The Army got into aviation first: The Aeronautical Division of the Signal Corps was set up 1 August 1907; its first plane was acquired from the Wright Brothers in 1909. The Navy constructed a platform on the cruiser Birmingham from which a civilian pilot flew 14 November 1910; the Navy's first three planes were delivered in July 1911.

It was in 1911 that the first Marine tried to fly. Alfred Austell Cunningham (born Atlanta, 8 March 1882) had served at age 16 as a corporal in the 2d and 3d Georgia Infantry Volunteers during the Spanish-American War. Returning from Cuba, he went to school, then into the real estate business. Ten years after he had been mustered out of the Army he applied for and received a commission in the Marine Corps. At the Marine Officers' School, at Port Royal, S.C., he stood fourth in a class of 55.

In 1911 Lt Cunningham was stationed at the Marine Barracks, Philadelphia. He had been obsessed with the idea of flying ever since he went up in a balloon in 1903, the year the Wrights first flew. In Philadelphia he squandered $25 of his $166.67 monthly pay to rent a contraption from a civilian aviator who had never been able to get it to fly. With some difficulty Cunningham talked the commandant of the Philadelphia Navy Yard into letting him test the "plane" on the half-mile field inside the yard.

Despite Cunningham's strenuous efforts, the machine never flew, not even after he built a ramp at the end of the field to bounce it into the air. His enthusiasm for aviation was dimmed not a whit, however, and he joined the pioneering Aero Club of Philadelphia. Cunningham's enthusiasm was rewarded with orders to the Navy's new aviation camp at Annapolis. He reported for duty 22 May 1912, which date may fairly be considered the birth of Marine Corps aviation.

Naval aviation had by this time made some progress: a year and a half earlier Eugene Ely had flown on and off platforms built on the decks of warships. Lt John Rodgers USN flew from Annapolis to Washington and back, by way of Baltimore and Havre de Grace; on 11 October 1911 Lt John H. Towers USN and Lt T. G. (Spuds) Ellyson USN, in Glenn Curtiss's first "convertible landplane-seaplane," had flown from Annapolis to Smith's Point, Va., 79 miles, in 85 minutes, though they had to make two landings for repairs and finished with four burnt-out bearings; Towers had even made night landings on the Severn River in Wright's first hydroaeroplane.

Congress gave the Navy $10,000 for aviation in its second year and authorized a total of $55,000 more from amounts originally appropriated for other purposes. The skeptical admirals did not divert all the money, however. In the same year $100,000 was appropriated for Army aviation.1

Cunningham was ordered from Annapolis for flight training at the Burgess plant at Marblehead, Mass., and soloed 1 August 1912 after 2 hours and 40 minutes of instruction. He was made a member of the Chambers Board along with six naval officers, assuring the Marines of a representative in naval aviation almost from the beginning. A year later he asked to be detached from flying duty because his fiancee declined to marry a flyer; he was detached and married, but in 1915 he returned to flying duty.

Lt Bernard L. Smith, of Richmond, Va., was ordered to the Annapolis camp on aviation duty 12 September 1912. He became naval aviator No. 6 and Marine aviator No. 22 (The first enlisted man was Sgt James Maguire.). In January 1914, Smith was assigned to Guantanamo, Cuba, for maneuvers, where he and the third Marine flyer, Lt W. M. McIlvain-Smith in one of the Navy's two flying boats, McIlvain in a Curtiss amphibian"gathered valuable data on spotting possibilities and on the ease with which a force attempting to land in small boats might be bombed from the air." On the same exercises Lt S. W. Bogan, an observer (non-aviator), suggested camouflaging mines after the waters in which they were to be laid had been reconnoitered from the air.

In 1914 B. L. Smith was sent to Paris as assistant naval attache. His superior reported that he considered "Captain Smith had as much knowledge of the theory and practice of aviation as any officer in the world." When war broke out in 1917 he returned to the U.S. for duty with Naval Operations, then established the Navy's school for aerial gunnery and bomb dropping at Miami before leaving again for Paris. In 1919 he helped build the NCs which flew the Atlantic, but the Navy kept him from making the flight. He resigned from the Marine Corps in 1920 but returned to service as a lieutenant commander in the Naval Reserve in 1931 (at which time the Marine Corps was accepting no reserve officers). In 1937 B. L. Smith returned to the Marine Corps. In World War II as a lieutenant colonel he set up the Marine Corps barrage balloon program, and later served as naval attache in Central America. He was killed in an automobile accident at Coral Gables, Fla., 2 December 1946.

