An intelligence mission could hardly have departed with less fanfare. Only the gold braid on the naval officers’ caps was conspicuous, although the tan naval khaki uniforms looked a bit like “Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders.” They came through Boston’s old North Station singly and in groups of two or three, and disappeared into the semi-darkness of the train shed outside.
Mostly strangers to each other, the 24 men found their billets in the last car of the Montreal Express. So began the mission of the group that later came to be known in U. S. naval aviation as the “Canadians.”
We had been recruited in Boston, detached from the Boston Navy Yard, and then ordered to entrain on the night of 8 July 1917. Most of us had enlisted in response to advertisements published in April 1917 after the Declaration of War, and had been told only that we would be sent to the newly opened Naval Air Station at Squantum, Massachusetts, and would fly submarine patrols along the Atlantic Coast. But, instead, we had received an order issued just before July Fourth, to report for active duty with the Royal Flying Corps at Toronto, Canada. Only a small number of us had ever seen an aeroplane.
The next morning the train rolled into Montreal, and we were hustled off and into motor lorries, and driven to a hotel where we breakfasted grandly. The remainder of the day was spent in a private day coach which was attached to the Canadian Pacific Montreal-Toronto train. During the day, it developed that our detachment was made up of 11 Princetonians: G. Breckenridge, W. F. Clarkson, J. V. Forrestal, H. F. Gibson, H. B. Gordon, R. Matter, R. H. McCann, W. Mudge, E. L. Shea, W. J. Warburton, and F. Zunino. The two Ensigns in command, F. L. Allen and F. I. Amory, were from Harvard, as were D. R. Goldthwaite, P. S. McCoid and D. H. Read. I was a 1916 graduate of Yale and had entered Harvard Law School; P. B. Frothingham was from Dartmouth, and S. M. Butler, T. H. Chapman, A. H. Wright, R. A. Griswold, H. Swift, and R. D. Randolph had college affiliations which I do not recall. Two other recruits whose backgrounds I never learned completed the group; S. Esty was sent back to Boston soon after our arrival in Toronto, and F. Tenny received his discharge while we were in training.
Where we were going and the kind of training we would receive were the subjects of a good deal of discussion. The name Camp Borden was bandied about knowingly by some, but even they were unable to state where it was or on what body of water we would land and take off. It did not occur to any of us that we would be trained in land flying. Undoubtedly our officers knew the answers to these questions, but they were riding in the parlor car ahead and we saw nothing of them all day.
It was dark when the train finally rolled into the Toronto Station. We were met by Canadian officers and noncoms with motor lorries. Our destination turned out to be Burwash Hall, a dormitory of the University of Toronto, but we did not learn that until the following day.
The next morning we were hustled out at an early hour and sent to the dining hall where we were served hot coffee with milk. Then, with our stomachs still awash, we were lined up for calisthenics. This to us became the greatest unsolved mystery of our Canadian trip: when, where, and why the British and Canadian Military took nourishment? Drinking coffee and milk before calisthenics, having tea and jam before early morning flying at 5 a.m., and shutting down flying operations for tea at 4 p.m., a time when, on those hot summer days, the air was just commencing to quiet down, made no sense to any of us.
At the first breakfast formation, an order was read instructing us to appear on the University parade ground for drill at 9 o’clock. An R.F.C. colonel, the Commandant of the Ground School, greeted us and asked us what drill instruction we had had and whether we had among us anyone who could instruct us in our own drill. Our replies being in the negative, he held a short consultation with the R.F.C. personnel accompanying him. He then informed us we would be instructed in their drill (the old British “form fours” which required about six commands to accomplish the same result as our “right by squads”). Fie also assigned Sergeant Sedgewick, a typical Rudyard Kipling soldier from the Coldstream Guards, to be our drill master.
Thus began our six weeks of Ground School. Early in this period we were informed that we were to take notes of everything so that we could bring back to the Navy complete information as to the subjects we were taught and the equipment and methods used in teaching them. The first day, however, all we took back to our barracks were very sore feet and very tired muscles.
To one who has not gone through this training of the British Guard Regiments which had been adopted by the R.F.C., the experience beggars description. Sergeant Sedgewick made us forget our sore feet and muscles, however, when we were drilling.
“Make those trees tremble,” he would roar, and his Kipling moustache would bristle ferociously. His 250-lb. frame would vibrate and his huge feet and shoes would literally carry out his own command. The British drill at that time included much noisy clicking of heels, only possible with the type of heavy “bewts” they wore.
After two weeks of putting in long hours on the parade ground—four to six hours a day is my best recollection—we were all in wonderful physical shape, and when on parade, we marched like the cadet companies I had seen at West Point.
We finished our training with a lasting affection for Sergeant Sedgewick and a great admiration for the type of soldier he represented. We had no such feeling, however, toward some of the others with whom we came in contact. In particular there was Flight Sergeant Cooper, in charge of cadet indoctrination and military training. The Turtle, as we came to call him, seemed to have a violent dislike for all Americans including the 100 U. S. Army Air Corps cadets being trained with us. The American sense of humor and lack of respect for discipline kept him in a constant fury. Such little tricks as setting fire to a newspaper in the hands of the man in front of you when Cooper was reading the orders of the day, or appearing “on parade” not “shaived” or with “dirty bewts” had him screaming at us most of the time. His sarcasm, however, was devastating and his voice so shrill it made our blood run cold. There was no way he could discipline us, but he did find one way to retaliate.
