The Thomas-Morse Scout became the favorite single-seat coaching plane for U.S. Pilots during World War I. The Scout first appeared with an order for one hundred S4Bs in the summertime of 1917. The U.S. Military Air Service later acquired just about five hundred of a barely changed version, the S4C. Dubbed the “Tommy” by its pilots, the airplane had a long and sundry career. Tommies flew at practically each pursuit flying faculty in the US during 1918. After the war stopped, the Air Service sold them as surplus to civilian flying faculties, athlete pilots and ex-Army fliers.
Some continued to be employed in the mid-1930s for WWI aviation pictures filmed in Hollywood. The Tommy on show was given to the museum in March 1965 by Capt. R.W. Duff, Miami, Fla, and revived by Aero Mechanics school, Detroit, Mich.
In 1916 the next generation of German wrestlers promised to win air supremacy over the Western Front. The French aircraft company, Socit pour l’Aviation et ses Drives (SPAD), answered by developing a replacement for its very successful SPAD VII. Fundamentally a bigger version of the SPAD VII with a more potent V-8 Hispano-Suiza engine, the prototype SPAD XIII C.1 ["C" designating Chasseur (fighter) and "1" indicating one aircrew] first flew in March 1917. With its 220-hp engine, the SPAD XIII reached a maximum speed of 135 miles per hour — about ten miles per hour quicker than the new German wrestlers. It carried 2 .303-cal. The machine guns are mounted above the engine and each gun had four hundred rounds of ammo, and the pilot could fire the guns separately or together. Technical issues checked production till late 1917, but 9 different firms constructed a total of 8,472 SPAD XIIIs by the point production ceased in 1919. Since the US entered World War I without a combat-ready fighter of its own, the U.S. Military Air Service got wrestlers built by the Allies. After the Nieuport twenty-eight proved unsuited, the Air Service adopted the SPAD XIII as its first fighter. By the war’s end, the Air Service had accepted 893 SPAD XIIIs from the French, and these aircraft provided fifteen of the sixteen Yankee fighter squadrons. Today, Americans are most acquainted with the SPAD XIII because lots of our aces — like Rickenbacker and Luke — flew them during WWI. Built in October 1918 by the Kellner et ses Fils piano works outside of Paris, the museum’s SPAD XIII (S / N 16594) didn’t see combat.
With 434 other SPAD XIIIs after the truce, this aircraft went to San Diego, Calif, and a smaller, 150-hp Wright-Hispano engine replaced its Hispano- Suiza engine. The museum staff revived this SPAD XIII to its original configuration, including a 220-hp Hispano-Suiza engine. It is painted in the markings of America’s highest scoring ace of WWI with twenty-six victories, Capt. Edward V.
The legendary Yankee volunteers of the French Lafayette Escadrille were flying the SPAD VII in Feb 1918 at the time they moved to the U.S. Armed forces Air Service, turning into the 103rd Aero Squadron. Several U.S. Units also utilized the SPAD VII, although most Yankee Expeditionary Force (AEF) fighter squadrons were provided with a touch improved version, the SPAD XIII, by the point the war climaxed in Nov 1918. The SPAD VII made its first flight in July 1916. It showed such guarantee that it was put into production at once, and by the second part of that year it appeared on the Front in both French and UK squadrons.
The plane was an instant success, basically because its structural ruggedness allowed it to dive at high speeds without disintegrating. About 189 of the marginally more than five thousand SPAD VIIs built went to the AEF. The plane on view was obtained from the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, Sick , and revived by the initial Fighter Wing, Selfridge Air Force Base, Mich, 1962-1966.
The English Sopwith Camel F-1 shot down more enemy aircraft than any other World War I fighter. It was highly maneuverable and terribly tough to defeat in a dogfight. Due to its hard handling traits more men were killed while learning to fly it than died while using it in combat. The Camel first went into action in June 1917 with seventy Squadron, Royal Flying Corps, and 4 Squadron, Royal Naval Air Service. Two U.S. Armed forces Air Service squadrons, the 17th and 148th, flew the Camel in combat while allotted to Brit forces in the summer and fall of 1918. Such famous U.S. Pilots as George Vaughn (America’s second-ranking Air Service ace to survive the war), Elliot White Springs, Errol Zistel and Larry Callahan were members of the 17th and 148th. A 3rd U.S. Unit, the 185th Aero Squadron, exploited the Camel as a night fighter on the North American Front in the last month of the war.
