The first eagles : the Fearless American aces who flew with the RAF in World War I

276 Pages·2014·23.14 MB·English

by  Mortimer

THE FIRST EAGLES
THE FEARLESS AMERICAN ACES WHO FLEW
WITH THE RAF IN WORLD WAR I
GAVIN MORTIMER
CONTENTS
The Flyers
Introduction: A Useless Fad
Chapter 1 I’m Going to Tell Them I Raised Hell
Chapter 2 The Suicide Club
Chapter 3 The King and the Cowboy
Chapter 4 Aren’t We Ever Going to Fly?
Chapter 5 The Cream of the Cadets
Chapter 6 The Red Baron’s Last Fight
Chapter 7 Love and War
Chapter 8 Dogfighting Days
Chapter 9 Am I to Blame?
Chapter 10 From Toronto to the Trocadero
Chapter 11 Chills Down My Spine
Chapter 12 Why Are You Crying, Sir?
Chapter 13 I Am an Old Man
Chapter 14 Low-Level Terror
Chapter 15 The 17th Aero Squadron
Chapter 16 Nerves Worn to a Frazzle
Chapter 17 Killed Doing Noble Duty
Chapter 18 Peace on the Horizon
Chapter 19 There I Lived a Life
Chapter 20 Homecoming
Epilogue: All You Had to Do Was Fly the Plane
Appendix I The Fate of the Few
Appendix II The Planes
Bibliography
Index
But ye who fearless flew to meet the foe,
Eagles of freedom,—nevermore, we know,
Shall we behold you floating far away.
Yet clouds and birds and every starry ray
Will draw our hearts to where your spirits glow
In the blue heaven.
—“In the Blue Heaven,” Henry van Dyke, 1919
The Flyers
Name Alvin Callender
Date and Place of Birth 1893, New Orleans, Louisiana.
Training and Shipment Trained in Canada and shipped out to England February 1918.
Service 32 Squadron RAF
Name Laurence Callahan
Date and Place of Birth 1895, Louisville, Kentucky.
Training and Shipment Trained USA and shipped out to England on SS Carmania,
September 1917.
Service 85 Squadron RAF and 148th Aero
Name Frank Dixon
Date and Place of Birth 1896, California.
Training and Shipment Trained USA and shipped out to England on SS Carmania,
September 1917.
Service 209 Squadron RAF and 17th Aero
Name John Donaldson
Date and Place of Birth 1897, Fort Yates, North Dakota.
Training and Shipment Trained in Canada and shipped out to England May 1918.
Service 32 Squadron RAF
Name John McGavock Grider
Date and Place of Birth 1892, Sans Souci, Arkansas.
Training and Shipment Trained USA and shipped out to England on SS Carmania,
September 1917.
Service 85 Squadron RAF
Name Frank Hale
Date and Place of Birth 1895, Syracuse, New York.
Training and Shipment Trained in Canada and shipped out to England May 1918.
32 Squadron RAF
Service 32 Squadron RAF
Name Lloyd Hamilton
Date and Place of Birth 1894, Troy, New York.
Training and Shipment Trained USA and shipped out to England on SS Carmania,
September 1917.
Service 3 Squadron RAF and 17th Aero
Name Reed Landis
Date and Place of Birth 1896, Ottawa, Illinois.
Training and Shipment Trained USA and shipped out to England on RMS Aurania,
August 1917.
Service 40 Squadron RAF and 25th Aero
Name Jens Larson
Date and Place of Birth 1891, Boston, Massachusetts.
Training and Shipment Enlisted in the RFC 1916 and trained in England.
Service 8, 34, and 84 Squadrons RAF
Name Oliver LeBoutillier
Date and Place of Birth 1895, Montclair, New Jersey.
Training and Shipment Trained in New York, shipped out from Canada fall 1916.
Service 209 Squadron RAF
Name Fred Libby
Date and Place of Birth 1892, Sterling, Colorado.
Training and Shipment Enlisted in the Canadian army 1914 and volunteered for the
RFC 1916.
Service 11, 22, and 25 Squadrons RFC
Name Bennett Oliver
Date and Place of Birth 1895, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Training and Shipment Trained USA and shipped out to England on RMS Aurania,
August 1917.
Service 84 Squadron RAF and 148th Aero
Name Donald Poler
Date and Place of Birth 1896, Medina, New York.
Training and Shipment Trained USA and shipped out to England on SS Carmania,
September 1917.
Service 40 Squadron RAF and 25th Pursuit
Name Orville Ralston
Date and Place of Birth 1894, Weeping Water, Nebraska.
Training and Shipment Trained in Canada and shipped out to England 1918.
Service 85 Squadron and 148th Aero
Name Bogart Rogers
Date and Place of Birth 1897, Los Angeles, California.
Training and Shipment Trained in Canada and shipped out to England February 1918.
Service 32 Squadron, RAF
Name Elliot White Springs
Date and Place of Birth 1896, Lancaster, South Carolina.
Training and Shipment Trained USA and shipped out to England on SS Carmania,
September 1917.
Service 85 Squadron and 148th Aero
Name Arthur Taber
Date and Place of Birth 1893, Long Island, New York.
Training and Shipment Trained USA and shipped out to England on SS Carmania,
September 1917.
Service Aviation Section, Signal Reserve Corps
Name George Vaughn
Date and Place of Birth 1897, Brooklyn, New York.
Training and Shipment Trained USA and shipped out to England on SS Carmania,
September 1917.
Service 84 Squadron RAF and 17th Aero

INTRODUCTION
A Useless Fad
On the penultimate day of December 1911, two young men greeted each other
warmly in the dining room of New York’s Plaza Hotel. They were debonair,
assured, their words and mannerisms those of men who had made their mark in
the world. With them was a reporter from the World newspaper.
One of the men, Walter Brookins, was American, a native of Ohio and the
first pilot to be trained by the Wright brothers. The previous year he had soared
to an unprecedented height of 4,380 feet. His dining companion was Claude
Grahame-White, a dashing Englishman with a touch of the dandy about him. He
was a celebrity as much as an aviator and, in 1910, had taken the United States
by storm winning the International Aviation Cup at New York’s Belmont Park
and also scooping a $10,000 first prize in a race from the park to the Statue of
Liberty and back.
Grahame-White was back in Manhattan visiting friends and the World wanted
to hear both his and Brookins’s views on the future of aviation. The conservative
American was of the opinion that this new mode of transport still had a long way
to go; his eyes nearly popped out of their head when the radical Englishman in
turn declared over his first course that he would “make a bet with anyone that in
twenty years’ time we will be flying across the Atlantic Ocean in fifteen hours.”
The discussion turned to military aviation, and again Brookins erred on the
side of caution. The German Zeppelin dirigible was, he said ominously, a most
“dreadful weapon” that could revolutionize warfare. Grahame-White snorted
dismissively. Why, the dirigible was obsolescent! No, the future was the
airplane, said Grahame-White, adding as he reached for his glass, “I have made
it a rule of late to avoid speaking about the uses of the airplane to avoid being
laughed at.” The reporter asked why people laughed at him. “People don’t
realize the importance of this branch of the military service,” replied the
Englishman. “It is enough to say that the airplane’s field in military and naval
work is unlimited.”