As it appeared in Flight Journal, October 1997

By Maj. William J. O’Dwyer, USAFR (ret)

At long last, we can trace the roots of when our military first sprouted flight feathers on its wings.

It took 85 years before the final piece of the overall puzzle fell into place and documented the birthplace of military aviation in the USA. It was 16 years ago this scribe and researcher discovered that a critical piece of evidence was even missing. It all comes to closure as we celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the United States Air Force. This has to be sheer poetry for USAF historians.  

The story starts with a pivotal historical question: which was the first nation to use aircraft in organized military maneuver “war games?”   A definitive answer may never be known, as various European countries experimented with aircraft either in combat or during maneuvers between 1911 and 1913. However, the first formal use of aircraft in conjunction with massive war game maneuvers in the U.S. and, quite probably, worldwide, in now known.

These games were reported in The New York Times, The Brooklyn Golden Eagle, The Bridgeport Evening Post, The Bridgeport Daily Standard and The Bridgeport Sunday Herald of August, 1912, to name but a few. They describe the derring-do of U.S. Army aviators in war games just north of New York City in the rural setting of the Connecticut countryside. But scholars rarely, if ever, accept newspaper accounts as documented history. This is easily understandable. Such accounts are frequently filled with errors, opinions and political spin. This does not imply such accounts cannot be given some evidentiary weight. They simply are not documents. Errors made in the public press can creep into history books and journals or magazines. These errors are frequently retold and sometimes further adulterate the original facts. They can next appear as popular folklore history. News coverage, however, serves as a reference point from which scholarly research can begin.

Research Begins Back in 1981, while at home recuperating from surgery, I had the time to browse microfilm files loaned to me by the public library in Bridgeport, Connecticut. My quest was to trace all coverage lent to aviation-oriented subjects by our local newspapers, prior to and following the dawn of powered flight. I wanted to research the period between 1894 and 1914 – the time frame in which manned winged flight became a reality. I was curious about how our local newspapers covered that evolution and how much space they lent to early air pioneers.   During my search in the microfilms that covered powered flight experiments around my area (prior to and after the events at Kitty Hawk, I stubbed my inquisitive toe on 10 days of front-page reports of 1912 U.S. Army military maneuvers in local newspapers. Broad coverage was also rendered by the prestigious New York Times. It was almost impossible to believe the headlines, yet the accompanying news photos may well be the first clear documentation of the first time an airplane was used in conjunction with military maneuvers in the entire world. And it took place right here in southwestern Connecticut! How could all the books covering military aviation history have failed to note this tremendously significant historic moment?   At that epoch-making moment, full-blown war maneuvers were held involving two divisions –20,000 soldiers.

The actual war game began with New Haven as the “Red headquarters.” Their division stretched northwest toward Newtown. The Blue [Army] Division (stationed in Bridgeport) was to fend off an assault by the Reds who were pressing to capture Danbury and cross into New York to capture the Croton Reservoir. The concept was to theoretically cripple the flow of water so New York City would be forced to surrender. The planes and their pilots were to fly and report enemy troop movements.  

In August 1912, the aviation section of the U.S. Army Signal Corps had only the nucleus of what would become the mighty Air Force we know today. In all, there were 12 airmen, consisting of pilots and observers. Some of these airmen went on to become famous generals. Some, unfortunately, were killed in the early days of the fledgling Air Force. Whatever their fate, they certainly made a mark, as observed in this national news service headline: “Bad Aero Mishap in Camp, Two Army Planes Smashed: President Taft is Coming.”   The reporter’s colorful prose described the miraculous survival of New York National Guard member “Pvt. Beckwith Havens” flying a [borrowed] Curtiss biplane. He dived toward the ground and struck a Burgess-Wright biplane while landing at the far end of a meadow. The Wright biplane was piloted by Lt. Benjamin D. Foulois (later to become the famed Gen. Ben D. Foulois of the late 1920s). All damage was reported as repairable. No injuries were suffered, but a crowd of locals was stunned nonetheless.   Lt. Foulois is credited in subsequent daily accounts for conducting “sensational” scouting missions of the Red Army movements. His flight began at the “Paradise Green” Blue Army airfield, in Stratford, Connecticut (farmland pasture alongside Paradise Green was turned in airfields).    

Included in these accounts were photos of his airplane being towed by a U.S. Army truck down Main Street in Stratford. And what of the news reported dated August 9, 1912? “Lt. Foulois, who arrived at the camp early this afternoon, recently made a new discover with flying a Wright machine. While flying at the rate of 45 miles an hour Wednesday night, Lt. Foulois was able to hear wireless messages from a station fifteen miles distant by means of an antennae consisting of three wires hanging from the rear of his machine and held straight down by several heavy weights.” Another significant first! Wireless to report back to camp what could be viewed from the air! A major electronic breakthrough. Villagers and the news reporters were all eyewitnesses to these pioneering events. The August 13, 1912, New York Times, in full-page coverage, with photos of general and troops, reports:  “Lt. Foulois, one of the army aviators, made a great flight this morning. He went into the air at 8:35, and did not come down until an hour later. In that time he circled over the entire war zone, and was able to locate every camp in both armies. Before ascending he fixed a little shelf to his Aeroplane, on which he tacked a map of the country. He marked each camp as he passed over it, and, returning to camp was able to give Gen. Bliss correct reports as to the position of every organization which figures in the Connecticut campaign for the possession of New York …. Secretary of War Stimson and Gen. Leonard Wood are expected to reach Bridgeport tomorrow, and they will remain…until the fate of New York is decided.”   New York Times, Stratford, Connecticut: “ From about two thousand feet he [Lt. Foulois] worked the wireless instrument attached to his biplane and sent back word of his progress to the operator at camp. He hung like a blur against the white clouds above [Lake] Zoar bridge, where Gen. Smith was sending his Red soldiers pell mell into the Blue territory.   “He saw a lively little fight between Col. Kirby’s Blues defending the bridge and the invaders – he chronicled the withdrawal of the Blues. Down by Derby, too, there was sharp fighting…”  

