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The Original First US Military Aviators - Reference Thread


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Think so, although Ellington was an Annapolis graduate. He was transferred to the Army by an executive order of President Taft according to my information.

 

Paul S

 

Paul: With regard to Eric Ellington’s transfer to the Army in 1911 (post # 10), this might be useful. According to an online source, an Obit that appeared in the News and Observer, 1913, “President Taft issued an unusual executive order transferring him [Ellington] from the Navy to the Army, the first time on record an order like this had been issued.”

The Register of Alumni, 1845-1992, shows that Ellington resigned his commission on 7 November 1911, and makes no mention of an executive order transferring him to the Army.

In a NASA historical study, Ellington Field: A Brief History, (NASA/CR-1999-208921), February 1992, made by Eric Carlson, “In 1911, Ellington decided to transfer from the U.S. Navy to the U.S. Army. Some contemporary newspaper accounts claimed that Ellington suffered from chronic seasickness, which would easily explain his desire for a transfer. Though this is plausible, his official fitness reports from the U.S.S California always indicated "excellent" health, and never mentioned motion sickness. One local researcher, Rosie Ferrell, argued that Ellington’s interest in aeronautical science compelled him to switch to the U.S. Army. On November 11, 1911, Ellington was honorably discharged from the Navy and simultaneously accepted a commission into the U.S. Army. After his transfer, Ellington was assigned to the United States 3rd Cavalry at Fort Sam Houston. While at Fort Sam Houston he requested reassignment to the fledgling aeronautical service.”

In Chandler and Lahm’s, How Our Army Grew Wings, Ellington was assigned to aviation by Special Order 228, 27 September 1912, nearly a year after he transferred to the 3rd Cavalry.

An interesting physical feature that might or might not offer a clue as to Ellington’s motivation—he was 5 feet 3 inches tall and weighed 100 pounds when he entered the USNA at the age of 16. Apparently he gained some weight but no height during his time at Annapolis and later aboard the USS California. If the motive for his transfer was to get into Army aviation, then his size and light weight might have been a factor. But that raises a question as to why he didn’t apply for Naval Aviation. The Navy had an infant aviation program ongoing since March 1911 and at the time he resigned his Navy commission he was an ensign an eligible for consideration.

I hope this is useful. drmessimer

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... and later aboard the USS California. If the motive for his transfer was to get into Army aviation, then his size and light weight might have been a factor. But that raises a question as to why he didn’t apply for Naval Aviation. The Navy had an infant aviation program ongoing since March 1911 and at the time he resigned his Navy commission he was an ensign an eligible for consideration.

I don't know what was considered normal for time in grade before promotion in those days, but it would seem that 4-years as an ensign for a USNA graduate was a long time. It's reasonable to assume that his small size was a plus for a budding aviator in those early days.

 

As a lightly related aside, I collect certain souvenir pieces made in San Francisco during the 1890 - 1910 period. One of those pieces is pictured below and features the USS California that Lt. Ellington served aboard. I think it was a commemorative piece marking the 1907 commissioning of the California--perhaps a memento for some dignitaries as it was made by upscale Shreve & Co. The California served mostly as a coastal defense vessel and sailed up and down the West Coast until after it was renamed the USS San Diego (1914) and subsequently reassigned to the east coast. It was sunk by a suspected German U-boat in 1918 about 13 miles off the southern coast of Long Island, NY, and was the only USN warship sunk during WWI.

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  • 1 month later...

This is a picture taken in Hawaii on 4 July 1945. I have found little else about Hollis Muller online. In this picture he was a Colonel and CO of the Army Garrison Force in Hawaii.

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Forgive me if this question is off subject, but do you know anything about Francis Wildman? I came across some records of him online while researching a WWII Marine named Francis Wildman III. I don't know if he is a relative or not. I was just wondering because one article has him listed as a private in the Aero Corp. Another has him as being the first pilot on scene when Henery Post died after breaking the American Altitude record Feb 9,1914. I was just curious.

Levi

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  • 5 weeks later...
one article has him listed as a private in the Aero Corp. Another has him as being the first pilot on scene when Henery Post died after breaking the American Altitude record Feb 9,1914. I was just curious.

Levi

Mr. Wildman appears to have been an enlisted pilot assigned to the San Diego school who was flying during the same time period as the rated Military Aviators who are the subject of this thread. The enlisted aviators are a perfectly legitimate subject for study, but would not have been eligible for the award of the MA badge.

 

Keeping this thread and my study of the first 25 MA narrowly focused on them is a challenge. During the same time period there were also civilian aviators in training by Curtiss and a fairly substantial number of victims of air crashes, some of whom, if they had not been killed would almost certainly have qualified as military aviators. In fact, there were on the order of 49 Army officers assigned for aviation training during the early years, only 25 of whom completed all the requirements. A few of these others are pictured in some of the early group photos.

 

There were a lot more people involved in early aviation than these first 25; however, the 25 are the ones who can be seen as the official cornerstone for what became the modern USAF. ;)

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What a magnificent helpful thread here, thanks.

