Guardsmen Look Skyward

The great debate on military aeronautics did not begin the December day, 1903, that the Wright brothers' first successful plane lifted from the beach at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Nor did it take place when Professor Langley attempted the first flight on the Potomac River a few weeks earlier. Each of these historic days did not impact the First Aero Company as much as a cool spring day in April, 1908.

First Company, Signal Corps, National Guard of New York, took its first lesson in practical balloon operations Thursday night, April 30, 1908, at the Seventy-first Regiment Armory. The one hundred men of the company constituted the class, and Augustus Post, secretary of the Aero Club of America, and Lieutanant Frank P. Lahm, U.S.A, were the instructors.

The lesson was the official beginning of the plan to make aeronautics a part of the study and work of the signal corps. An aeronautic corps of twenty-five men, commanded by Major Oscar Erlandean, has been organized.  Ascensions are to be made as soon as the work is far enough advanced and arrangements are made for equipment. Balloon construction also is to be taken up. More in this newspaper clip, below:

NEW YORK HERALD, FRIDAY, 1 MAY 1908

GUARDSMEN BEGIN BALLOON LESSONS
Initial Tuition in Aeronautics Received by First Company, Signal Corps, in Armory First Company, Signal Corps, National Guard of New York, took its first lesson in practical balloon operations last night at the Seventy-first Regiment Armory. The one hundred men of the company constituted the class, and Augustus Post, secretary of the Aero Club of America, and Lieutanant Frank P. Lahm, U.S.A, were the instructors.

The lesson was the official beginning of the plan to make aeronautics a part of the study and work of the signal corps. An aeronautic corps of twenty-five men, commanded by Major Oscar Erlandean, has been organized.  Ascensions are to be made as soon as the work is far enough advanced and arrangements are made for equipment. Balloon construction also is to be taken up.

For purposes of demonstration there was provided a model balloon, belonging to Albert C. Triaca, director of the American School of Aeronautics. It was equipped with all the attachments used in actual ascension work.  Mr. Post pointed out that the French have led in aeronautics since the end of the seventeenth century, when two paper bag manufacturers filled a bag with smoke and watched it rise to the ceiling.

“When it was proposed for the purpose of further experiment,” said Mr. Post, “that two criminals condemned to death be made to go up in one of the earliest balloons, a distinguished Frenchman insisted that the honors of France be not allowed to go to criminals and he made the ascension himself.”

Every item in the equipment of a balloon and its particular function was fully explained.  The different classes of aerial navigation devices were shown by means of moving pictures, among them vies of the preparations for and start of the balloon race from St. Louis for the international cup for aeronauts. Moving pictures of recent flights made by Farman in France were received with applause.

Lieutenant Lahm instructed the class in the preparation of a balloon of 35,000 cubic feet capacity, owned by A. Leo Stevens.  Other meetings for instruction will be held.

Among the aeronauts present were Alan W. Hawley, who piloted the American balloon from St. Louis, and Lieutenant T. D. Selfridge, U.S.A

Those flights were measured in feet and seconds. It was not until 1908, when the longer flights of the perfected planes and engines, in America by Orville Wright and in France by Wilbur Wright, startled a long-doubting World. Meanwhile, a well-educated young Italian, age 20, and burning with enthusiasm for anything that might get off the ground, arrived in New York from Turin. For convenience he changed his name from Mario Terenzio Enrico Casalegno to Henry Woodhouse, and began grinding out articles on aeronautics. He and his writings were massively ignored by all except a few members of an embryonic association that styled itself the Aero Club of America, and a few New York City National Guardsmen who were habitués of the 71st New York Regimental Armory. Admittedly, some of the interest of the latter stemmed from the thought that an off-Broadway balloon ascension might stimulate recruiting.

But from all motives there was interest enough for the Aero Club members to get through the door and feel at home. Some Aero Club men became Guardsmen, particularly after May 1, 1908. That was the day the 1st Signal Company, New York National Guard, began receiving instruction, with a 35,000-cubic-foot balloon owned by A. Leo Stevens 35,000 cubic-ft balloon. "The lesson was the official beginning of the plan to make aeronautics a part of the study and work of the signal corps" of the National Guard of New York, according to the New York Herald of that date. To that end an aeronautic unit of 25 men, commanded by Major Oscar Erlandson, had been organized as an integral part of the States Signal Corps. There was a growing and sustained interest. Hudson Maxim and a professor from Columbia University were among their instructors in 1911. Under modern bureaucratic centralization, with its outflow of directives and supervision, such initiative would be impossible.

Heavier-than-air craft soon captured their imagination. The 1st Signal Company financed, to the extent of $500, a do-it-yourself, home-constructed airplane. It was with the Company at the Pine Camp [now Fort Drum], summer of 1910, through the field instruction period. A copy of an early Farman type, it was built by Private Phillip W. Wilcox, an engineering student at Columbia University. For reason of weather or facilities, it was not flown at Pine Camp. Wilcox later crashed it at Mineola and walked away from the debris to achieve the rank of Major in the burgeoning Air Corps of World War I.

Notwithstanding this initial reverse with an airplane, by August 1912, the unit definitely was flying missions in training maneuvers. But most missions were by a Curtiss-owned plane accompanied by a well-known early bird test pilot then carried on the Guard roster and so reported in the Press as being Private Beckwith Havens.

In that summer, the National Guard units of New England and New York concentrated on opposite sides of the lower stretches of the Housatonic River for a brief was between the Blues, West and defending, against the Reds, for the East and invading. The Regular Army participated and there was wide interest in the maneuvers. Most attention was attracted by a Lieutenant Benjamin D. Foulis, U.S. Army. The reporter misspelled his name, but since he was still some years short of two stars and Chief of the Air Corps, it is not likely that the editor made an issue of it. Foulois's claim to fame through those maneuvers was a forenoon flight in which he rose to an altitude of no less than 3,080 feet, flew "all the way to Bridgeport," located every hostile troop camp or concentration, and was back on the ground within an hour and 15 minutes. Even so, Private Haven's flying stunts were what most Guardsmen present remembered longest.

After 1912, the New York Guard began clamoring for planes, but the Army would give it nothing. Hat in hand, the Guardsmen went back to their old friends in the Aero Club. By this time, Henry Woodhouse was flourishing as editor of Aircraft and founder and publisher of Flying and Aerial Age. Through him they found vast sympathy, much publicity and some money. Forward-looking men were deciding that the airplane had come to stay.

Among them was Guardsman Raynal Cawthorne Bolling, a native of Arkansas with a law degree from Harvard, who, at the age of 35, was doing quite well in the Big City. He was the General Solicitor for the U.S. Steel Co., and a Director and President of lessor corporations. At Pine Camp summer training he flew missions that convinced General O'Ryan that New York's Division (later the 27th) merited a separate Aeronautics unit. It was activated as the 1st Aero Company, National Guard, New York, November 1, 1915.