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This short-sightedness was one of the major reasons why we had neither combat aircraft nor combat crews in our military structure at the beginning of World War I.

  The War Department was, however, much more receptive to the use of the airplane for observation and military reconnaissance missions. We began these actual field tests in Army maneuvers held in the vicinity of Bridgeport, Connecticut, from August 10th to the 17th in 1912. we sent one Burgess-Wright airplane, one Curtiss (single-seater), and one Curtiss (two-seater). The Wright plane was to be flown by Foulois and the Curtiss plane by Geiger and myself. From a military standpoint we were able to get information of value. Some expressions of the ground forces' staff officers support this observation. I quote a few: "The experience gained in these maneuvers proves conclusively that the airplane is the best possible method of obtaining information." "The information obtained by the airplane was much more rapidly obtained and much more accurate and full that that gathered by the Cavalry patrols on either side." "To be without an aviation squadron attached to a force when operating against one supplied with airplanes is to place an almost insurmountable handicap upon that force."

  These results were achieved with planes that were underpowered and of very limited endurance. The communication equipment was the product of field improvisation. We were, however, successful in demonstrating one of the military values of an airplane.

   Later Arnold and I conducted a series of tests at Ft. Riley, Kansas in aerial adjustment of Field Artillery. Arnold was equipped with radio while I used a drop message technique. Accurate observations proved easy to make but the drop message technique took too much time. The most successful method proved to be the use of the radio from the plane.

  It was during these tests that Arnold had a nerve-racking experience and a narrow escape from a serious crash. We had finished our work for the next morning on the firing range and were preparing to fly back to the parade ground at the Fort. Arnold went on ahead and I followed a short time later. When I got over the field, one of the miniature whirlwinds which occur on sunshiny days in that country struck my plane and turned it more than 90 degrees. The plane stalled, but by diving it a short distance I regained speed and pulled it out for a safe landing. When I had landed I found everybody on the ground in an uproar. They told me that Arnold had had a narrow escape and that he and the bachelor friends, with whom he was staying, were at Headquarters celebrating the fact that he had not been killed. I joined them and found them gathered around a table imbibing champagne rather freely under the justification of his narrow escape. He told me that a whirlwind had stalled his place causing it to fall away into a dive. Also, that he instinctively kept pulling back on the controls and that on the last pull his plane came out just inches above the ground and made a successful landing. While the urge to pull our of a stalling dive can be very impelling if the ground is near and rapidly approaching the best procedure for such a crisis was to push the elevators forward for as long as possible to gain speed and control, delaying the pull back for landing as long as possible. These were procedures Orville Wright had heavily stressed while we had been his students at Dayton. The shock, however, was so severe to Arnold's nerves and confidence that he temporarily quit flying. Fortunately he came back again in the First World War.

  With the growth of the school at College Park it was becoming increasingly difficult to carry all of the school activities at that one center. Curtiss, who was conducting a school at North Island, San Diego, invited the Curtiss contingent to move there. This move was approved and the Curtiss pilots and planes were transferred to San Diego under command of Lieutenant Geiger. In December, McCall and Ellington

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