It was just prior to Smith's service in Cuba that the first designation of Marine aviation as a separate unit from naval aviation was made. Curiously, the name of the sender does not appear on this ancient document:

Although this memorandum indicates that the separation of naval and Marine aviation was in the back of someone's mind-and the Commandant's report for 1912 mentions possible benefits which trained aviators might bring to the Advance Base Force-the Marine aviators were in fact only Navy aviators in a different uniform.

But the Marine uniform, then as now, provided the impetus for stirring deeds, and naval aviation's early development owed much to its Marine members. Perhaps the most daring feat by any naval aviator in the days when every flight was a deed of valor was performed by Capt Francis T. Evans, the fourth Marine flyer (and 26th naval aviator). At Pensacola on 13 February 1917. defying the experts who believed it was probably impossible to loop a seaplane, Evans looped an N-9 (floatplane Jenny) from 3,000 feet, not once but twice. Then he forced it into a spin and pulled it out safely-the experts also had serious doubts that a seaplane could be brought out of a spin. For this contribution to the science of aviation and the security of flight, Evans was finally awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross on 10 June 1936 (nine years after the decoration was created).

World War I Begins

B. L. Smith first proposed to the commanding officer of the Flying School, Pensacola, that Marine aviation be organized as a definite separate entity. His 1914 recommendation foresaw an aviation unit operating with Marino ground troops as a part of an advanced base force. This recommendation was later accepted by the General Board, and the Major General Commandant in his report covering the year 1915 stated that "by direction of the department a Marine Corps aviation company consisting of 10 officers and 40 enlisted men" was to be organized.

But in June 1916 only five Marine officers were classed as naval aviators. Enlisted men numbered 18. At the outbreak of war on 6 April 1917 the increase was only 1 officer, 1 warrant officer, 25 enlisted men.

Marine aviator No. 5-after Cunningham, Smith, McIlvain, and Evans-was Lt Roy Stanley Geiger, whose naval aviator number was 49. The sixth Marine pilot was David L. S. Brewster. Both were selected by Cunningham in a letter submitted to the Major General Commandant. The first warrant officer pilot was Walter E. McCaughtry.

This strength of 7 pilots and 43 men compared with 131 officers and 1,087 men in the Army's air establishment and 43 officers and just over 200 men in the Navy's.3

World War I gave Marine aviation its chance, however, and wartime expansion was pell mell in Marine aviation, as in all U.S. military organizations. Twenty-one days after the declaration of war the Aviation section was split to form the "Marine Aeronautic Company, Advance Base Force" at Philadelphia; four members came in from the Marine Corps Reserve Flying Corps, which had been set up under the Naval Appropriations Act of 29 August 1916 along with the Naval Reserve Flying Corps.4

This company in turn was divided on 12 October 1917 into the 1st Marine Aeronautic Company (seaplane)with 10 officers (of whom only two were qualified pilots) and 93 men transferred on the 14th to Cape May, N.J., and the 1st Aviation Squadron (24 officers, 237 men) which was transferred on the 17th to Hazlehurst Field, Mincola, L.I.

In the Azores

Shunted out of Philadelphia to make room for the Naval Aircraft Factory, the 1st Marine Aeronautic Company was destined to make its contribution to history as the first American flying unit of any service to go overseas completely equipped and trained. The Navy, in order to deny the further reaches of the Atlantic to the U-boats and to forestall any attempt by Germans to establish a submarine refueling base in the Azores, sought to acquire an additional base there. The State Department completed the arrangements with the Portuguese Government within a few days, and plans were made to send the 1st Marine Aeronautic Company to operate seaplanes out of the Islands.

Under the command of Capt Francis T. Evans the company of 12 officers and 133 enlisted men sailed from Philadelphia on 9 January 1918 and arrived 13 days later at Ponta Delgada on the island of Sao Miguel. Its planes included 10 R-6s (Curtiss twin-float seaplanes), 2 N-9s (single-engined, single-float), plus 6 HS-2 flying boats which arrived late in the summer.

