Large group of WWI and 1920's era USAAC pilot

[willycrash]

A couple of squadron group photos. The top photo is clearly of the "boys" on the boat heading over"

The history of the troop ship the 278th took to France is pretty amazing all by itself: apparently a rather successful captured German commerce raider before it was renamed USS Von Stueben. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Kronprinz_Wilhelm

[willycrash]

Hello. yet another few years later I see that I missed a bunch of activity here. just thought I'd post a photo of the piece of aircraft canvas my grandfather Lt. Robert Rowe brought back from France with the unit insignia-apparently cut from a crashed plane. I'm in the process of having it appraised and perhaps, restored. My sister has all my grandfather's letters he sent my grandma while he was training with the 278th through to his return from France and she apparently organized them chronologically so I can now look for his letters from specific dates in order,perhaps to find his take on events and the two crashes.

 

file:///Users/williamrowe/Downloads/Willie's%20Airplane%20Pic.webarchive

My Mom thinks that she heard that this guy did the original 278th owl and spyglass work. hard to know if true: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Sarg

[willycrash]

Finally...briefly looking at Lt. Rowe's letters from before the end of the war, they are quite boring historically speaking because of the censors, but also found a letter from December 19th, 1918 (after censorship was lifted). He states in the letter that they were still prohibited from discussing the names of dead or injured pilots by name until the families were "officially notified". Lt. Rowe mentions driving to recover a crashed aircraft ("forced down"), apparently right after the war was over in which he says that while waiting to be picked up, the pilot of that plane claimed to have been "kissed by every woman in France and half of the men" but Lt. Rowe also writes to reassure my grandmother that he himself "waited in the car"so was not kissed by any french men or women during the trip ( I find that dubious at best ). Since this was his first letter after the unit was suddenly called to Toul (apparently orders received on the 9th of December) it was an excited letter which flits from topic to topic. I look forward to reading the letters that come after he was able to calm down, for any additional info on Oglivie and William's crash or where our little collection of 278th aircraft parts actually came from. Also...if anyone in the 2nd army lost a automobile near Toul after leaving it broken down on the side of the road for a couple days, my grandfather appears to have had it towed it into the airbase. After fixing it, he took it for himself. I apologize if that caused any issues...

[binthere]

willy,

 

I suspect the crash he went to recover was the one my grandfather was in. He was a crew chief for one of the aircraft whose pilot was on leave. As the unit was displacing from Autreville to Toul they had to shuttle the aircraft with the pilots available and it took several days. As a result my grandfather's plane didn't fly off until 11 Nov 1918 - Armistice Day. He flew in the observer's seat with a replacement pilot who got lost. Here's a transcript for an oral interview he gave years later.

 

"My lieutenant was on leave, so one of our new pilots whom I didn't know, named Conrad, flew my plane, with me in the back cockpit. We were supposed to follow the commanding officer who knew where we were going. We all flew into a bank of clouds, and when my plane came out there was no one else in sight. It didn't take the pilot long to discover we were completely lost. He wasn't watching his compass and got turned around. It was getting late in the afternoon and the fog was beginning to rise. I could tell he was getting nervous, because he'd shake the plane every time he'd move the controls. So we flew along low, following the Moselle River for a while. Every now and then we'd come to abridge and the pilot would zoom over it. It was getting so you could hardly see the ground and it looked as if the pilot was going to set the plane down. All of a sudden he lost his nerve and opened up the throttle and climbed out and we went right through the tops of a row of trees. I thought, "This is it! Goodbye California!" But he made it and went out over the town and the next thing I knew he was headed for a big brick chimney that was sticking up right in front of us. Just then he saw it and banked the plane sharply and missed it by 50 feet. Then instead of going back around like my old pilot would have done, he came in over the trees and down and of course he gained a lot of flying speed, and this not being an aviation field, we didn't have room to land. The last I remember, I looked out over the side and it was dark and it looked like he was making a landing all right. The next thing, I woke up and was hanging upside down in the plane with my head a couple feet off the ground. The wings were all ripped up on the plane, and the pilot was lying over on his back about 25 feet from the cockpit - thrown out, apparently. I thought he was a goner and me hanging there and couldn't get my harness loose. When you're standing up in the cockpit you just bend your knees a little and pull the rawhide on the cotter pin that holds it, but with all your weight on it, it's a different story. I tried and tried and had to give up, Steam was coming out of the plane and I thought any minute it would burst into flames and that would be the end of me. About this time, the pilot came to and sat up and yelled, "Sergeant, sergeant, where are you?" and got all excited, and I answered, "Here I am! Get me out of here!" So he came running over and reached up and yanked the cotter pin out that you release yourself with, and down I came head first and hit the ground. He didn't even try to hold me he was so excited.

 

"By then some Frenchmen from the town came running across the field, picked us up and started to run across the field with us. I didn't understand French at all, and they were feeling us and repeating "Vous mal? Vou mal?" and I didn't know what they were saying. Just then a good looking French officer came up, six feet tall with gold braid on his cap and said, "Are you Americans?" I could have kissed him I was so glad to find someone we could talk to. I told him yes and opened up my overcoat to show him the tight collar we wore with "U.S." on it. Then everything was fine, and I asked him to please stop these souvenir hounds who were tearing the plane apart. So he yelled, "Allez, tout suite!" which is French for "beat it", approximately. He got some soldiers out there with guns to guard what was left of the plane. Then he invited us over to the officers' quarters and we had a big party that night: champagne, cognac, and so on, to celebrate the end of the war, and you should have heard them praising the Americans for coming over and helping them to win the war. They gave me a French helmet as a souvenir, and my pilot received a sword, which was passed around the table and kissed by everyone. On my right at the table was a left-handed French lieutenant who was a real drinker, downing everything that came by. I never could drink much wine, just a glass or two with a meal, but the waiters kept the glasses full, so each time the left-handed guy put down an empty glass next to mine, I'd just slide my full one in its place. All evening I switched glasses on him with the result that I was the only sober one when the party broke up. My pilot had told me earlier to go ahead and have a good time and he would see that I got to bed, but when the time came, I had to haul him to bed and pull his boots off. The next morning I woke up and thought I was going to die, my chest hurt so. I had broken a couple ribs and every breath hurt. When we crashed, my chest must have hit the little desk at the front of the cockpit where the telegraph key was mounted. The right side of my face was raw where it had gotten scraped on something, and my right hand was big and swollen from hitting the ratchet the machine guns go up and down on - you could see the holes from its teeth every inch across the back of my hand."

 

As a note to the above, they had gotten truly lost. They ended up crashing on the southern outskirts of Lyon on the Rhone River, not the Moselle. This was far out of the American sector, so the two were a great novelty to the French who rescued them.

 

More coming.

[binthere]

Back on post #53 I included the November 13, 1918 entry from my grandfather's diary mentioning LT Roe [Rowe] arriving to survey the wreck. Rowe took Conrad back with him but left my grandfather there with the wreck until a truck from the squadron came and they returned to the squadron with the wreck on November 19.

 

If I can figure out how to post a photo here (no guarantees) there should be two photos included here. One is the photo of my grandfather sitting on the wreck surrounded by French officers and soldiers. The second is a picture of the data plate from the wreck, which he took as a souvenir.

 

[binthere]

Hmmm. Looks like I missed the editing window on my post #79. In the middle of line 6 of the interview it should read as follows:

 

"It was getting so you could hardly see the ground when we finally came to a town which turned out to be Venissieux, 200 miles in the opposite direction from Toul and near the Swiss border. We came in over a parade ground and it looked as if the pilot was going to set the plane down."