 1917. An uneasy neutrality is shattered. Unprepared, but grimly determined, the nation mobilizes to help win World War I. It is a war that has already raged across Europe for three brutal years. Trench by trench, crater by crater. A conflict in which the Allies and the Central Powers unleash every weapon in their growing arsenals. By the time the United States enters the war, a new weapon has established itself over the western front. This is the first major war where soldiers can look down on the battlefield, where combatants can use the air to carry war to the enemy. It is a weapon to be reckoned with, not only over the battlefields, but over the sea, where the airplane has already demonstrated its value in naval operations. Thus, as the United States Navy goes to war, its new air arm must be mobilized to support allied operations. New planes and equipment must be developed. Men must be trained to service a growing number of aviation units and fly the new Navy planes. Naval aviation must be prepared for the first test of war. The Navy enters the war with 54 planes. Most of them unfit for combat. Yet these planes must be flown. Blown by men like C. E. Sugden, a Coast Guard. I'll never forget one of the first flights I took out of Montauk. With the war off the throne, I flew to Martha's Vineyard on a search for submarine. I had no bombs, which to attack them, if I saw them, but I didn't see any anyway. Returning from Martha's Vineyard, and being rather careless, a fog came in below the ship. And the first thing I knew, there was no land in sight and I didn't know where I was. War off the throne said he didn't know where he was either. So I put the ship down on the ocean, figured that perhaps the vessel would come along and I could see her and go over and get directions as to where we were and how to get home. Fortunately, and it's rather peculiar, a ship did show up, flew over to her, waved her down, they sent over a boat, and I went to the ship. Found she was a Belgian tramp. She gave us our position at 65 miles from Montauk, 125 miles from the entrance to New York, Harvard. He had no gasoline, but he did lend me a boat compass. Though, as we sounded our tanks, we had enough gas, one hour's gas. So, Ron took the compass on his left and just circulated right, her left, to keep us on course, and we hit Montauk's mic on the nose. And when it landed and went up to the runway, everybody came down, all excited in exercise, wanted to know where I'd been all that time. And then they thought I was lost. They had sent a plane out to look for me, didn't find me, and then we were getting ready to send out two destroyers from the New York Navy Yards to look for me. And then they sounded the tanks and all that was left in it was smell, it wasn't a drop of gasoline in there. So, it was quite an experience and they never sensed of playing out again without a compass from that station. There was no compass in my plane, otherwise I would never have gotten lost. No compass, no bombs, and in the Atlantic the sinkings continue unabated. Aircraft are desperately needed to protect allied shipping. Industry mobilizes to produce planes for the Navy. But the demand for military aircraft is tremendous. So, the Navy establishes its own aircraft factory in Philadelphia to manufacture flying boats. Prominent in the design of these planes is Dr. Jerome C. Hunzacker. After the war had started in Europe, the British made rapid progress in flying boats for anti-submarine work and we benefited from a knowledge gained from their experience. And by the time we were in the war we were building at the Curtis Company, again Glenn Curtis's help, the H-16 and later the F-5 flying boats of which thousands were built in this country and shipped abroad as anti-submarine patrol craft. They were possible only because of the Liberty Engine. Two Liberty Engines gave the power plant that was needed for such a large flying boat with the heavy gasoline load needed to stay out on patrol for long periods of time so that our flying boats were doing anti-submarine patrol and we also used blimps for anti-submarine patrol, not only there but on the approaches to our own ports. And the Navy got into a lighter than air venture then in developing what later came to be called blimps. In that we had copied the French and the British to some extent who had started lighter than air work. The gas for inflating such ships was hydrogen, highly inflammable and dangerous but through the Bureau of Mines in this country it was found that some of the natural gas in Texas in the southwest had helium in it and by extracting the helium from the natural gas we could get helium to inflate our blimps and they would become non-inflammable. To employ the growing number of new aircraft in naval operations the Navy needs bases and men. Naval air stations are established on both coasts. Civilians throughout the nation join the Naval Reserve to become the fliers and ground crewmen so urgently needed to bring naval aviation to combat strait. Commanding an early reserve unit is E.O. McDonald. Early in 1917 Admiral Towers then Lieutenant Towers who is the assistant chief of the aviation division of the Navy in Washington offered me the job of taking charge of the training of the first Yale Naval Aviation Unit. I was very glad to accept and was promptly ordered over to West Palm Beach where the unit had assembled. For the most part these boys were juniors at Yale and I must say that I don't think anybody ever had charge of a finer more enthusiastic group. We trained at West Palm Beach and at that time we had mostly civilian mechanics. All the planes that were in use there had been furnished by private subscription members of the families and