Though 5,490 Camels were produced, only a few remain in existence today. USAF staff built the Camel on show from the first WWI factory drawings, completing it in 1974. The airplane is painted and marked as the Camel flown by Lt. George A. Vaughn Jr, 17th Aero Squadron.
Introduced into combat in the last great German offensive of World War I, the CL IV supported German troops by attacking associated ground positions and it is equipped with both fixed and flexible machine guns, hand-dropped grenades and tiny bombs, the CL IV proved extraordinarily efficacious in this role, but it didn’t have the armor required for cover against ground fire.
The CL IV changed into a hunted target of associated pursuit squadrons, but it gave a good account of itself in dogfights. A flexible machine, the CL IV also performed as an interceptor against associated night bombing raids and served as a night bomber against troop concentrations and airports close to the front lines.
The museum purchased the Halberstadt CL IV on view in 1984. Badly deteriorated at the time, its restoration was a joint global co-operative venture by the Museum fur Verkehr und Technik in Berlin, Germany, the Smithsonian Establishment’s State Air and Space Museum and the nation’s Museum of the US Air Force. It is marked as the CL IV of the squadron leader of the Schlachtstaffel twenty-one, which is understood to have engaged components of the U.S. Armed forces’s 94th and 95th Aero Squadrons in mid-July 1918 in the Castle Thierry battle.
When the US entered World War I, plans requested Yankee makers to mass produce aircraft already in use by the Allies. One of the wrestlers selected was the UK S.E.5A, designed by the Royal Aircraft Factory.
The prototype S.E.5 first fly in December 1916, and the deliveries of an improved version, the S.E.5A, which was started in March 1917.
For its pilots already in Europe, the North American Expeditionary Force purchased 38 S.E.5A aircraft from Great Britain, and in the U. S. the Govt placed orders with the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motors Company. The truce halted production after Curtiss had completed only 1 S.E.5A, but fifty six more were constructed from parts shipped from Great Britain. In 1922 the Eberhart Steel Products Corp. Received a contract to reconstruct fifty of the regiment Air Service’s S.E.5A aircraft using 180-hp Wright-Hispano “E” engines. The regiment Air Service used these aircraft, redesignated the SE-5E, for sophisticated coaching. The museum purchased the SE-5E thru a contribution by the estate of Lt. Col. William C. Lambert, USAF Ret. A WWI ace with 21.5 victories, Lambert flew the S.E.5A as an Yank member of the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Air Force. The Air Force Museum Foundation also helped buy the aeroplane. It is painted to represent an SE-5E of the 18th HQ Squadron, Bolling Field, Washington, D.C, in 1925.
The DH-4 was an ever-present element of the U.S. Military Air Service both during and following World War I.
entered WWI in Apr 1917, the Aviation Section of the Signal Corps only had 132 aircraft, all outdated. Modeled from a combat tested Brit De Havilland design, the DH-4 was the sole U.S. Built aircraft to see combat during WWI. With insufficient funding to purchase new aircraft, the recently created U.S. Military Air Service continued to use the DH-4 in a number of roles in the lean years following the war. When it was ultimately retired from service in 1932, the DH-4 had been developed into over sixty variants. The Great War During WWI, the Air Service utilized the DH-4 essentially for day bombing, observation and artillery spotting. The 1st American-built DH-4 arrived in France in May 1918, and the 135th Aero Squadron flew the 1st DH-4 combat mission in early Aug. By war’s end, 1,213 DH-4s had been dropped at France. Sadly , the early DH-4s had flaws, including the fuel system. The pressurized gas tank had an inclination to explode and a rubber fuel line under the exhaust manifold caused some fires. This led on to the title “The Flaming Coffin,” although only 8 of the thirty three DH-4s lost in combat.
burned as they slipped. Additionally, the position of the gas tank between the pilot and observer limited communication and could crush the pilot in an accident. Perhaps the most outstanding mission flown in the DH-4 was the brave effort by 1Lt. Harold Goettler and 2Lt. Erwin Bleckley of the fiftieth Aero Squadron to find and aid the legendary “Lost Battalion” on Oct. Six, 1918. In a resupply mission to this trapped unit, their DH-4 was shot down.