Occasionally the whole body of cadets, including all the Canadians, the U. S. Army and the Navy, would be assembled on the Campus and marched past the Commandant and his staff in review. Sergeant Cooper, who stood near, but behind, the officers, would wait until we were swinging by in our best style, and then, in a sing-song off beat, he would intone: “delp, bight, delp, bight” to upset our cadence, with the result that the unit would always break step and stagger by in confusion, much to the colonel’s obvious annoyance.
The drilling and ground school lectures and classes crowded our days through that July and August. The subjects taught were: theory of flight, rigging, engines, machine gunnery, bombing, aerial photography, meteorology, instruments, and astronomy. Even the more frivolous of our group took seriously and listened with rapt attention to the lecturers, most of whom were Canadian and British officers with combat or front line experience.
We were given thorough schooling in the Lewis and Vickers machine guns by instructors who were noncommissioned officers. The Vickers was used as a fixed gun firing between the blades of the aeroplane’s propeller through the miracle of the Constantenesco gear which was also explained to us. We learned to live with the guns, to break them down and reassemble them at top speed, to clean them and to recognize and correct the various types of jams to which they were subject; also to understand the workings of the various types of aerial gunsights then in use, and to fire the guns. All our firing experience, however, was deferred until we reached the advanced flying school at Camp Borden in October.
What the R.F.C. called “wireless” was what became known in our services as “radio;” our course at Camp Borden included some instruction in the special codes used in sending various types of messages from aeroplanes which had been developed overseas.
“Artillery Observation” was the now well known system of reporting and directing artillery fire by “wireless” from the air. In the ground school the cadets had the benefit of a mock-up of a landscape showing a battlefield, with a seat for the pilot hung high above and fitted out with a sending key. A system of lights on the map below simulated the results of artillery fire. The spot where each shot “struck” was reported by using the “wireless” key and was checked by the instructor.
In the engines class, we had an opportunity to examine and in some cases to take apart and reassemble various types of aeroplane engines then in use, including the English Daimler, the American Curtiss used in training ships in Canada, and the French Clerget and Gnome rotary. The last named was used in most of the pursuit aircraft like the Sopwith Camel, one of which was on exhibition. The Gnome had only one set of mechanically operated valves, the exhaust, and used castor oil for lubrication which was force-fed. Only the crank shaft of the engine was stationary, the propeller being fastened to the engine which revolved with it. We were warned that these engines had a habit of stalling on the take off, due to a defective fuel pressure system, and dropping the pilot into the trees at the edge of the aerodrome. Occasionally the whole motor had been known to break away from the aeroplane leaving it out of balance and uncontrollable; it was, however, extremely light and powerful.
Our lectures covered the design, material and working of the carburetor and magneto, the timing of engines, theory and practice.
In the class in rigging, we learned in detail how aeroplanes were constructed from specimens of wings from ships that had crashed. We were also taught to mend holes in the fabric which covered all surfaces by sewing, patching, and painting them with highly inflammable aeroplane varnish. In this class on one occasion, the group received something of a shock when someone noticed the seat in a fuselage, recently added to this equipment, had blood on it. Incidents like this and the frequent flying of the flag on the parade ground at half mast, made the training something less than a pleasant summer vacation.
We also had the theoretical side of flying presented to us in lectures. We learned why an aeroplane flew and how it was controlled, plus a glossary of new terms: streamlining and its importance, ailerons, the dihedral angle and how it affected lateral stability and lift, empanage, the tail assembly, angle of incidence and chord which determined the lift capacity of a particular wing section, propeller torque and how it could cause tailspins which cost many lives during World War I, and the location and function of flying wires, landing wires, and control cables.
The classes dealing with bombing, aerial reconnaissance, contact patrol, and map reading, all were closely related to ground operations on the Western Front. In one of these classes another incident occurred which reminded us quite forcibly that we were at war. All the cadets were assembled in a large auditorium where lantern slides of aerial photographs of the Western Front were being shown. All light had been excluded and a picture of a section of the “trenches” was on the screen, when suddenly the lights were turned on and we were marched in small units to individual classrooms where we were left to stand and wonder for almost an hour. In the meantime, a rumor was whispered around that some slides were missing and that we were likely to be searched. Everyone was keeping his hands in his pockets and watching those around him. Finally our group was dismissed without any explanation. The next day one of our officers told us in confidence that the pictures had been found in another classroom under a radiator where the thief had apparently dropped them and that they were less than two weeks old. Knowing that spies were about gave us all an uneasy feeling later especially when we heard of crashes due to control wires that had been cut.
