III
“This order shall be and remain in full force and effect during the continuance of the present war and for six months after the termination thereof by the proclamation of the treaty of peace, or until theretofore amended, modified, or rescinded.
“Under this order Mr. John D. Ryan continued as Director of Aircraft Production and Maj. Gen. William L. Kenly became Director of Military Aeronautics.”
This division of responsibilities and functions gave a clearer conception of the unique duties of the Air Service in production of planes and training of pilots, and is significant, too, of the many tactical reasons which made it imperative for England and France to establish separate and independent air services.
The end of the fiscal year found this problem of higher organization one of the most important to be faced. An early defect discovered in the reorganization developed when there appeared to be inadequate liaison between the Bureau of Aircraft Production and the Division of Military Aeronautics. One was responsible for the production of planes, the other for their operation and military efficiency. The method of selecting a type to put into production and the final decision whether any plane produced was suitable for its military purposes or not, was undetermined. The situation of two sets of officials with equal authority in their respective fields of action, neither responsible to the other, at once demonstrated that neither could be held for the final production of an acceptable plane for the front. This was partially obviated by an agreement between the Division of Military Aeronautics and the Bureau of Aircraft Production that the types of plane to be put into production must first be mutually agreed upon, and that before a plane could be sent to the front it should be given a military test and accepted by the Division of Military Aeronautics. But considerable time was lost before this policy was definitely arranged, a policy which might easily have at once been established by a unified department.
The personnel side of the air service, including the selection, training, organization, and operation of the flying forces, developed within the fiscal year 1917-18 into an educational system on a scale infinitely larger and more diverse than anyone had anticipated. Teaching men to fly, to send messages by wireless, to operate machine guns in the air, to know artillery fire by its bursts, and to travel hundreds of miles by compass, teaching other men to read the enemy’s strategy from aerial photographs, and still others to repair instruments, ignition systems, propellers, aeroplane wings, and motors, has required a network of flying fields and schools, a large instructional force, and a maze of equipment and curricula.
None of this, practically speaking, was on hand at the outbreak of the war, neither fields, instructors, curricula, nor, more serious than all, experience to show what was to be needed. This country had never trained an aviator sufficiently to meet the demands of overseas aerial warfare and had not the slightest knowledge of the instruction necessary for radio, photography, or enlisted personnel. Consequently, the first men largely taught themselves before teaching others, and experience led on from one course to the next.
First, in the point of need, was that of flying fields. Two were in limited operation at the outbreak of war, San Diego and Mineola; three more were selected, cleared, equipped, and made ready for flying in six weeks’ time, and by the end of the year over a score were in operation all over the country. All were protected by a three-year lease with option to buy, if desired, at a fixed price. During the year also five supply depots, three concentration depots, three balloon camps, two repair depots, one experimental field, one radio laboratory, and one quarantine camp were built.
The selection of men for training as flyers was a complicated task, as the requirements were necessarily rigid. Volunteer examining boards of the highest medical skill were organized all over the country, 36 urban and 30 divisional boards, and a total of 38,777 men were examined to June 2, of whom nearly half, or 18,004, were disqualified. This naturally led to a high grade of personnel, and made the later training both more rapid and more efficient.
The first step in instruction was at one of the new “ground” schools opened on May 21 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cornell and Ohio State Universities and the Universities of Illinois, Texas, and California, with Princeton and the Georgia School of Technology added on July 5. Here, in eight weeks, under military discipline, the cadets were grounded in all the elements of aviation at a cost to the Government at first of $65 per pupil, and later $10 each for the first four weeks, and $5 weekly thereafter. By June 30, 1918, a total of 11,539 men were graduated to the flying fields and 3,129 were discharged for failure in studies, etc.