For the next year the Aeronautic Company maintained a full schedule over the convoy lanes around the Azores, flying 70 miles out with only two hours' gasoline capacity. The American consul gave them a fine send-off when they departed in January 1919:

The loyalty, harmony and good fellowship prevailing among the men under you speak well for your leadership. . . . The utter absence of any complaint on the part of the local authorities against your men testifies to the high standard of citizenship in your command.

One pilot, Lt Walter S. Poague, was drowned when his plane crashed on 5 November 1918. Along with Capt David L. S. Brewster and Lt William P. T. Hill he was commended in a letter from the CO to the Commandant for frequent flights in inclement weather without "radio, pigeons or Very pistols." Or, it might have been added, reliable compasses.

On 24 July 1918 half the company was pulled out of the Azores and sent home to train new pilots. Among them was Capt Evans, who was succeeded as CO by Brewster. The submarine menace turned out to be far less awesome in 1918 than it had been in 1917.

World War I Organization

Marine aviatiors remember Mineola, L.I., and its Hazlehurst (now Roosevelt) Field chiefly because the 1st Aviation Squadron spent several very cold weeks there. The month of December was said to be the coldest ever recorded by the Weather Bureau in New York-17° below zero on the night of the 27th. An epidemic of pneumonia swept nearby Camp Mills, where the Rainbow Division was quartered.

On New Year's Day, 1918, the squadron left Mineola for a landplane base farther south. The destination turned out to be the Army's Gerstner Field, Lake Charles, La., although the Marines had to spend three days aboard train coaches before quarters could be found for them in one of the Army's cadet schoolhouses.

At Gerstner the Marine flyers settled quickly. They also learned about flying with stick control-although most aviators remember the JN (Jenny) as a stick-controlled JN-4-D, the 1st Squadron pilots at Mineola had learned to fly with wheel-controlled JN-4-Bs, a very primitive plane indeed. At Gerstner there were also Canuck Jennys and old Thomas-Morse Scouts, singleseaters with a rotary Gnome engine.

While Capt McIlvain trained his squadron at Lake Charles another unit was being formed at the Naval Air Station (NAS), Coconut Grove, Fla., which reported to Lt Marc Mitscher USN, CO of the station. Originally this detachment consisted of Capt Geiger, whose stamp on Marine aviation was beginning to make an imprint which would last 30 years, Lt Douglas Roben and Lt Arthur H. Page. McIlvain had the main increment in Louisiana but Geiger's Florida force was augmented in February and March by six newly commissioned permanent second lieutenants and about a dozen lieutenant reservists. The Marines were also represented by B. L. Smith, who was teaching Mitscher's men gunnery.

Geiger's crowd qualified in seaplanes and were duly designated naval aviators and awarded wings. As the pioneer, Geiger took his earliest qualifiers over to the edge of the Everglades to a small, sandy field which was being used by the old Curtiss Flying School, breaking away from the strictly water flyers under "Pete" Mitscher.

His original equipment consisted solely of three OX-5 Jennys until he acquired-through an exchange of reserve commissions for the Curtiss instructors-some even more ancient "Dep"-controlled Jennys. In Washington Capt Cunningham, who was serving as the first Officer in Charge (OinC) of Marine aviation (without being thus formally designated), got his hands on 20 Jennys with Hispano-Suiza engines.

On 1 April McIlvain arrived in Miami with his 1st Squadron. The new arrivals bulged all facilities at Curtiss Field, which was renamed the Marine Flying Field, the first in the history of the Corps.

It was also the last field the Marines got during the war despite various efforts to acquire a new base at Selma, Ala., or Charleston, S.C. Lest the reader envision the 1918 Miami in terms of luxurious hotels on the waterfront, let him ponder a contemporary report:

Marines are still operating at the temporary field at Miami, living in tents, housing the machines in canvas hangars, which are about to fall down, using a landing field which is made of sand so soft that no grass can be made to grow in it and which is so near sea level that there is a possibility at any moment of having the whole field flooded and making it useless for several days. The surrounding country is almost entirely wild and uncultivated, making it impossible [sic] to land machines in only a very few places except right near the present field at Miami.

Fortunately, the citizens of the young Miami were hospitable and "not so anxious to take a dollar away from you," as one aviator recalled 32 years later.

