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hour for a total endurance of 4 hours and 20 minutes, which set a new American distance and endurance record.  Had I known at the time, the world distance record, which was 249.5 miles and the endurance record, 434 minutes, I could have easily broken them both on this flight.  As it was, had a measured course been laid out around San Antonio, a new world distance record would have been established.

     On the first of April Captain Chandler, who had commanded the aviation school from its inception, was relieved from duty and ordered to the Philippines for a tour of foreign service.  He was succeeded by Captain A. S. Cowan,from the Signal Corps, then Chief Signal Officer of the Second Division.

[Image of an airplane and two men with caption below]
Lt. T. DeW. Milling and Lt. Sherman landing at Texas City, Texas
after breaking American Duration and Distance Record.

     In a few weeks it became apparent that there would be military operations along the Mexican border at that time.  Everyone wanted to re-establish the school at some location that would be suitable for flying the year around.  Excellent reports had come from the Curtiss School at North Island. Finally authority was granted and arrangements made to occupy North Island, and most of the unit and equipment was transferred to that station on June 14th.  A detachment, consisting of Kirtland, Graham and McCall, with 26 enlisted men and two airplanes remained at Texas City for continued service with the Second Division.  Lieutenant McCall was killed the next month flying alone, in a type-C Wright while performing the precision landing requirements for his military aviator rating test.  The exact cause was not determined, but was probably due to a stall.  This was the major killer of flyers in those days.  Lieutenant Graham met with a serious motorcycle accident and was relieved from aviation duty and returned to his regiment.  He returned to aviation duty in World War I and remained with the Air Corps until his retirement in 1929.

    By July the school of North Island was running smoothly.  The officers who had been assigned to the Curtiss airplane and were being trained in the Curtiss school were transferred back into the Army school, and operated under the command of Lieutenant Geiger as a separate unit.  Captain Cowan was in command.  Goodyear was chief instructor for all Curtiss plane training and I occupied a similar position for all Wright aircraft.  Students were being received, reporting at various times, with different states of proficiency.  By the last of December, 1913, the overall accomplishments in aviation by the Signal Corps can be summed up as about the follows:  Since the purchase of the first airplane in 1909, 23 others had been bought, nine had been destroyed in accidents, and 15 remained in service; 11 officers and one non-commissioned had qualified as pilots, and nine students were undergoing instruction.  This was a small cadre for meeting the expansion needs for war,-and war clouds were already forming on the European horizon.  But while we were short in numbers of trained personnel and in quantity and quality of equipment, we were not to short in experience.  We were laying a sound foundation in training technique and operational