friends of the members of the unit. Later when we got to the unit was transferred to Huntington Long Island and about this time Navy planes, Navy personnel were furnished and gradually the operation took on more of a real Navy flavor. Throughout the instruction I attempted to teach these boys something about the Navy as well as flying. I gave them lectures and ordinance, gunnery, seamanship, navigation and so on. There was no doubt about the enthusiasm about flying however when it came to my lectures I found that there was not quite the same enthusiasm. I found out that there was a certain amount of competition among members to the seats behind the pillars in the room where I gave the lectures so they could take a nap while I was talking. They didn't know that I knew this but I was on to it all the time. Among the first Americans to sail for Europe after the outbreak of hostilities are naval aviators. Men like David Ingalls, a Yale undergraduate. After we were all qualified and received our certificates as naval aviators we were distributed to various parts. First three of our crowd were sent overseas. A number were then sent to different where they were starting different naval air bases in this country and then eight of us went over in one group to London. There we really had a good time because we had just been given or bought our new uniform. The forest green naval aviators' uniform and it had a shoulder strap with a star on it, an ensign of course, and the British and any other troops in London knew nothing about this uniform and they saw the star and we were saluted by practically everybody in London and of course we were all kids and we didn't mind being given a little acclaim as we walked down the streets of London and enjoyed ourselves. Soon they are arriving by the thousands, fighting men of the American expeditionary force bound for the front. To escort them into port, sea planes, blown from French bases by navy airmen of the first aeronautic detachment, the first American combat unit to arrive in France. One of its members is Joseph C. Cline. On a small lake outside Bordeaux, a place called Mouchic was being established by the Navy at that time, which was like as a pilot's pool. Our group was split up there. I was assigned to the U.S. Naval Air Station in La Croix-de-France, which at that time was operated by the French Navy. One of the riders there, Lieutenant Commander William Corey, the United States Navy, was in command. And our operations from that station consist of escorting the troops ships from the United States in the south of there, convoy. We flew the French Territory A.C. plane and the patrols were long and teachers were very artsy, but we got to be like an old milk rather than a gang that were there for anything to die. Our group consists of two marked four bombs, which were slung underneath the wings on either side of us, lost machine guns of Alice Lamb, and two carrier pigeons. Of course, we had radio, which was a God out system in those days, but sometimes it didn't work and I was suddenly sure we're not very good anyway. This went on for many, many months. We didn't see any submarine, but we understand that the month of operation from our commanding officer that the sinkings within our area were greatly reduced since taking over from the French Navy. We had been operating many months in the station on anti-submarine patrol. We were still lads with the quartermaster at $17.60 a month until one day, a surprise inspection came aboard consisting of Admiral Benson and Admiral Sins. In a hurry, we were lined up for inspection on our breast blues and coming down the line, Admiral Sins stopped in front of the one of my cadets, shipmates, next to me, who was wearing a French purvey. Admiral Sins said, young man, why is that you're wearing? No one else said that. That's a French purvey, sir. He said it is. What is it for when it's a signify? Well, he says, it's a designation by the French government. He says, that's so, what sort of a designation? What's for flying? He said, are you an aviator? Yes, sir. You're a pilot, not a mechanic? Yes, sir. You apply the patrols out of here, bring the crew ships in? Yes, sir. How long has this been going on? About 11 months now, sir. And he looked, he turned and looked to me and he said, is that your status, too? And I said, yes, sir. He said, Lieutenant Corey, why aren't these men commissioned? In two weeks, we took our examinations and became Benson. On constant patrols, American sea planes step up the fight against the submarine, but the vulnerable flying boat must be protected by other Navy pilots, men like A. A. Elliott. My job at Dunkirk was flying fighter cover to protect the under submarine patrol planes. One morning, on patrol, I was in formation of three honraeos at about 3,000 feet out of the patrol plane, about 500 feet. It was very hazy. Suddenly, I saw a submarine, they lost. And the first thing I noticed was that they were firing at the patrol plane and the bursts were coming in, coming to be close. In fact, they forced him to turn around. However, they hadn't seen the honraeos and we were in a bad with our machine guns open. And I believe that we shot some of the gun crew off the deck. As we were closing on the submarine, it started to submerge. And at that point, the patrol plane turned around and came back and dropped two death charges on the spot. We circled and about a minute, the submarine came up about first at an extreme angle and then sent back against turn first. We received official credit for submarine on this patrol. And now the war enters its fourth year, 1918. German submarines continue to patrol the Atlantic, but now the U-Vote has a new enemy, a deadly enemy. First