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The Original First US Military Aviators - Reference Thread


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  • 1 year later...

I have spent the last 2+ hours devouring every word in this topic and can not express enough gratitude for all of the information shared. Tremendous amount of knowledge and data here. Thanks to all who shared.

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  • 1 year later...

Wonderful photo of 1/Lt Joseph Dodge Park who earned his Military Aviator (MA) rating on May 7, 1913. Picture taken at the Signal Corps Aviation School at North Island, San Diego, CA. He was killed in an air accident two days later on May 9, 1913. Park Field, Millington, Tennessee, was named in his memory.

 

Cliff

Dredging up an old thread....

Was cruising around the Interwebs on Memorial Day weekend and came across this thread.

Thanks for this photo. Joseph Park is my great-grandfather and namesake (see the JP in JPW). He has a burial marker in NH. I recall meeting his sister Ruth as a very young child.

 

I don't have the electronic version, but there is a rather descriptive account of his final flight in his obit from the NYTimes in May 1913. From what I can remember from the obit -he got disoriented in the fog, landed next to an olive grove, saw a young girl and asked her to have her parents communicate with the field, took off again, and then was later found to have crashed into a hill.

 

Unfortunately, there is not much more family info to share other than the (apocryphal?) story that his son was an aviator in WW2 and died in a crash following discharge. My mom (born 1938) was adopted by Joseph Park's son as an infant and then was given her step-father's last name following her mother's remarriage.

 

Cheers and thanks again for the photo!

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  • 2 years later...
5thwingmarty

I believe this photo includes a young Hap Arnold as well. He looks a great deal like the man shown earlier identified as a young Hap Arnold. I have no idea who else is in the photo or where it was taken. It is in an album from another WWI pilot I just picked up.

 

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  • 10 months later...

November 1915 photo of the First Aero Squadron in Fort Worth, Texas. They were on the way from Fort Sill, Oklahoma, to Fort Sam Houston, San Antonio, Texas. Left to right: Bowen, Carberry, Foulois, Milling, Rader, And Chapman.

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  • 6 months later...

Portrait of Colonel Charles DeForest Chandler by Joseph Cummings Chase.

Shown wearing his embroidered WW1 Balloon pilot wings and 1913 Military Aviator badge.

 

Now in the UNITED STATES AIR FORCE ART COLLECTION: 

 

 

 

Charles DeForest Chandler_painting.jpg

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  • 1 year later...
aerialbridge
On 6/10/2019 at 4:50 PM, 5thwingmarty said:

I believe this photo includes a young Hap Arnold as well. He looks a great deal like the man shown earlier identified as a young Hap Arnold. I have no idea who else is in the photo or where it was taken. It is in an album from another WWI pilot I just picked up.

 

post-96854-0-77652700-1560210534_thumb.jpg

 

 

 

I believe the RADM is William A. Moffett.  In July 1921, Moffett was promoted to Rear Admiral and became the first Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, qualifying as a Naval Aviation Observer a year later.  He held that billet until his death in the crash of the airship USS Akron (ZRS-4) on April 4, 1933 off the NJ coast in a storm, killing 73 out of 76 aboard. NAS Moffett Field, at Sunnyvale, CA in Santa Clara County, where sister-ship USS Macon (ZRS-5) was based from 1933 until her crash two years later in the Pacific Ocean off Point Sur, CA on February 12, 1935,  was named for him.  Macon first flew on April 21, 1933, less than 3 weeks after the crash of Akron and Moffett's death. Lessons learned from the Akron disaster, notably inflatable life rafts and life vests for all Macon's crew, plus unusually warm water conditions for the winter, contributed to all but two of Macon's 83 men aboard surviving.

 

moffett.jpg

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  • 4 months later...
rathbonemuseum.com

From Air Heraldry, Jan 1, 1944 by Carl Mann. I feel like the information written in this thread specifically and on the section in general updates a lot of what was written in 1944. Mr. Mann documents the original order that authorized the 14 awards to be made with only two authorized to be issued, and that the order was enlarged to 25, thinking this would be sufficient for years to come. 

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rathbonemuseum.com

Another neat piece from the Don Chalif files, and probably from Duncan Campbell's files, is the original Rock Island arsenal blueprint for the Military Aviator badge (along with other badges). As noted, the original blueprint dates from 16 November 1915, demonstrating that the process of approving, designing, manufacturing, authorizing and awarding these badges took years. 

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  • 10 months later...
aerialbridge

First photo is Lieutenant Theodore  G. Ellyson,  US Naval Aviator #1,  with Captain Washington Irving Chambers, USN (1856-1934) (First Officer in Charge, Naval Aviation), who was  the "Father of US Naval Aviation" as a passenger in a Curtiss Navy trial of the A-2 at Hammondsport, New York, in September 1911.   Wm. Moffett (1869-1933) was not the Father of Naval Aviation.  U.S. Naval Aviation was born 8 May 1911, with a purchase request made by Captain Washington Chambers for the Navy's first aircraft.  Chambers also organized the first aircraft take off (1/18/1911) and landings (11/14/1910) from a US Navy ship with civilian aviator Eugene Ely, designed the first catapult system to launch an aircraft from a ship, set up the first naval aviator training (at North Island, San Diego) and established the first naval air station at Pensacola, FL.

 

Second photo is the First Navy seaplane built by Glenn Curtiss, June 1911. Left to right: unidentified Curtiss mechanic, Dr. A.F. Zahm, Lieutenant Junior Grade J.W. McClaskay USMC ret., Mr. Witmer Curtiss pilot, Glenn H. Curtiss, Captain Washington I. Chambers  "Father of (US) Naval Aviation", Lieutenant John H. Towers (Naval Aviator #3), Lieutenant Theodore G. Ellyson (Naval Aviator #1), and Mr. Pickens of Curtiss Exhibition Company.at Hammondsport, NY,  on 1 July 1911.          Photos from the vast paper and photo collection of Capt W.I. Chambers, USN donated to the Navy by his only son,  Capt.  Irving Reynolds Chambers, USN (1893-1979).

 

https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1986/april-supplement/first-year

 

 

NH 1386.jpg

NH 52829.jpg

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