Our only recreation during this period was to walk downtown in Toronto after our work day was over. The city was full of men in uniform, many R.F.C. cadets, as well as Canadian ground troops. The spectacular officer’s uniform was notably missing, however, due to the fact they were allowed to wear mufti when off duty to avoid constant saluting. Saluting was accompanied by eyes right or left depending on which side the officer passed. The opposite hand, palm forward was brought up “smartly,” in a wide flourishing arc; the index finger touched the forehead or cap. We had to learn that salute to the satisfaction of Sergeant Sedgewick, and we used it long after we returned from Canada to the astonishment of American officers at whom we directed it and to the obvious pleasure of the Canadians and British officers we met in the United States.
Our naval officers’ caps brought us immediate attention on the streets of Toronto. We were tagged the “American Naivy” by the British soldiers and the name stuck to us until we returned home.
Our walks downtown, however, added very little to the pleasure of our summer. There were always groups of wounded and badly crippled soldiers gathered on street corners. This depressing effect was strengthened when a “British Tommy” stopped several of us and asked if we had come to join the “suey-side club” which was their name for the R.F.C.
One effect of our evening ramblings was to convince us that we were very badly dressed compared to the R.F.C. cadets who were allowed to buy officer’s uniforms before they finished ground school and to wear them without bars everywhere except on duty.
Our officers had tried without success to get some information from Washington about our own winter naval aviation uniforms; we decided to do something about the situation ourselves. The prime mover was Jack War- burton of Princeton and a member of the Wanamaker Clan, whose social background was well known to us.
The name of the tailor selected, as I recall it, was “Follett & Sons,” then the leading tailor in Toronto for officer’s uniforms. The uniforms were of green gabardine, as the Navy had indicated that the naval aviation winter uniform was to be green like that of the Marines. As several of us had tried to have our khaki summer uniforms copied with strikingly unsatisfactory results, we were forced to decide on the British jacket or “tunic” as they called it, with a flaring skirt and belt. The belt did not have the shoulder strap like the Sam Browne belt but we added that just before leaving Canada. With the naval officer’s hats equipped with green gabardine tops, our outfit might have passed as “Florenz Ziegfeld Aviators.”
Our uniforms were finished just before the end of August when we had expected to be leaving for flying camp. We learned, however, that there was no room for us at any flying camp and, instead, we were again packed into lorries and carted down to Long- branch, formerly a small flying camp on the lake shore some miles southwest of Toronto, where we were quartered in tents.
We were to continue drill training but the weather had become so hot, 110 degrees on the so-called parade ground, that Ed Shea, genial star halfback and third baseman on Princeton teams of two years before, who abhorred drilling, persuaded Sergeant Sedgewick to omit drill for the time being and promised in return that we would wash dishes. We discovered to our dismay that these dishes were for 300 cadets soon to arrive as well as for those men already in camp. As a result, we washed dishes steadily for three days, and no one, not even Ed, was very well pleased with his bargain.
The week passed quickly at Longbranch. Almost before we knew it, we found ourselves on a train, bound for a flying camp in Eastern Ontario. We arrived at the village of Deseronto, about 40 miles from Kingston and the Thousand Islands about noon. It was a beautiful clear day with drifting white clouds and a stiff breeze ruffling the water between the islands and Lake Ontario beyond. As we stood on the station platform awaiting orders, aeroplanes were coming and going overhead, motors roaring and wings flashing in the sunlight as they banked and turned out over the water and disappeared quickly to return or to be immediately replaced by others in a seemingly endless parade. It was a new and fascinating world.
Beyond the 4-hangar aerodrome on a slight rise was a row of low buildings—our barracks and living quarters. These consisted of two- story dormitories surrounded by double-deck porches, and separate one-story structures also with porches. These contained a dining room, kitchen, and large, well furnished living room, including a piano, and plenty of magazines. Officers’ accommodations were similar but more luxurious and smaller. All this bore witness to the fact that, here at Camp Rath- burn, we had ceased to be enlisted men and were becoming embryonic officers.
In absence of other orders for the day we all wandered down to the hangars and spent the greater part of the afternoon watching the flying operations. Some of the Canadian officers who were on the field began taking us up on what was known as our “joy hop.”
These flights were really our most amazing experience, coming from a generation who, like all those from the time of Daedalus to the Wright Brothers, considered flying an impossibility. My own nearest approach to an aeroplane had been a trip to Belmont Park Racetrack to see the English aviator Latham make a flight many years before, but the wind had blown so hard that he was never able to take off. Later I had seen Clifford Harmon making the first flight across Long Island Sound, but he was so far away that I could see only the two wings which looked like some strange species of box kite. This impression of an aeroplane had been fortified by a view which I chanced to get of a copy of the monoplane in which Bleriot crossed the English Channel, under construction in a loft building on Jerome Avenue in New York. That did approximate a large box kite in size and construction. Compared to those ships, the Curtiss trainers came as a revelation. In spite of this, however, each of us, I am sure, harbored some misgivings while being strapped into the front seat.
After taking off and climbing well above the field, the R.F.C. pilots would make a few sharp banks, standing the ship first on one wing and then the other, then turn back to the aerodrome coming in for a landing in a steep dive, with the wires screaming and the ground coming up at us in a great rush. It was over almost before we knew it had happened. I staggered away toward the hangar, a little dizzy after my experience.
