Posted on 08/09/2005 10:31:34 PM PDT by real saxophonist
During November and December 1917, Captain Alfred A. Cunningham, the first Marine Corps aviator, travelling under orders from Major General Commandant George Barnett, toured the battlefronts and flying fields of France to observe Allied air operations and training.
In 1917, Cunningham was the Marine Corps's de facto director of aviation. He had joined the Corps in 1909 and as a first lieutenant stationed at the Philadelphia Navy Yard made his first experimental flights in a crude airplane which he rented at his own expense. In May 1912, the Marine Corps sent Cunningham to Annapolis for Navy pilot training. He soloed early in August of that same year and on 5 March 1913 was designated a naval aviator.
During the next four years, as Marine aviation slowly grew, Cunningham, joined by a few other far-sighted Marines, continually worked and argued to promote its interests. On 26 February 1917, Cunningham received orders to organize at the Philadelphia Navy Yard the Marines' first tactical aviation unit, called initially the Marine Corps Aeronautic Company. At this time, Marine aviation muster rolls carried the names of seven aviators and 43 ground personnel.
With the declaration of war against Germany in April 1917, Marine aviation, with Aeronautic Company as its nucleus, joined the rest of the Corps in rapid expansion.
Cunningham began looking for a way to get his force of men and machines into front-line combat. To this end, he made his trip to France. He brought back from his tour a proposal for the creation of a Northern Bombing Group composed of squadrons of Navy and Marine land planes with the mission of attacking German U-boat bases on the Belgian coast. This plan won the backing of the General Board of the Navy, and on 11 March 1918 Cunningham received instructions to organize the First Marine Aviation Force -- the first Marine air organization ever to fly in combat.
During his tour of the war front in 1917, Captain Cunningham kept this diary, which was acquired by the Manuscript Collection of the Marine Corps Museum in November 1973 as part of a gift of Cunningham materials made by Mrs. Alexander H. Jefferies, sister-in-law of the late Mrs. Alfred A. Cunningham. The original of the diary is now located in the Alfred A. Cunningham Papers (PC 459) in the Marine Corps Museum Collections Unit, Building 198, Washington Navy Yard.
The diary, kept in tiny, neat handwriting in a small pocket notebook, begins on 3 November 1917 with Cunningham's sailing from New York on board the S. S. St. Paul. After a description of a rough winter passage through the North Atlantic U-boat zone, the entries record the confusion, inconveniences, and hardships of wartime London and Paris and contain repeated expressions of homesickness, along with sometimes acid comment on the French people and culture. (emphasis mine) 8~)
Semper Fi bump
Possible Foxhole material?
Thanks for posting this
Yes Sir! Thanks.
Thanks for reading it
Bump. Just to see if anyone sees this.
It is worth a read, imo.
Hey, thanks for the bump. It is a good read.
Tou're Welcome!
Tou're=You're
Bump for later read...
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