|
|
 |
Title: Join the Air Service |
|
Description: “No aircraft fit for combat and no airmen with any experience of aerial warfare”: thus is a condemnatory historical assessment of the state of the United States Army Air Service at the time of the American declaration of war against the belligerent Central Powers on April 6, 1917. After the poor performance of the Service in the 1916 Mexican Punitive Expedition, the U.S. government had not done much to equip or support the nation’s nascent air force. Even though the U.S. Congress quickly stepped up funding for the development of the air service after the U.S. entered World War I, the service struggled to produce airplanes and train pilots and mechanics to battle the already combat-hardened and technologically advanced Germans or to serve as an equal air ally to Britain and France over the skies of Europe. At the time of America’s entry into the “Great War,” (this epithet was used by English speaking peoples to refer to WWI in the 1920s and 1930s) the Air Service was an arm of the Army Signal Corps. |
|
Possessing about 65 officers, 1100 men, and roughly 200 aircraft (mostly trainers and many obsolete even for that purpose) in the spring of 1917, this Aviation Section of the Signal Corps clearly could not compete with the Europeans. Yet America charged ahead, and by the end of the war, in November of 1918, the American Expeditionary Force’s Air Service had grown immensely, with close to 8,000 officers and over 70,000 enlisted men flying and maintaining thousands of aircraft and being trained in numerous flight schools (26 for pilots and flight personnel alone). The United States’ aviation industry, by the armistice, had manufactured more than 11,000 airplanes of all types, with an annual production rate of 21,000 craft per annum. These developments are all the more extraordinary considering the fact that in DATE America had fallen to fourteenth place in the ranks of the world’s air powers. in the space of less than a decade since the Army acquired its first Wright Flyer, with less than 1,000 aircraft of all types being made since the Wright’s flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903. The recruiting poster pictured here forcefully commands the viewer to join up and go to France. Considering the desperate needs of the Air Service (which had to use foreign airplanes to jumpstart the military expedition) and the grand numbers required by army planning, one can almost sense the urgency emanating from the slogan. The aircraft shown is a Standard J-1, manufactured by the Standard Aircraft Corporation, beginning in 1916. Used as a trainer like its more famous rival the Curtiss JN-4, the Standard served as a primary trainer for the new pilots of the Air Service. Due to an unreliable engine, the J-1 was phased out as the better Curtiss craft became available in greater numbers. The insignia of the Air Service shown on the airplane should be noted: initially, in 1916, the Air Service had adopted a red five-pointed star (later used by the Soviet forces). The first official Air Service insignia, established in May of 1917, consisted of the white five-pointed star with the red center and blue surrounding circle, as shown here. This symbol, painted on the wings only, was accompanied by the red, white, and blue rudder striping, used as well by the British and French. Confusion arose, however, when the first American trainers flew in France in 1917, as the American star and circle looked too much like the German cross to observers at a distance. This led to the adaption of a roundel, using the Imperial Russian insignia of a red, then blue, then white circle, with white at the center, and with new tail striping, switching blue to the trailing edge and red to the leading. This roundel and striping survived as the official insignia until August of 1919, when the star and original striping returned. However, aircraft that remained in the U.S. did not receive the roundel and reversed striping, keeping the star and original rudder colors throughout the war. Thus, the craft pictured here would either be a plane that stayed on American soil, or would have been repainted after shipment to Europe. Poster artist J. Paul Verrees (1889-1942) was of Belgian descent but worked in the U. S. He made his reputation painting portraits, landscapes, and still lifes, as well as recruiting and propaganda posters for the U.S. government. Here he has created a strong image, repeating the tricolor red, white, and blue in his background and font reflecting the airplane insignia. The vigilant soldiers stand ready, observing perhaps a distant foe, while the pilot above them spurs his craft forward, ready to soar above the enemy on reconnaissance or engage in combat. |
|
  |
|