 

I completed pretty good thumbnail biographies for the AFTWS WW1 forum from public sources for Lahm, Milling and Chandler last week (plus a few other aviators not among that first 25, e.g. 1Lt Jack Morris Wright and others).

 

So, the list gives me a project guideline for rounding out essential participants one-by-one.

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Mr. Wildman appears to have been an enlisted pilot assigned to the San Diego school who was flying during the same time period as the rated Military Aviators who are the subject of this thread. The enlisted aviators are a perfectly legitimate subject for study, but would not have been eligible for the award of the MA badge.

 

Francis "Doc" Wildman was a curtiss company pilot who left Curtiss to become the chief instructor of "overwater flying" at the Army's aviation school at North Island. He was a civilian instructor. His Wright counterpart was Oscar Brindly from the Wright Company. drmessimer

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I've not found a photo yet for Col. Carleton G. Chandler (1896-1971)... still searching.

 

Bluehawk: I think you mean 2nd Lt. Carleton G. Chapman who trained to fly with Herbert Dargue and C. Perry Rich in the Philippines Chapman was a Wright pilot and qualified as a Military Aviator in July 1913. Here is a photo of Chapman taken at North Island in 1915. He was then a first lieutenant. drmessimer

 

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Bluehawk: I think you mean 2nd Lt. Carleton G. Chapman who trained to fly with Herbert Dargue and C. Perry Rich in the Philippines Chapman was a Wright pilot and qualified as a Military Aviator in July 1913. Here is a photo of Chapman taken at North Island in 1915. He was then a first lieutenant. drmessimer

 

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Yes, of course you are correct - and, thank you so much for that photo.

 

That day I had just completed a Remembrance for a Chandler... my mind ages, too stuffed :D

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Chapman is one of those really obscure early pilots who apparently left a light footprint behind after his early flying activities. I've found very little about him online or in some of the reference books. However, he was a member of the of the Early Birds which I take to indicate something of a long term interest in the subject of flying.

 

Here is a rework of that same picture which I believe is one from the Library of Congress collection. It shows his facial features more clearly.

 

Does anyone have any further information about his later life...and of another obscure, long-lived Early Bird, Joseph Carberry?

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Chapman is one of those really obscure early pilots who apparently left a light footprint behind after his early flying activities. I've found very little about him online or in some of the reference books. However, he was a member of the of the Early Birds which I take to indicate something of a long term interest in the subject of flying.

 

Here is a rework of that same picture which I believe is one from the Library of Congress collection. It shows his facial features more clearly.

 

Does anyone have any further information about his later life...and of another obscure, long-lived Early Bird, Joseph Carberry?

 

Joseph E. Carberry

Paul: You’re right that he left a very faint footprint. He was born in Wisconsin on 20 July 1887, graduated from the USMA class of 1910, and took his commission in the infantry. He was assigned to aviation on 15 March 1913, passed his FAI tests on 23 June 1913 and qualified as a Military Aviator on 25 September 1913. While at North Island he set several Army altitude records, but was otherwise not outstanding. He was with the 1st Aero Squadron on the Mexican Border in 1916 and received mention for that in Pershing’s WWI memoirs. During WWI he was in France as a member of Pershing’s staff, and as a captain he sat on a board that reviewed Mitchell’s paper on air policy and organization for the AEF. He spent most of the war in training, being for a time chief procurement of heavier than air training aircraft and later as director of Air Service instruction. By that time he was a lieutenant colonel. I couldn’t find anything on his postwar assignments, but according to the Register of Graduates, he retired on disability as a major on 25 October 1924. There is another Register entry that says he retired as a Lt. Col. In 1930 at the rank of Lt. Col. He apparently lived in Arcadia, CA at that time and died in Alhambra CA on 12 November 1961. Dwight (drmessimer)

 

Here's a photo of Goodier, Carberry and Talliaferro

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Dwight, in looking a bit closer at Arcadia for clues as to why Carberry might have settled there, I found some interesting bits of information. Nothing mentions Carberry by name, but Ross Field, a balloon school, was established there in 1918-19, and there is a picture of Pershing visiting the school in 1920 on an inspection tour. Since Carberry was on Pershing's staff and charged with establishing air fields during WWI, it isn't much of a leap to think that he would have had something to do with this installation.

 

Arcadia, about 15-miles NNE of Los Angeles, was rural at the time with a population on the order of a very few thousand and just starting to develop from chicken ranches to home-sites. Carberry's obit mentions that he had lived in CA since 1933. The current version of the Santa Anita Race Track opened in 1934-35, so for Carberry, then 46, the area may have been both appealing as a place to live and as a place of some opportunity for a middle age man.

 

Question: What was the nature of his disability that caused his retirement in 1924, at age 37, and what was he doing & where, the years 1924-1933?

 

Also, Carberry may not have had anything to do with it, but the largest real estate transaction in Arcadia's history took place either 1933 or 1936 which arranged a transfer of Ross Field to Los Angeles County and was brokered by Congressman John H. Hoeppel, a former Army Sgt. who had served at Ross Field and in WWI France. Douglas MacArthur was involved in accepting the land. The motive for the transfer was to free the land and surrounds for development. It would be difficult to exclude Carberry from having had some part in all this. However, I haven't found his name attached to any of these people or sites yet.

