was delayed after a relapse of the typhoid he contracted in the spring of 1907 and he took convalescent leave at a rest home in St. Germain. It was in the home's garden on August 1, 1907, the very day that the Aeronautical Division came into being, that Lahm's father introduced him to Wilbur and Orville Wright. The elder Lahm had personally investigated the claims of the brothers and had been quietly promoting them among his colleagues in France since 1905. The meeting was the beginning of a friendship that lasted until the two brothers died. Lahm learned that the Army, through the reluctance and disinterest of the Board of Ordnance and Fortification, had obstructed the attempts of the Wright Brothers to provide the Army with an airplane, and immediately wrote his new superior, Chief Signal Officer (CSO) Brig. Gen. James Allen (who sat on the board), urging that favorable consideration be given their most recent proposal.
En route to the United States, Lt. Lahm toured aviation sites in Germany and England, where he met Griffith Brewer, a balloonist who later became a pilot for the Wrights. In December, Lahm arrived at Fort Myer, Virginia, where he and a detachment of Signal Corps troops constructed a hydrogen generating plant and practiced captive observation balloon work. Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone and an early aviation enthusiast, often invited Lahm to join visiting scientists in his Washington home for discussions on many subjects, especially aviation.Bell chaired a group called the "Aerial Experiment Association" whose members were himself, Glenn Curtiss, Frederick W. "Casey" Baldwin, John A.D. "Douglas" McCurdy, and Army Lt. Thomas Selfridge, all of whom except Curtiss were wealthy young men interested in flying.
The Signal Corps advertised specifications for a powered airplane on December 23, 1907, and among the three bids found acceptable was one submitted by the Wrights to build a plane within 200 days for $25,000. The Signal Corps budget had insufficient funds to meet the three bids, and in early February 1908, Lahm accompanied Gen. Allen and chief of the Aeronautical Division Capt Charles DeF. Chandler to meet with President Theodore Roosevelt to obtain funds from a contingency account.