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performance, which I later regretted;–several successful airplane builders and pilots started with this type of underpowered air vehicle.

At the time of my assignment to the Signal Corps for pilot training I was on duty at Fort Leavenworth with the 15th Cavalry, serving as a Second Lieutenant in H. Troop of the Second Squadron. This was my initial assignment following my graduation from the United States Military Academy at West Point in June, 1909.

Life at Fort Leavenworth during these years was like the "calm before the storm." Even though the World War was in the offing, the "Old Army" predominated with its drills, exercises, practice marches, parades and inspections with all of the accompanying "spit and polish." But in the Bachelor Messes,-and there were many bachelors-(one did not marry unless he was personally able to support a wife), there was some discussion of flying machines and their probable use in war. We knew, in general, of the flights made by Orville Wright at Fort Myer, Virginia, in the summer of 1907 to meet the specifications issued by the War Department for the purchase of an airplane. We had read of the crash that resulted in the death of Lieutenant Thomas E. Selfridge, the first person to be killed in an airplane accident, and the serious injuries suffered by Orville Wright which delayed the completion of tests until the summer of 1909. When, in that year, the tests proved successful, it resulted in the purchase of an airplane by this country for military purposes,-the first acquired by any nation in the world. Following these tests there was a burst of flying activity which saw Wilbur Wright make a flight from Governor's Island up the Hudson to Grant's Tomb and return, and Glenn H. Curtiss make his record flight of one hundred and forty-two and one-half miles from Albany to Governor's Island in two hours and fifty minutes. Meantime, Wright and Curtiss exhibition teams had taken to the air and were giving flying exhibitions in the principal cities, where thousands of people were being finally convinced that man could fly.

But things were not going so well in the Army. As the year 1910 had drawn to a close the outlook for army aviation was gloomy indeed; the entire "air service," stationed at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, consisted of the one Wright airplane purchased the previous year and a detachment of nine enlisted men of the Signal Corps with Lieutenant Benny Foulois as sole pilot and Commanding Officer. To keep this small unit alive, Foulois at times found ti necessary to provide personal funds for critical maintenance and repairs. This, despite the fact that when Congress established the Signal Corps as a Bureau of the War Department in 1890, it was assigned the duty and responsibility of providing aeronautic facilities for the Army.

In the meantime Europe had forged ahead in all phases of flying with such rapidity that Congress finally called for an investigation and, as a result, appropriated $150,000.00 for the fiscal year of 1912, of which $25,000.00 was to be made available on March 3, 1911. This appropriation marked the real beginning of progress in military aviation; it provided the money for establishing the first Signal Corps Aviation School, and for the purchase of a few airplanes. The Chief Signal Officer, Brigadier General James Allen, immediately placed orders for five airplanes, all of the "pusher type," having the propellers in the rear. Two Wright B's were to be furnished by the Wright Company at Dayton, Ohio; one Wright B by the celebrated yacht designer, W. Starling Burgess, who had organized the Burgess-Curtiss Company at Marblehead, Massachusetts and was operating under license of the Wright Company; and two by the Curtiss Company and Hammondsport, New York. The Curtiss planes and one Wright B were to be delivered to Fort Sam Houston, Texas, and the other two to College Park, Maryland.

The selection of an aviation school site was not difficult: College Park, Maryland, a small village near Washington, on the Baltimore Highway and the Baltimore and 

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