 

If we can discover something more about his late life in the 1940-1960 period, we might be better able to fill in the blanks. I did see a mention in a 1956 Early Bird newsletter that he was unable to attend a meeting which coupled with the mention of a long-term illness in his obit might point to a long period of his inability to do too much near the end of his life.

 

I hadn't seen the picture you posted of Carberry, Goodier, and Talliferro before; however, I do have another picture of the 3 of them standing together with an unidentified fourth man that was taken about the same time. As you know, Goodier taught both Carberry and Talliferro to fly and the three of them were principal participants in the Goodier trial. It seems clear to me that they were good friends.

 

Sometimes the obscure guys can surprise you. I dug in to Talliaferro's story in some depth a few months ago and discovered that just before his fatal crash into San Diego harbor, he had married (I think) a daughter of the San Diego mayor. Another one, Dodd, if I recall correctly, had married a girl with social connections that led to a Fifth Avenue wedding venue just a short time before he crashed. As you know, for some of these guys, life was short and sweet, as they say.

 

Paul

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Dwight, in looking a bit closer at Arcadia for clues as to why Carberry might have settled there, I found some interesting bits of information. Nothing mentions Carberry by name, but Ross Field, a balloon school, was established there in 1918-19, and there is a picture of Pershing visiting the school in 1920 on an inspection tour. Since Carberry was on Pershing's staff and charged with establishing air fields during WWI, it isn't much of a leap to think that he would have had something to do with this installation.

 

Question: What was the nature of his disability that caused his retirement in 1924, at age 37, and what was he doing & where, the years 1924-1933?

 

As you know, Goodier taught both Carberry and Talliferro to fly and the three of them were principal participants in the Goodier trial. It seems clear to me that they were good friends.

 

Paul: I have the same question; what disability caused Carberry retire in 1924 and what did he do after he retired? The double retirement entry in the Register might mean that the Army called him back for some specific purpose, much like the retreads, such as Kirtland and Goodier, in early WWII. In any event, NARA probably has the missing information in the Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, RG 94. Another possible source, and probably easier to obtain, is to contact the National Air and Space Archives (NASM) and ask them if you can obtain a copy of Carberry’s file, which is found in the Records of the Early Birds of Aviation, Inc., Box 29, Folder No. 1. You might also ask them to check the Early Birds’ house organ, Chirp, for a biography of Carberry.

 

I don’t think Carberry had anything to do with establishing the balloon school at Arcadia. He was at Mineola in 1916 and in 1917 he was in France, during the time that the Government acquired the Arcadia property. Carberry’s association with newly acquired airfields took place in France while he was on Pershing’s staff. Your speculation on Carberry’s possible involvement with various real estate deals in Arcadia is a possibility, but something of a long-shot at this point.

 

With regard to the Goodier Trial, 18 October-18 November 1915, Goodier, Jr. played a small part, and though the conspirators felt Carberry was in their camp, he took no part in the conspiracy and wasn’t called to testify during the trial. Talliaferro, who was one of the conspirators, was directly involved in the events that led to the trial, and, with Dodd, signed the charges against Cowan. But he was killed on 11 October 1915, one week before the trial started.

 

In a previous post I described Carberry as “not outstanding” while he was at North Island. That’s not accurate and I shouldn’t have used that phrase. He was low-key and avoided the ongoing politics that led to the Goodier Trial, but he was an accomplished pilot. He and Fred Seydel won the 1913 MacKay Trophy. Dwight (drmessimer)

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In regards to Carberry, I happen to know the collector who has much of his original Aviation related paperwork--and maybe even some of his other stuff. I have seen photocopies of much of this and used to have it saved on my computer but have since misplaced it as I have changed machines over time.

 

It is well cared for, I know that much.

 

Patrick

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I cannot understand why there is so little online about Lewis E. Goodler.

 

Can anyone suggest or advise where to look?

 

Of all the WW1 aviators I have searched for, Goodler has nothing readily available.

 

Very unusual.

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I cannot understand why there is so little online about Lewis E. Goodler.

 

Can anyone suggest or advise where to look?

 

Finding anything about Goodier's later life is difficult even though he lived until 1961. His home was in Santa Barbara and while there in the late 1950's he recorded several hours of tapes in response to a request that had been made of him. Those recordings can be found in the AFHRA site along with a sizable picture collection.

 

Paul

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Finding anything about Goodier's later life is difficult even though he lived until 1961. His home was in Santa Barbara and while there in the late 1950's he recorded several hours of tapes in response to a request that had been made of him. Those recordings can be found in the AFHRA site along with a sizable picture collection.

 

Paul

Thanks Paul... I'll do some checking on AFHRA.

 

It really was surprising that nothing was available in a normal search, as was the case with every one of these first 25 that I've looked for thusfar (now up through Lt Kelly).

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Does anyone know the location of Col. Kirtland's burial?

 

He passed away at Moffett Field, CA 2 May 1941.

Col. Kirtland is interred at Fort Rosecrans in San Diego.

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