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 (Public Law 143) 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 (ASSC), and is the designation recognized by the United States Air Force as its predecessor for this period.Greer (1985), p. 149, Appendix 2
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 (Public Law 143, 63rd Congress), 38 Stat. 514, to supersede the Aeronautical Division, an administrative creation of the Signal Corps within the Office of the Chief Signal Officer (OCSO), 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.Mooney and Layman (1944), pp. 19–20 Later provisions of the National Defense Act (39 Stat. 174), 3 June 1916, and the Aviation Act (40 Stat. 243), 24 July 1917, permitted aviation support functions to be gradually transferred from the Aeronautical Division to newly established aviation section organizations."General Records of the Chief Signal Officer 1914–1918 US National Archives 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.Heimdahl and Hurley (1997), p. 28.Approximately $5.9 million in 2014 dollars. US Inflation Calculator
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.Hennessy (1958), p. 130. 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 (and therefore incurred a 25% reduction in flight pay) 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.Hennessy (1958), p. 110.The Aviation Act of 24 July 1917 authorized those holding a pre-war JMA rating to advance to an MA rating either by the three-year rule or by "distinguished service".
At its creation, the Aviation Section had 19 officers and 101 enlisted men. The Aeronautical Division, a quasi-headquarters (Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Reber, Washington, D.C.) with three officers and 11 enlisted men, issued orders in the name of the chief signal officer (CSO).Hennessy (1958), p. 111. 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 (Captain Arthur S. Cowan, San Diego),Four officers, 37 enlisted men, and seven civilians, plus airplane S.C. No. 22 1st Aero Squadron (Captain Benjamin D. Foulois),A headquarters of two officers and one enlisted man 1st Company, 1st Aero Squadron (Captain Harold C. Geiger)Five officers, 26 enlisted men, and three airplanes: S.C. Nos. 24, 25, and 26. 2nd Company, 1st Aero Squadron (Captain Lewis E. Goodier, Jr.),Five officers, 26 enlisted men, and S.C. Nos. 20, 28, and 30 totaling 16 officers, 90 enlisted men, seven civilians, and seven aircraft.Hennessy (1958), p. 120.The organization of the aero squadron into two companies lasted only until April 1915, when it changed to 12 sections, including a section for each of its eight aircraft. The companies of the 1st Aero Squadron, carried on separate rolls, were consolidated into a single entity on 17 April.
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.Company A of the 1st Aero Squadron, led by Capt. Foulois, left San Diego 24 April with five pilots, a medical officer, thirty enlisted men and three airplanes by train for Galveston, arriving 30 April, one day after the last transport sailed for Veracruz. As a result they did no flying for four months, since their planes were never uncrated. (Pool, p. 438; and Hennessy, p. 120)
By December 1914, the Aviation Section consisted of 44 officers, 224 enlisted men, and 23 aircraft.Hennessy (1958), p. 124.
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.Hennessy (1958), pp. 151–152.
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,Frederickson (2011), p. 15On 15 January Jones had set a solo flight duration record with a flight time of eight hours and 53 minutes flying S.C. 31. (Hennessy, p. 135) as the Army massed around Brownsville in response to civil war between the forces of Pancho Villa and the Carranza government.Heimdahl and Hurley (1997), p. 30. On 20 April, Milling and Jones became the first American military airmen to come under fire from a hostile force.Using part of the cavalry drill field at Fort Brown as a landing strip, Milling and Jones flew S.C. 31 to observe for movements of Pancho Villa, with Jones as pilot and Milling as observer. A morning flight was routine but on the afternoon sortie, while still on the American side of the border, their aircraft was fired upon by a machine gun. After landing at Fort Brown, Jones taxied the plane into a ditch and damaged it beyond repair; the chief of the Aviation Section refused to replace it for ten days until pressured to do so. (Hennessy, p. 145)
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.Hennessy (1958), p. 147.
Between 19 and 26 November 1915, the six JN-3s of the 1st Aero Squadron at Fort Sill (the other two were on detached duty at Brownsville) made the first cross-country squadron flight, to a new airfield built near Fort Sam Houston, Texas.Hennessy (1958), p. 149.
The Texas base became the "first permanent aeronautical station"Hennessy (1958), p. 95The site had been approved in April 1913 but was delayed by lack of funding. on 6 January 1916, designated as the San Antonio Air Center.Hennessy (1958), p. 160. 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.Hennessy (1958), p. 167, note. Signal Corps Aviation Station, Mineola (later Hazelhurst Field) opened on 22 July 1916.Hennessy (1958), p. 177.
On 12 January 1916, the strength of the Aviation Section stood at 60 officers (23 JMA-rated pilots, 27 student pilots) and 243 enlisted men (eight of whom were pilots), which figures were 100% and 93% respectively of its authorized totals. It was now organized into four subordinate organizations: the Aeronautical Division (Washington D.C.) the Signal Corps Aviation School (San Diego) the 1st Aero Squadron (San Antonio Air Center) the 1st Company, 2nd Aero Squadron (Manila)
It had 23 aircraft: four seaplanes based overseas at Manila, two seaplanesThese Curtiss flying boats were heavier than their land-based counterparts and used as primary trainers in San Diego's gusty winds. They also provided many more takeoff and landing repetitions for new student pilots in the same training time frame. (Hennessy, p. 113) and nine trainers at San Diego, and eight JN-3s in Texas. Thirty-two other aircraft had been destroyed or written off since 1909, one was in the Smithsonian Institution, and three were too damaged to repair practically.Hennessy (1958), p. 156.
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 (including its founder, Captain Raynal Bolling) and 40 enlisted men, it used two leased aircraft to train until five aircraft were purchased for its equipment in 1916.
Punitive expedition