The days which followed were a great disappointment. We had expected to start flight training at once, but nearly three weeks passed and we had not been off the ground again. Our officers were quietly trying to get our flight training started but the British were apparently pressing for more Canadian pilots for military operations in France and that had to have priority. Also, instructing was neither an easy nor safe job, and the instructors were not anxious to push it. The country adjacent to camp was rough and checkerboarded with small fields and forests and occasional ponds. These created frequent changes from rising currents to down drafts and vice versa, commonly described as “bumpy air.” On a hot September day this made instructing at altitudes below 4,000 to 5,000 feet much too hazardous, and climbing to that height with a Curtiss JN4B with each student pilot took time. This was coupled with the fact that at that time Canada, after three years of war, was scraping the bottom of the flying cadet barrel, and some of the manpower was so inferior as to be difficult to instruct.
Finally, there was always a shortage of aeroplanes due to daily crashes which in many cases did not injure the pilot but always put the ship out of use for a minimum of several hours. This shortage was aggravated by the fact that, after soloing, airborne student pilots were allowed to wander all over eastern Canada and sometimes landed so far away from camp that it took several days to truck the aeroplane back. There was among the Canadian cadets a stocky little American from Louisiana named Winkler who was ordered by an 18-year-old British lieutenant to take a ship up and stay three hours; he attempted to do just that. We had all been instructed that gas tanks in Curtiss trainers held only enough for two and one half hours flying.
Winkler somehow managed to stay up three hours and five minutes and then made a forced landing in a field full of large boulders without even blowing a tire. To compound the errors, however, the “leftenant” took off with Ed Shea in the front seat and flew over to survey the situation. When he attempted to land, he hit a boulder with one wing. The resulting crash gave Ed some minor cuts and bruises which made him look worse for several days than he had after any Harvard-Princeton football game. Both aeroplanes had to be dismantled and trucked back to camp, a process which took several days.
These days, though empty of accomplishment, were pleasant and relaxing after our ground school training. The September days were gorgeous and the evenings were made delightful by the music of Harry Gordon who was an accomplished pianist with a, fascinating and apparently endless repertoire. Night after night he played continuously from supper until bedtime anything requested while the entire unit gathered around the piano.
When instructors were finally assigned to us and our flight training began, our knowledge of the experiences and activities of the others became meager.
I was assigned to a Lieutenant Swazey. He gave me several hours of air work and then was shipped out, probably overseas. For a time I was grounded and was rapidly getting discouraged as the others continued their training, but I was rescued after several days of idleness by an R.F.C. lieutenant from New York City, whose name, I believe, was Goldstein. He proved to be a most competent pilot and an excellent instructor.
When Lieutenant Goldstein indicated that he thought I was ready for solo, he was more confident than I was. That night a black cat crossed my path and, for the first time in my life, I was disturbed by it. But the insignia of our squadron was a black cat, and apparently both of them were good luck because the next morning I soloed without mishap.
In solo flying our cadets experienced a sort of monotony of tension. This was aptly described by Randolph when someone asked him about his flight, “I sat up there for two hours waiting for the tail to fall off.” There were many things we all knew could happen although they never did. We all knew for instance, that a gas or oil leak, dirt or water in the gasoline, or merely an inaccurate gasoline gauge on the tank could cause a forced landing. These things would have been of little importance in an automobile or pontoon- type aeroplane for use over water. Flying over eastern Ontario, however, a motor failure meant a landing in a barnyard, a potato patch, or in the treetops.
My daily routine for soloing, when I could get a ship, was to take off and head for Kingston 40 miles away. With the lake on my right to guide me, I would wait until the streets and houses were in plain sight. Then, having managed to get headed back in the other direction, I would again follow the lake shore until I saw our aerodrome. This crosscountry trip seemed less dangerous to me than dodging cadets making landings and R.F.C. pilots instructing with whom the sky about camp seemed to be filled. Though the back country north of the lake was preferred by some of our group, I did not like it because of the danger of getting lost. There were no landmarks to follow; moreover, the appearance of the country from the sky was so new and different that I found it difficult to pick up and identify our Camp Rathburn even from a few miles away. On one occasion, I found myself in a ship rigged to climb with the result that I was over 4,000 feet when I reached Kingston, and I almost missed it and went on down the St. Lawrence. Later in. the fall, we heard that a cadet did make that mistake and finally landed at Malone, New York. Since no maps of the country were ever given out and the aeroplanes had no compasses, this was understandable.
An incident which happened at this time revealed to us an interesting bit of history. News of the Canadian high casualty rate in flight training reached the Navy Department during the summer. One day Bill Mudge who happened to be helping our officers saw a Department letter giving detailed instructions as to how the bodies of any of us that might be killed in a crash, might be sent home. One of our officers volunteered the following explanation. As part of the deal under which the R.F.C. was to have a winter flying base in Texas, the British had offered to train a certain number of pilots for the United States. Secretary Josephus Daniels was opposed to sending any from the Navy, however, because of the heavy casualties in the Canadian Schools. We had been sent to Toronto by Assistant Secretary Franklin D. Roosevelt and Commander John H. Towers without Daniels’ knowledge. These instructions had been sent to avoid the unavoidable hornets’ nest which would otherwise have been stirred up in the event of such casualties.