With the move to Miami there was a split (15 April) into a headquarters detachment and four landplane squadrons. The Navy allowed a flock of transfers. This was the organization-the "1st Marine Aviation Force"which was ordered almost immediately to get ready to sail for France, to the concern of Cunningham, who feared they wouldn't be prepared for combat. As the senior at Miami, Geiger commanded Squadron A and was acting CO of the whole works. The other squadron commands went to McIlvain, Roben and Russell A. Presley.

At this time the Marines were trained mostly in Jennys. Four British-designed, American-manufactured DH-4s were expected, and they were awaited eagerly. The DH-4 was the British DeHavilland which became the standard American combat plane, not only for World War I, but for many years afterward. A two-seater, the DH-4 could stay in the air about four hours, had a ceiling of 19,000 feet and a speed of about 124 miles an hour. It could climb to 10,000 feet in 14 minutes and could carry a load of about 1,200 pounds. One of the drawbacks which caused it to be labeled the "Flying Coffin" was its design: the observer and pilot sitting in tandem, with the large gas lank between them. This fault was corrected later in the DH-4B. Even worse was the overhead gravity feed, a 30-gallon tank whose contents a mild crack-up would spill onto the hot manifold pipes.

But not until May did the Marines get even Flying Coffins. Meanwhile, the pressure to send the squadrons overseas was increased, and the Navy didn't want two squadrons now and two later-the Navy wanted four right now.

In the summer of 1918 the Marines began drawing their flying students from the school the Navy had set up in April at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Promising volunteers were sent there and given the rank of chief petty officer or gunnery sergeant during their preliminary training. "Marine flying candidates are all enlisted men of superior physique, weighing from 135 to 165 pounds, and with at least two years' college or university study to their credit. The age limits are 19 to 39 years."

The course at M.I.T. lasted 10 weeks, following which graduates were sent on to Miami to learn to fly. Mechanics, riggers, and armorers were drawn from the Marine section of the naval school for mechanics at Great Lakes Training Station, Chicago (eight-weeks course), and a similar school at San Diego.

About 100 Navy flying cadets were sent to Miami for transfer to the Marine Corps. On 1 June the 1st Marine Aviation Force could report that it had on hand 124 "satisfactory" pilots:

Seventeen of the Navy pilots were found unsatisfactory, which upset the Navy Department, but Marine Corps headquarters stood fast in its long-established insistence on selectivity, even though "they have practically stated they are not going to send us any more."

Assignment to France

The devastating losses to U-boats in 1917 pointed up the role which naval aviation logically should play; 875,000 tons of shipping were sunk the month the United States entered the war. As a first installment on antisubmarine warfare 7 naval aviators and 122 mechanics were sent to France in June, with no planes and little training, mostly for morale purposes. The commanding officer, Lt Kenneth Whiting USN, early recommended that American naval aviation be employed from Dunkerque in bombing the German submarine pens at Zeebrugge, Ostend, and Bruges. It was believed that seaplanes, though they lacked the distance necessary to go out and find submarines, could catch the U-boats in their pens.

It soon became evident that the seaplanes on hand were unable to carry the necessary bomb load to destroy the submarine pens. There ensued a heavy argument between the Army and Navy as to who should do this job. As a result the British, who had already consolidated their air services into a separate air force, put some pressure on the United States to do the same, and the US Army air people were ready to jump at a chance to escape from control by their ground officers. Not so with the US Navy, which was already witnessing the retrogression in the Royal Navy following the loss of most of its aviation to a separate service-a factor which was to prove disastrous to the Royal Navy in World War II.

The Navy's requests finally were set at 75 bombers and 40 single-seat fighters to escort them. The Army, following General Pershing's decision that the Navy should bomb the submarine pens, agreed to furnish the fighters, but demurred at supplying the bombers. The Navy was stuck with its own seaplanes, plus whatever else it could pick up from foreign governments-Capronis from Italy, Handley-Pages from Britain, DD flying boats from France.

It was Cunningham himself who came up with the suggestion which eventually put the Navy and Marine Corps aviators solidly-if belatedly-into the war. Following a trip to Europe late in 1917, he appeared before the General Board on 24 January 1918 and said that at least four Marine fighter squadrons were necessary to help wrest control of the air in the Dunkerque-Calais area from the Germans. Lt Towers added that seaplane bombers were useless there without fighter escort. Admiral Sims and his staff later decided that fast, aroundthe-clock bombers were more important than fighter escort, so the Marines never flew fighters. But Cunningham had got the project rolling.