In addition to Lt. Foulois and Pvt. Beckwith Havens, one other pilot who would rise to international fame was Lt. H. H. “Hap” Arnold. He went on to command the USAAF in World War II. In 1912, he was loaned to the Red Army to fly in a Curtiss biplane. He was originally scheduled to arrive in a Curtiss flying boat, which he picked up in Boston. En route to Connecticut, he had engine trouble and crash landed in the shallows at Plymouth Bay – breaking the pontoon and the prop. On a less glorious arrival in Bridgeport by train, he switched to the Curtiss land biplane. The text and photo coverage in the newspapers show that these maneuvers were witnessed by more than our nation’s generals, head of our War Department and U.S. President Taft. England sent its attaché, Maj. Morton A. Gage! The Mexican Army sent Maj. Jose Avalos and Russia sent in its military attaché, Col. DeBode. All three were present to witness not just the games, but, more important, to witness the first use of heavier-than-air aircraft as observation platforms.   The attaches took home huge lessons in the values of air reconnaissance. England apparently modeled its war games of 1913 on what Maj. Gage learned in August 1912 at Stratford’s Paradise Green flight headquarters.  

The Final Clue  

As a researcher/historian it was vital for me (even though I had documentation from these newspaper accounts) to find the type of document no scholar or museum could dispute. Hard evidence. We had “the gun,” we still desperately needed “the bullet.”   There was a clue. Newspaper reports described the “mapping of troop movements all along the fron lines by Lt. Foulois.” What happened to hose maps? That question had haunted me since. 1981. Foulois had personally marked them. It was the proverbial needle-in-a-haystack situation: did they even exist?   Inquiries were made at [the] Air Force Museum, Maxwell Air Force Base archived and the Army archives. None was productive. Because it was the first moment in the U.S. when airplanes were used in conjunction with mock wartime combat, I had hopes those maps would not have been destroyed. Surely, the general and the pilots were well aware they were writing history with each day’s flight and returned each map report to Gen. Bliss’ headquarters. It was my gut feeling Lt. Foulois would treasure and preserve them, even if any general or the War Department did not. Years flew by, and it was always a dead-end search.

Then a stroke of luck came my way in February 1997.

The Final Piece Falls into Place

In the “Early Military Aviation” room, I ran into retired Lt. Col. George A. Larson. He was seeking anyone who might help him gather information covering aerial reconnaissance history. We exchanged e-mails to fill in each other with our backgrounds and interests. His portfolio was just what the doctor ordered. Col. Larson had briefed two U.S. Presidents at the Pentagon. He was a tenacious researcher. He agreed to retrace my prior trails at various government archives to see what might still exist. Locating the maps, if they existed at all, would give us a documentary, not just another speculative article. Lt. Col. Larson succeeded! Three of the August 1912 maps were at the National Archives! They hadn’t been disturbed since they were last folded and filed, inexplicably in an obscure file in 1921! (Lt. Col. Larson also located the August 1912 war-games coverage by The Brooklyn Golden Eagle in very brittle, unopened microfilms at Ellsworth AFB library.) The writing of books about our military air history did not begin until the late 1920s! We had not only located the all-important document evidence (maps) that would corroborate the newspaper accounts, but we could also now place those historic records in their proper perspective. It was proof of those historic records in observations in conjunction with ground maneuvers in the U.S. – the “Big Bang” moment when our USAF began!   But the quest begun in 1981 is yet to be completed. Somewhere, we have to believe, are the logged wireless messages Lt. Foulois sent back while participating in those 1912 war games. Although there are a total of 10 days of newspaper coverage of the games – from August 8 through August 18, 1912 – those we located cannot be the only accounts filed. Of this we feel fairly certain. The extent to which it was covered in other newspapers in Connecticut, around the USA, Europe and Mexico will only be known when this baton has been picked up by others than this scribe. Our work has been to furnish the tools which the next century’s historians can use for further scholarly studies.

Louis H. Corbit – photographer

The alert Bridgeport Evt’s editor was bening Posut four miles distant from the biplanes at Paradise Green when the Wright-Burgess biplane was hauled by the Signal Corps truck down Main Street in Stratford, Connecticut. He wisely hired the professional photo services of Louis H. Corbit. Corbit’s studio darkroom produced the major turn-of-the-century photo coverage of prominent Bridgeport industrial and social growth. Thanks to his special assignment, we can now see those historic pilots and their flying machines.   Most of Corbit’s photos were lost in a fire that destroyed his studio in the early 1950s. The accompanying photos are from the sole photo album surviving the fire. They lend the genuine evidence to what was being reported by all the newspapers.