Aspects of Anglo-US co-operation in the air in the First World War

Air & Space Power Journal, Winter, 2004 by Sebastian Cox

Editorial Abstract: The United States Army entered the First World War with an air service of just over 1,000 men and 200 aircraft, not one of which was suitable for combat. US officers quickly recognised that their new Allies possessed a wealth of resources and experience which could be of great benefit to America's Airmen. This article recounts the early steps in what was to become a long and continuing history of Anglo-American air power cooperation in the First World War.

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THE HISTORY OF co-operation between Airmen of the British and American air services in the First World War falls very broadly into three categories: training and combat operations, theory and doctrine, and production. As latecomers both to the war itself and to the organisation and operation of air forces on a large scale, the Americans were anxious to benefit from the hard-won lessons and experience of their British and French Allies. On entering the war, the United States had only 130 officers and some 1,000 enlisted men in its aviation service, together with 200 aircraft, not one of which could be deemed suitable for combat. (1) By September of 1917, Gen John "Blackjack" Pershing was already planning an air service of 260 frontline squadrons by 30 June 1919. (2) If the United States was to build an effective air arm of this size, it was obvious to American officers that they should seek to obtain the maximum benefit not only from their Allies' firsthand experience of war, but also from their military organisations themselves. In addition, of course, some spirited Americans had entered the service of the Allies before the US declaration of war in April 1917. The most famous of these served with the Lafayette Escadrille of the French Air Service, but others, as we shall see, had made their way across the Canadian border and found their way into the British Royal Flying Corps (RFC).

An organisation of the small size of the US aviation section clearly could not expand, using its own resources rapidly enough to produce an air arm of sufficient size to meet US wartime requirements, without drawing on the already large and well-established resources of its Allies. Furthermore, as the Americans had no aircraft suitable for war; they were also going to rely on their Allies to a large degree for materiel, and this gave further impetus to the need to train US personnel not only to fly, but also to maintain foreign equipment. While Americans made strenuous efforts to develop training programmes and facilities in the continental United States, including co-operative efforts with industry, these were never going to be sufficient to support the rapid expansion and were always hampered by lack of equipment and instructors. In these circumstances, US officers turned to their Allies for assistance. In Britain's case, this took various forms, but one of the earliest initiatives came from a remarkable British officer--Lt Col (later Brig Gen) Cuthbert Hoare, commander of the RFC in Canada at the time. Remarkably, Hoare, despite the title of his organisation and its location in Canada, reported not to the Canadian government but to the War Office in London. Hoare did not run a Canadian RFC but was, in effect, operating an entirely autonomous British military organisation in another nation, and although the Canadian government gave him its co-operation and support and was in turn kept abreast of his activities, it did not exercise any real control over these activities. With an officer less able or less diplomatic than Hoare, national sensibilities and the sometimes prickly independence, which unthinking British officers could all too readily ignite in Dominion nations, might well have created friction and conflict. Hoare's remit was to establish 20 training units in Canada, with their supporting organisation, in order to provide a steady stream of manpower for the British frontline Air Service. His organisation was to recruit the personnel and give them initial ground training and basic flying instruction. They would then be sent to Britain to complete their training before moving on to combat units. (3)

As the Canadian official historian has commented, "The key to the success or failure of RFC Canada lay in recruiting." (4) Hoare had always sought to recruit Americans into the RFC even before US entry into the war, but US legislation, notably the Foreign Enlistment Act of 1818, prevented recruitment on US soil, and potential recruits had to be enticed across the Canadian border if they were to join up. More remarkable still, however, were his actions after the US declaration of war. On the face of it, the United States' entry into the war threatened to turn off the flow of US recruits for Hoare's scheme since patriotic Americans might reasonably be expected to enlist in their own nation's air service to fight the war rather than that of an Allied country. Such was not the case, however, and Hoare successfully continued to recruit Americans. The seeds of his success were sown when the United States entered the war and the British ambassador in Washington asked him to meet with US officers and officials to give them the benefit of his experience in military aviation. At this meeting, Hoare met Brig Gen George O. Squier, then the chief signal officer of the US Army, but more importantly the man with overall responsibility for the US Army's nascent air service. A number of initiatives flowed from this initial meeting. Subsequently, in May 1917, Squier visited Hoare in Canada and told him that the US Air Board would not object to the British opening a recruiting office in the United States. A British recruiting mission was established in New York, ostensibly to recruit British citizens resident in the United States. Hoare went one step further, however, and, working with the mission, opened an office on Fifth Avenue which actively, if quietly, sought to recruit Americans. Hoare himself was well aware of the tenuous nature of his operation. He told London in September 1917, "The situation is this: the British Recruiting Mission has given a written undertaking not to recruit American subjects; that I can do so is entirely due to personal influence at Washington, and though I think I can carry it through, I cannot possibly give you a definite assurance." Eventually and inevitably, his activities drew the attention of others in Washington who were not so well disposed as Squier, and in February 1918, Hoare was forced by the State Department to cease his recruitment activities. (5) The exact number of recruits enlisted via Hoare's unorthodox activities is unknown, but some 300 Airmen are believed to have entered the RFC through enlistment via Canada. (6) We might legitimately ask why Squier would apparently so readily agree to suitable candidates for his own air service being "poached" by the British after the American entry into the war. The answer, in all probability, lies in the fact that Squier knew his own training organisation was inadequate and thought it better to have Americans trained to fight with the British than not to fight at all. He may have calculated that some at least would become available to the American service in due course, and in this he must have been encouraged by the fact that the British agreed to release five experienced US pilots from their own service and transfer them to the US Army, where they were promptly appointed as squadron commanders. (7) Furthermore, through one route or another, between 900 and 1,100 Americans ultimately flew with the RFC. These men not only provided a very welcome influx of high-quality personnel to the British Air Service but ultimately proved of even more value to their homeland, since most of the survivors ultimately transferred to the US service, bringing with them a priceless injection of frontline experience. (8)