with experience and new planes, naval aviation goes on the offensive. The target? German submarine vents, where the U-Vote can be attacked before it can threaten Allied shipping. To spearhead the attack, the Northern Bombing Group is formed, consisting of Navy and Marine Corps units flying with the Allies. Taking part in its operations is Francis Mulcahy, a marine aviator. The squadron I was in, 218 Royal Air Force, was equipped with DH-9 airplanes with a Sidley Puma engine of 260 horsepower. The mission of these planes initially to attack submarine pens in Belgium required considerable climbing because of the very accurate German anti-aircraft fire. The mission around trip from our base near Calais, two bruise and return would take about two hours and 45 minutes. The most of this time spent in climbing 15,000 feet. These airplanes had a pilot and a gunner observer. The observer seated immediately behind the pilot also operated a very crude bomb site. While the marine aviation operations initially involved bombing of the German submarine facilities in Belgium, with the ground offensive beginning in September 1918, and from then on, marine aviation was engaged in support of ground operations by bombing enemy supply points and railroad facilities. One day on a mission to bomb one of the railroad junctions behind the lines, our squadron was jumped by German fighters. The plane that we had, being on the flank of the squadron, got the brunt of the attack. I was certainly very glad to have with me that day as a gunner, an old marine gunnery sergeant named McCullough, who was a crack shot. According to squadron reports, he knocked down one of the German fighters and probably destroyed another. While these people were shooting into us, some Belgian fighters came down to help and between McCullough and the Belgians the Germans retired. Many of the Navy's pilots are especially assigned to fly with the Allies in the famous dogfights of World War I. First to become an ace is Dave Ingoats. Some of us were trained on large flying boats, but three of us were picked to fly fighters in a hope to be Navy squadron that might be formed at some later date, and it was hoped that we might be flight commanders. So we were trained on the British airplanes and sent to Gosport, Turnberry and Air, where we flew avros and camels. There I remember running into a lot of good Army pilots that were also training and were quite famous. Elliott Springs was there. Clayton Knight, who painted and gave me this painting of the camel airplane that I flew at the front, was there at that time and one of the pilots. The camel, I think probably, was more or less the same as all other fighters at that time, accepting that it was the slowest of the better fighters and without doubt the most maneuverable of the fighters that the Allies had. It, as I recall, landed perhaps 45 or 50 miles an hour with a top speed of about 120 miles. It was made by plane and had a lot of wires and things sticking out all over so that it couldn't go very fast. We had two machine guns mounted in front of us that flew, that shot through the propeller. They were synchronized with propeller and the machine guns were one of our greatest difficulty because either due to the timing mechanism or something, they would shoot only at the most seven or eight times before there would be a misfire and then the pilot would have to hit the handle of the loading apparatus and reload and then his gun would shoot again for five to seven times so that while you, it was a rather primitive kind of shooting but you did have a machine gun or two machine guns that would actually shoot. The instruments were about as primitive as possible. We had, as I recall, a compass and an airspeed indicator and an allometer and some of the normal engine instruments and that was about the limit of instrument flying. In that way it made it a lot simpler. You flew by the seat of your pants and you didn't have to worry about the modern method of flying on instruments. Flying in these planes was a good deal simpler in combat than the modern combat missions that the boys went on in the last wars because of course the plane was much slower and the guns shot slowly and there weren't many guns on each particular airplane and an actual fight was usually developed into a dog fight between two planes and one on each side in the number of different groups and they would fly around and round trying to get on the other man's tail and shoot him down. That was where the camel had to decide at advantage because it would turn inside of any airplane that I ever saw. It couldn't run away from a fight so that once you were actually involved you stayed until something happened one way or the other but at least you had an aircraft that would turn inside the other plane and give you a chance that I thought was better than simply speed which would enable you to dive safely away. Thus Navy pilots add a first memorable page to Naval aviation's combat record. Flying with the allies on all fronts and on the sea approaches to the United States and Europe and then November 11th 1918 the last shot is fired for the first time in four years the western front is silent. The great war has ended giving to the victory on land and victory at sea is aviation. For the Navy World War I has brought about the first test of this important new arc a harsh test that has greatly accelerated the development of aircraft and aviation equipment. The training of naval air personnel and has fostered a better understanding of the role aviation can play in combat operations. In its aircraft and its men the Navy has a potentially powerful weapon a weapon that must now be tempered for a harsher test of another world war.