Fortunately nothing of the sort occurred though we had our share of crashes: Tom Stuart Butler thought a scarf added something to the uniform, while Harold "Pete” Gibson favored a leather helmet over a steel lining. Frank Tenney (opposite page) turns over a propeller at Camp Borden and three planes of Canadian Training Squadron 85— the "Black Cats”—are readied for inspection. Chapman managed to land nose first but with tail almost perpendicular, on top of one of the hangars. He was not even scratched; getting him down without upsetting the aeroplane on top of him, however, was a most precarious job.
Jim Forrestal, who was both capable and careful physically as well as mentally, at first found it exceedingly difficult to make landings. He broke the back of one ship, demolished the undercarriage of another, and spoiled a third, fortunately without any injury to himself. After that he had no further difficulty with flying. One of those crashes, however, might very well have changed the course of history.
The principal reason for the large number of crashes was insufficient dual instruction. Whether this insufficiency was due to lack of instructors or a studied policy based on the theory that it was more economical in the long run to have the poor material eliminated in this way early in the training course was hard to determine.
We had to learn to fly entirely by “feel” as we had no instruments except an altimeter and a “rev counter” showing the speed of the motor. We learned by watching and following the instructor’s use of the controls. He could not communicate with us from the rear seat where he sat, except in an emergency when some instructors were known to stand up and hit the cadet on the head with a monkey wrench or anything available. Such action occasionally was necessary when, for instance, a student flyer froze to the controls. The members of our unit soloed after periods of dual instruction that ran from a maximum of six hours to a minimum of 45 minutes compared with the ten hours dual then required in the flying schools of the U. S. Army and Navy.
Fortunately, even the worst crash that any of us had did not result in an injury to the cadet. One afternoon during our last week at Deseronto, a student was putting in time while some of us chanced to be standing about waiting for ships to take up. We were all startled to hear the noise of an aeroplane motor so low that it sounded as if it was taxiing up the main street of Deseronto.
In a moment the ship appeared, coming in just over the tree tops. We all expected the pilot to land (though he was coming in cross wind), because one wing was drooping and the motor was missing badly. Instead, he made an uncertain turn off the field and flew over a barn adjacent to the field, missing a silo by a few feet, and disappeared over the trees beyond. A quick check showed that the pilot was Floyd Clarkson, and we got back to the aerodrome just in time to see Clarkie come in again and execute the same maneuver in an even more shaky fashion. This time, however, he did not return, and the sound of his motor died out quickly beyond the trees.
At this point the black ambulance which was always at the edge of the field when there was flying—affectionately dubbed “Hungry Liz” by the cadets—dashed off down the road in the direction from which the last sounds had come. None of us expected to see Clarkie alive again.
An agonizing hour passed, and we heard nothing. Then up the road came “Hungry Liz” and out stepped Clarkie unscratched, looking for all the world as if he had been to Eternity and back. He had ended his strange flight in a flat tailspin some miles from camp. A witness who saw the crash reported that the aeroplane seemed to collapse into kindling wood as it struck, leaving the pilot entirely unhurt in the middle of the pile. This incident also illustrates a weird phenomenon with which we all became familiar. In the very sparsely settled sections of Canada where our flights took us, if you made a landing away from an aerodrome whether by accident or design, people would literally spring from the earth about you. Where they came from or how they happened to be there was never clear.
One advantage that the Curtiss training aeroplanes of that day seemed to have was that though they were made of highly inflammable materials they did not seem to catch fire as readily as modern all metal ships. In fact, I never saw or heard of a specific instance of such a fire while I was in Canada.
All the cadets who had crashes were not as fortunate as we were, though it was the fact that the aeroplanes of that day, made of wood, fabric, and wire, sometimes cushioned the pilot’s fall. Lieutenant Vernon Castle, the famous dancer, who was instructing at the other R.F.C. flying camp at Deseronto, and a cadet he was instructing had a bad crash in which the cadet was killed. That crash generated much argument among the cadets about the custom or rule that the cadets should ride in the front seat during dual instruction. Flying over that type of terrain, in rough air and instructing the caliber of cadets then training was very dangerous business. Personally, I think the rule was sound and proper.
One day word got about that we were expected at Camp Borden Advance Flying School on 1 October. It was also rumored that, if we finished our requisite 50 landings and ten hours of solo time sooner, we would be granted leave to go home in the meantime. I had only four hours to finish and decided to get those out of the way at once, if possible. A ship was available that morning, and I easily put in two hours. But when I returned to the hangars in the afternoon, the only ship there was a new Canadian Curtiss JN4 then in process of being assembled and not yet released to the cadets for flying.
