 Francis S. Gabreski Airport (formerly Suffolk County AFB) in Westhampton Beach, New York, is home to the Air National Guard's 102nd Rescue Squadron (RQS), part of the 106th Rescue Group (RQG). The squadron traces its roots as far back as 1910; however it was officially formed on 15 November 1915 as an unnumbered aviation detachment of the 1st Battalion Signal Corps, New York National Guard. A short time later, the detachment was renamed the First Aero Company. Under the command of Capt Raynal Bolling, flight training began with Curtis's JN-4 "Jennies" at the Mineola Aviation Field on Long Island. More...
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. 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 Regiment’s Armory. Admittedly, some of the interest of the latter stemmed from the thought that an off-Broadway balloon ascension might stimulate recruiting. More...
The First Aero Company, National Guard of New York, which is the first militia military aviation squadron to be organized in the United States, was mustered into Federal service at the Garden City Aerodrome yesterday afternoon. The company was lined up in four sections, each in charge of an officer, and each section standing at attention in front of an aeroplane. More...
National Guard aviation emerged early in the twentieth century during a period of enormous organizational and technological ferment within the American military establishment. Reformers were bent upon transforming it from what amounted to a small,constabulary focused on such tasks as policing the Indians and developing the nation's infrastructure to a modern force whose primary role was to engage in combat against other major industrial powers. It was also beginning the difficult task of determining how to incorporate such startling new developments as radios, automobiles and trucks, machine guns, and aircraft into its doctrines and operations. More... |