The Curtiss Jenny became America’s most renowned World War I coaching aeroplane. Often used for first flight coaching, some Jennies were equipped with machine guns and bomb racks for complicated coaching. The JN series started by mixing the best features of the Curtiss “J” and “N” models. A 1915 version, the JN-3, supported Pershing’s Punishing Expedition into Mexico in 1916, but the plane proved barely suitable for field operations. Curtiss improved the JN-3 and redesignated in the JN-4. With America’s entry into WWI on Apr six, 1917, the Signal Corps ordered large amounts of JN-4s, and by the point production was terminated after the truce, more than six thousand had been delivered, the bulk of them JN-4Ds. After WWI, the division sold loads of surplus JN-4s to civilians.
The plane soon became the anchor of the “barnstormers” of the 1920s, and many Jennies continued flying into the 1930s. The JN-4D on show was obtained from Robert Pfeil of Taylor, Texas, in 1956.
Tethered balloons authorized World War I observers to see as far as forty miles behind enemy lines to spot troop movements, chart ditch systems and direct artillery fire. The observation balloon most utilized by Americans was named for its designer, French engineer Lt.
Albert Caquot. The hydrogen-filled balloon could lift 2 passengers in its basket, with charting and communications appliances, and the weight of its mooring wire, to a height of roughly four thousand feet in good weather. Standard operations were between one thousand and four thousand feet. During WWI, Yank balloon observers directed artillery fire at targets like troop concentrations and supply dumps. They spotted more than one thousand enemy aeroplane sightings, one thousand instances of army traffic on railroads and roads and four hundred artillery batteries. Caquot balloons were made in great numbers in WWI; virtually one thousand were made in the US in 1918-1919. During World War Two, the British produced Caquots once more, but in limited numbers.
Made in 1944, the balloon displayed at the museum is thought to be the only survivor. The UK used it for parachute testing and noncombat aerial observation and photography till 1960. The UK Ministry of Defense, Royal Aircraft Corporation, presented the Caquot to the museum after it was found with the help of Yankee and British WWI balloon vets in 1975. Aided by the Goodyear Aerospace Company of Akron, Ohio, which had produced these balloons during WWI, museum staff mended and sealed the balloon fabric and prepared it for inflation. It was placed on show in May 1979.
In July 1913, the Brit AV. Roe (Avro) Corp. Tested its first model 504 aircraft, and many variants followed — based on the kind of engine installed. The 504K version had adapters, which authorized the installation of many differing kinds of rotary engines. This aircraft had an ordinary combat career, but it proved to be a superb tutor and after America entered in the World War I, it took many months to build the coaching facilities required by the U.S.
Armed forces Air Service. In the meantime, many American student pilots went abroad for flight training and those were sent to Great Britain learned the Avro 504K tutor before advancing the fight aircraft.
The U.S. Army Air Service ultimately established its main coaching center at Issoudun, France, and in July 1918, the North American Expeditionary Force (AEF) chiefs ordered 52 Avro 504K aircraft for teaching aerobatics at Issoudun. After the war, the regiment Air Service brought some Avro 504K aircraft back to the U. S. , and they stayed in coaching service for a couple of years. Using original parts, the Royal Canadian Air Force’s Aircraft Upkeep & Development Unit built the aircraft on display in 1966-1967 with a 110-hp Le Rhone J rotary engine. It turned up at the nation’s Museum of the U.S. In May 2003 Air Force, and it is painted to represent one of the 52 Avro 504K aerobatic trainers used at the AEF.