At four o’clock, after much difficulty, I finally obtained permission and took it up. It was a wonderful little aeroplane, firm, taut, and extremely pleasant to fly compared with the somewhat exhausted JN4Bs we had been using. Being late September, the air at that hour was cool and smooth; I turned east along the lake for a while. The other flying camp was west of the town. Kingston at that time of day seemed risky and so I turned north and then, while I could still see the lake clearly, headed back to camp. After several of these laps, I noticed the sun was getting low over the horizon and the latter was getting hazy. Then, on a pass over camp, I noticed the lights coming on there and in Deseronto but the sky was still light. I could see the instruments and the sunset illuminating the western horizon.
Watching night come on was so engrossing that I entirely overlooked the significance of what I was seeing. All of a sudden the light in the west vanished and darkness, like great rolls of black cotton, crowded in frighteningly from all directions. I was several miles east and north of camp when, without warning, my engine, which was new and stiff, sputtered once and stopped dead. I must have been 1,000 feet above the treetops.
There was no time to think. From some newborn instinct I pushed the nose of the aeroplane over into a steep dive. The treetops were coming up faster and faster when miraculously, the motor started again. The air pressure on the propeller generated by the dive had cranked the engine.
I was able to pull it out of the dive well clear of the trees and headed for camp again, still visible through the gathering darkness. I circled once to look over the landing problem. Instead of the usual ambulance at the edge of the field, there was a motor lorry with its headlights on showing up a few yards of grass on the surface of the field. That was all I needed to gauge my gliding angle and put the ship down beside the motor lorry. I taxied over to the open hangar and a waiting mechanic and looked at my watch. It was just six o’clock, and I had completed my ten hours.
A special automobile took me to Napanee, 12 miles away, so that I could take the night train. The porter got me up at Montreal the following morning just in time for me to climb on the day train for Boston. As the new porter carried in my luggage, including a leather flying helmet, he stared guardedly at my uniform and finally asked: “Mister, be you an avitator?” This was my first encounter with the public interest we attracted wherever we travelled during the War, heartwarming at first, but finally something of a burden.
Four days later, we were all on the train which ran from Toronto north into the Georgian Bay and Lake Simco country, where the advanced flying school was located.
As we approached our destination, no aeroplane hangars were visible, but the forbidding appearance of the temporary buildings surrounding the railroad station gave the impression of proximity to the War, which was enhanced by the rattle of machine gun fire from the ranges and the sustained roar of many motors in the test sheds nearby. Death in the summer sunshine of Deseronto seemed out of place and as far away as it does to air travellers of the jet age, but at Camp Borden the feeling of remoteness was gone, not to return until we finally left for home.
The weather was always cold and windy during our stay at Camp Borden. On some days it blew so hard that the underpowered Curtiss training aeroplanes were badly tossed about and we were constantly on the edge of trouble in turns at low altitudes near the aerodrome and in making landings, avoiding sideslips and spins. On one occasion, I watched two Canadian pilots who remained in a fixed position over camp for more than an hour, their flying speed barely equalling the speed of the wind. Several times they attempted to land but as soon as either cut his motor and began his descent, the wind picked up the aeroplane and carried it backward away from the field because of its much lower gliding speed. Power landings in those days were unheard of. The two finally landed after the wind had eased, fortunately before their gas had run out.
In one of the first flights I made at Camp Borden, coming back to the field, I nosed over a few miles from camp to lose altitude from 2,000 feet. The ship, which was rigged nose heavy, dropped out from under me so quickly, in an almost perpendicular dive, that I had the sensation of falling at lightning speed minus an aeroplane. Fortunately I was able to resist the instinctive impulse to pull up sharply on the controls which could have been disastrous.
On another occasion, McCoid and I were slated to fly to Toronto 70 miles away. There was a strong wind blowing, and when I took the aeroplane assigned to me up to try the air, the wind nearly turned it over. I was sure that it would fall apart. Much to the displeasure of our Canadian Flight Commander, I concluded it was too rough to make the trip that day. McCoid took off after a time but had to make a forced landing near Lake Simco far off the course to Toronto; he did not get back to camp for two days. A Canadian cadet took my ship and crashed so badly that he permanently lost the sight of both eyes.
The threat of a forced landing was the hazard most constantly present in our minds at Borden as it had been at Deseronto. At Borden, however, the course included, somewhat tardily, some preparation for such contingencies. We were required to make landings in a 50-foot circle on the aerodrome cutting the motor at a stated altitude, and our performance was checked by our Flight Commander. Whenever a cadet was in the air and had the opportunity, he was apt to hunt for a spot to try such a landing. It was good practice and, besides, landing in a farmer’s field had an attraction approximating an appearance in a circus parade.
The race track at Barry, a few miles from camp, was well suited for both landings and takeoffs, but it was so easy to get in and out of that it was scarcely worthwhile. Other sites selected from the air were likely to offer unpleasant surprises; it was almost impossible from our normal altitudes of flying, from 2,000 to 5,000 feet, to get an idea of the presence of hills and valleys or of the existence of fences. As a result a cadet attempting to make a simulated forced landing might find himself, when he came to a halt on the ground, with a hill blocking his takeoff into the wind or a fence too near to allow for the building up of the necessary speed and altitude. I had one such experience, missed the fence by inches, and avoided stalling by the narrowest of margins as I pulled the nose up to get over the top of a hill.
