Aeronautical Division, U.S. Signal Corps
military unit
The Aeronautical Division, Signal Corps (1907–1914) was the first heavier-than-air military aviation organization in history and the progenitor of the United States Air Force. A component of the U.S. Army Signal Corps, the Aeronautical Division procured the first powered military aircraft in 1909, created schools to train its aviators, and initiated a rating system for pilot qualifications. It organized and deployed the first permanent American aviation unit, the 1st Aero Squadron, in 1913. The Aeronautical Division trained 51 officers and 2 enlisted men as pilots, and incurred 13 fatalities in air crashes. During this period, the Aeronautical Division had 29 factory-built aircraft in its inventory, built a 30th from spare parts, and leased a civilian airplane for a short period in 1911.
Following statutory authorization of an Aviation Section in the Signal Corps by the United States Congress in 1914, the Aeronautical Division continued as the primary organizational component of the section until April 1918, when its inefficiency in mobilizing for World War I caused the War Department to replace it with an organization independent of the Signal Corps that eventually became the foundation of the Army's Air Service.
Birth of an air arm
The United States Army Signal Corps became associated with aeronautics during the American Civil War, when Thaddeus S. C. Lowe was named chief of the Union Army Balloon Corps. In 1892, Major General Adolphus Greely, Chief Signal officer of the Army, formulated plans for a War Balloon detachment for the Signal Corps and authorized the purchase of a balloon from France, dubbed the General Myer, based at Fort Riley in 1893 and Fort Logan in 1894. When the General Myer deteriorated, a second balloon, the Santiago, was manufactured by members of the Signal Corps in 1897 using the General Myer as a model, and served in combat in Cuba in 1898.
In 1898–99, the War Department accepted the report of an aeronautically minded investigating committee that included Alexander Graham Bell and invested $50,000 for the rights to a heavier-than-air flying machine being developed by Samuel Pierpont Langley, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.
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