This was the genesis of the Northern Bombing Project and of the rushing of Marine squadrons to France despite Cunningham's fears that they were not ready for combat.

Geiger. McIlvain, and Roben, commanding officers of Squadrons A, B, and C, were sent ahead in June 1918 to join Chamberlain, the advance agent, for training with the British and French. Two weeks later Cunningham sailed in USS DeKalb with 1 captain. 16 first lieutenants. 79 second lieutenants, 657 enlisted men-the personnel of the three squadrons.

Cunningham and his 1st Marine Aviation Force reached Brest on 30 July. Sorrowfully he reported to Lt Harvey B. Minis, whom he had left behind in Washington as a very junior OinC: "We arrived day before yesterday and found that no one here knew what we were, where we were to go, or what we were to do here. . . . The trouble is that no one in Washington took interest enough in us to cable when we would arrive and what we were for." The debut of the Marine flyers in France was not auspicious.

But Cunningham, confronted with wall-eyed stares from Army and Navy officers, once again proved his resourcefulness. He secured from the French ("God knows whom") a train manned by Frenchmen, loaded it with the three squadrons plus their equipment and some food, and took off for Calais. After three days and 400 miles the Marine entourage reached Calais. Squadrons A and B made their camp near Oye, a town between Calais and Dunkerque, Squadron C was assigned to La Frene, a small village about 10 miles northeast of Calais.

Without planes, the Navy and Marine-and Armyaviators could only sit and wait. Despite elaborate production plans which called for 4,500 planes at the front by 30 June 1918, the American effort fell far short and caused Congressional and Presidential investigations. The Germans were spurred by the well-advertised threat from the West to greater efforts of their own which they sarcastically called Amerikaprogramm. It was 17 May 1918 before the first American-built DH-4 was delivered (to the Army) in France. When they did arrive the American-built planes required a major overhaul; their spruce wings were usually warped; 40 per cent of the control wires were too short; the Liberty engines were carelessly or improperly assembled. Insofar as their own later allotment of planes was concerned, the Navy and Marine mechanics performed miracles of reconstruction and repair-the total number of changes was put at 118 -but the agonizing delay put a crimp into the whole World War I effort. Assistant Secretary of the Navy F. D. Roosevelt after a brief investigation noted on 18 August that no naval plane could operate offensively, and only eight could take to the air. The "scandalous" situation he laid to Washington and to improper factory inspection.

While they waited, the American pilots were assigned to British squadrons, the Marines to Nos. 217 and 218, where they got their first taste of combat in DHs. The plan was to give each pilot three missions. This at least would introduce them to aerial combat.

The Combat Record

Upon their arrival in France the Marine squadrons became the Day Wing of the Northern Bombing Group.5 Their designations were officially changed from A, B, and C to 7, 8, and 9. Personnel of the squadrons usually called them "First," "Second," or "Third." Major Cunningham set up his wing headquarters at Bois-en-Ardres. Supply bases were at Paulliac and at Eastleigh, England, where the first attempts at reconditioning and assembling the American-built DH-4s were made.

Actually, it was 23 September before the first DeHavilland was received by the Marines in France. By 16 October there were still only 17 in the Day Wing (eight of them in commission).

The first raid in force by the Northern Bombing Group was carried out 14 October by Roben's Squadron 9. Eight planes attacked Thielt railway junction at 15,000 feet and dropped 2,218 pounds of bombs.

Operating with the 5th Group, Royal Air Force, the Northern Bombing Group raided canals, railroads, supply dumps, and airfields. Nearly all operations were carried out by Squadron 9, with pilots from other units attached at various times. All day squadrons moved forward as the Germans retreated, Squadron 8 reaching an abandoned enemy station at Knessalare, Belgium, on 1 November.

With the arrival on 8 October of Squadron D (relabeled "10") at La Frene, the roster of the Day Wing was complete. Capt R. A. Presley, who had preceded his squadron, resumed command and was assigned repair and maintenance for the Day Wing, which was "drab and colorless" duty, its skipper recalled 32 years later. Presley himself was the only member on the sick list (influenza).

Altogether the Marines dropped about 14 tons of bombs on the enemy during World War I, as can be seen from the following table for the Bombing Group as a whole:

Robert Guy Robinson