Some daily flying was devoted to formations and some to climbing for the altitude test, 8,000 feet. The hazard of the latter was that the JN4 sometimes stalled as it approached that height, and as none of us were given training in stalls or in the spins which might follow, those cadets who experienced either were apt to do the wrong thing. In the case of a stall, the wrong thing was to pull the nose up too fast which might crash the wings. So far as I can remember, the only remedy given us for a spin was reverse rudder and aileron which did not agree with the theory later taught us by the U. S. Navy which was to put all controls in neutral. I recalled this argument in the spring of 1918 as I spun a Navy Burgess seaplane into San Diego Bay.
Formation flying was largely a gesture as no check was or could have been kept on it by the school. Because of the heavy traffic in and out of the aerodrome, such maneuvers could only be tried at some distance from Camp Borden. The rough air and our limited training deterred us from ever bringing aeroplanes into close formation.
The remainder of the 40 hours flying required to finish the course was devoted to bombing practice, artillery observation, and aerial machine gunnery.
Bombing was the easiest. The R.F.C. had a ground support device consisting chiefly of a mirror in which the bombing plane was reflected. The bombing pilot sent down a “wireless” signal in lieu of releasing a bomb and the enlisted man watching the mirror could determine from the position of the reflection of the aeroplane whether the bomb would have hit the target.
That was all simple enough but the mirror was located close to the hangars and the path of ships landing. In addition, in trying to bring the aeroplane into position to score a hit, the tendency was for pilots to forget everything else and to wake up after pressing the wireless key in a dive or a sideslip or in front of an aeroplane attempting to land. The traffic was so heavy that it was absolutely necessary to put out your arm before making any kind of a turn or dive when near the aerodrome. Though we all had learned by experience at Deseronto that a few aeroplanes could crowd the sky and that they could come out of nowhere in the most unexpected places and at the most unexpected times, the change to Camp Borden, with its five squadrons operating from dawn to dark, was like a transfer from Main Street to Fifth Avenue traffic.
“Artillery Observation” consisted of flying figure 8s over a tent several miles from camp and reporting the location of puffs from small smoke bombs previously laid out and fired by an enlisted man in the tent. The report by the pilot was sent by “wireless” in the now well known “clock code.” As the Curtiss JN4 had no compass and the aeroplane was constantly turning, confusion was easy. Also by the time we got into this portion of the training, it was late October and so cold that we had to send the Morse Code by hitting the key with our fist encased in heavy gloves—the signals must have been very difficult to understand.
The “Aerial Gunnery” training on flexibly mounted Lewis Guns was given to pilots riding in the training aircraft as passengers along with cadets being trained as “observers.” The Canadian pilots flying these gunnery ships were volunteers, probably because it was regarded as a suicide profession. Two pilots would often put themselves into difficulties maneuvering their ships in simulated combat. A camera device, looking like a machine gun but taking only a single still picture when “fired,” produced a print showing whether the gunner’s aim would have scored a hit or a miss. After we returned to the United States a moving picture camera gun was developed which showed the results more accurately, particularly of burst firing.
The other part of aerial gunnery training, actual firing at a sleeve target towed by another aeroplane, was carried out with Lewis guns on flexible mounts bolted to the top wing of the gunnery ship. The cadet fired from a standing position in the rear cockpit. The pilot of the aeroplane with the tow target crossed the line of flight of the ship manned by the other gunnery pilot and cadet at a right angle and sufficiently ahead of the latter to give a clear chance for a burst of fire at the sleeve target without the towing ship coming into the line of fire. My own experience illustrates how hazardous the practice could be.
No safety belts were provided for the cadet, so that as soon as I spotted the target approaching from the right, I stood up in the rear cockpit and started firing. It was a long reach lengthening as the target got further away. Without intending any such gymnastics I climbed up until I was standing on the rear seat. As I followed the target, suddenly the towing ship and its pilot appeared in the middle of my ring-sight and I found my gun aimed point blank at his tail. Fortunately nothing happened, and I hastily turned my gun away and slid back into the seat. That night I expected at least there would be rumors of bullet holes in the towing ship, but I heard none. The incident, however, furnished a far too vivid illustration of one of the hazards that was responsible for the high mortality rate among gunnery pilots at Camp Borden that summer.
We never had an opportunity to fly an aeroplane equipped with a fixed gun sighted by aiming the ship at the target. There was one such aeroplane at Camp Borden with a Vickers gun firing between the blades of its propeller, synchronized by the Constante- nesco gear; but it was firmly anchored by cables to the ground on the machine gun range. Up to a few weeks before our arrival this aeroplane had been in regular use, and cadets had been allowed to practice firing at targets on the ground.
Although our experience in firing machine guns in the air was extremely limited, we spent many hours firing both Lewis and Vickers on the ranges. This like other training at Borden had its grim side. The weather was turning increasingly colder, and even in trench coats and makeshift overcoats, we had to gather close around roaring fires to keep warm when not actually firing the guns.
