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the second battle of Verdun was fought and this Spad, which has been chosen by the unanimous vote of all the Allies at the July 31st conference became obsolete even before it reached the French sea coast for shipment to the United States. No final agreement as to royalties was ever reached with the French. In due course of time, the subject was dropped. The French said no more about it but simply gave us what we desired. When later we chose for manufacture articles designed by a French individual, as, for example, a camera or a new type of oxygen outfit, we agreed to pay a royalty to the individual owner since the French government could not or would not commandeer the article for us.
In 1917, our American engineers and factories were faced with organizing a new industry. Unfortunately, there was no aircraft industry in the United States when we entered the war. Our War Department was not finally informed until our cablegram of July 31, 1917, as to the types of airplanes necessary for fighting in the European war. It was not until sometime in August that copies of the British planes could be started in the United States. Likewise, the Italians, despite their genuine efforts to make prompt shipments, could not get their Caproni to the United States until September 18, 1917.
So, when General Pershing wired in February, 1918, that no American airplanes had yet reached Europe, he was not wiring that America had for ten months failed to supply him with American airplanes. He was wiring that six months had gone without any copies of British and Italian planes reaching Europe and five months had transpired without receiving any copies of French planes. All such copies of all recommended "day light" planes would have been "obsolete" upon their arrival on the western front. Models changed frequently in that fight for world supremacy.
During the war, aircraft design advanced so rapidly that the British used for single-seater pursuit planes, 27 different advanced types; the French, 31 types; the Italians, 13 types; the Germans, 12 types. To show you how rapidly any one type of pursuit plane was necessarily altered, it is interesting to note that the French, at the end of the war, were using a design of Spad twelve designs advanced over the type of the Spad that the Bolling Mission, with the advice and agreement with the Allies, had recommended to the United States on July 31, 1917. The French Spad was redesigned an average of once a month for

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