We had an extremely competent and considerate noncom as gunnery instructor and it was he who was responsible for what I believe was the extremely good machine gun technique which we passed on to U. S. Navy cadets when we returned home. We also spent a good deal of time taking written examinations in various subjects under the aegis of other noncoms when we were not flying, and We marvelled at the extent to which the British and the Canadians left the running of everything to these men.
In other respects, life at Borden was neither very pleasant nor comfortable. Some of the detachment were for a time obliged to live in tents and use outside washing facilities. These they regularly found frozen in the morning. We in the barracks were comfortable enough in the daytime, but at night even sleeping bags made from two Canadian army blankets, pinned together with huge horse blanket safety pins, failed to keep us warm.
Some of the Canadian cadets got weekend passes and spent the time in Toronto. None of our group tried to do likewise for a variety of reasons, but chiefly because we all wanted to get the training behind us. At camp the only recreation was gambling. This went on in a frenzied fashion night after night.
I recall one occasion when I joined a bridge game after dinner. There were several tables of poker or bridge in the large living room of the cadets’ mess building and a dice game going on in the center. As the evening wore on, the crowd playing dice became a howling mob. The poker and bridge players were joining in the uproar by making bets from their tables. And so it went far into the night with early morning flying and everything else completely forgotten. It was even impossible on many nights to find quiet by going to bed because there would be equally noisy games going on in the shower and wash rooms of the barracks.
In the midst of all this, occasionally a nearby bed might not be occupied and the next day a Canadian officer might be seen packing up the effects of that particular cadet to send them home.
But even at Borden all crashes were not fatal ones. I remember during two days I spent in the infirmary, getting rid of a sinus cold that made flying impossible, one of the Army cadets, Jimmy Ackerman, was carried in badly battered and completely out of his head. Jimmy lived not only to fly in France and to be shot down but also to return home none the worse for it.
Word had leaked out that the R.F.C. was moving to Texas for the winter very soon but the exact date had not been revealed. None of us wanted to go to Fort Worth with the R.F.C., however, and to avoid it, we made every effort to complete and to pass our tests. We were all much amused at the enthusiastic anticipation displayed by the Canadian personnel who all believed hopefully that that particular part of Texas would be very much like Florida. We all carefully refrained from disillusioning them.
About this time Ensign Fred Allen got us together and informed us that we were to return to the United States to Navy Flying Schools as instructors. He also told us that when we finished the course at Borden, we were to proceed to Toronto and each of us was to write a report to the Navy on some phase of the training, subject to be assigned.
Those last days at Borden were very confused, and I remember finding myself back in Toronto with most of the unit, distributed between the King Edward and the Queen’s Royal Hotels, with my assignment to describe in detail the R.F.C. system of practice bombing, using the mirror and “wireless.” These reports were finished in a few days, and we separated with verbal orders to report to the Boston Navy Yard after a brief leave. I believe we paid our own hotel expenses at Toronto as well as our travel expenses.
It was still October when we “formed two deep” outside the Boston Navy Yard. The brass on our hats and the bright green of our uniforms seemed to look brighter and more conspicuous in the autumn sunshine of Boston. When everyone seemed to be present, someone gave the command “right . . . march!” And as we swung by the Marine sentry at the gate, with clicking heels and our Sam Browne belts and British open-collared tunics, we heard a bystander remark to another that we were a detachment of the Italian Navy.
At the door of the building where we had received our orders in July, we halted and broke ranks never to form again. But the mission which began on that July night in 1917 was not ended. A new and far more important phase was soon to begin, but it can only be touched on here as it became many different stories instead of one.
Toward the end of November our commissions and orders came through. We were divided between Bay Shore and Hampton Roads Naval Air Stations, to qualify on seaplanes and flying boats, which required only a few days, and then we were scattered throughout the Navy.
The largest contingent from Bay Shore, including Allen, Gibson, Gordon, Clarkson, Swift and others, went to Pensacola, where they were active in the development of an advanced flying and aerial gunnery school patterned after Camp Borden. Duncan Read was soon sent to Miami where he founded another aerial gunnery school and remained in command there until the Armistice.
Breckenridge, Butler, Frothingham, McCann and Wright were sent to stations in England and France, Frothingham and Wright never to return. Ed Shea and I, after just a week at Hampton Roads, were ordered to San Diego, California, where, with Ensigns A. K. Warren and Bert Ames, naval aviators trained at Pensacola, we joined with Lieutenant Commander E. Winfield Spencer, then commanding officer of an air mechanics school located in Balboa Park, in founding the Naval Air Station at North Island. Our only other claim to distinction from that duty was the privilege which we enjoyed of dancing once on Saturday nights, at the Hotel del Coronado, with the commanding officer’s wife, now the Duchess of Windsor.
Jim Forrestal, with Goldthwaite, was sent to the Navy Department in Washington to help in the task of spreading the lessons learned and the material brought back from Canada. There he worked under Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who, 34 years later, would appoint Jim to be his Secretary of the Navy.