Dean Ivan Lamb

Dean Ivan Lamb (January 25, 1886 – November 1955) was an American pioneer aviator and soldier of fortune.

Dean Ivan Lamb was born on January 25, 1886 in Cherry Flats, Tioga County, Pennsylvania. In 1908 he was working on the Panama Canal

He enrolled in the Curtiss flying school in Hammondsport, New York in 1912. During the Mexican Revolution, according to a Lamb newspaper interview, he was hired as a mercenary pilot to fly for General Benjamin G. Hill's forces. Phil Rader, a mercenary pilot for opposing General Victoriano Huerta, had supposedly several times bombed the town of Naco, Sonora, Mexico, held by Hill's forces. The two pilots were reputed friends, and staged a mock pistol battle in the sky often labeled the first dogfight in history.

Lamb purportedly joined the British military in World War I and transferred to the Royal Flying Corps as a sergeant-pilot, supposedly becoming an ace with either five or eight victories. Lamb was interviewed by Arthur Howden Smith of the New York Evening Post about his claimed downing of a German Gotha bomber over Hainault Forest, in which his gunner was killed and he himself was shot. However, he goes unnoted by such aviation historians as Norman Franks and Christopher Shores, and none of his victories has ever been documented.

Lamb supposedly was awarded Royal Aero Club Certificate No. 4543 on April 26, 1917, while an Air Mechanic, 1st Class. There is a Sgt. Dean Lamb (service number 8054) who joined the Royal Flying Corps on August 30, 1915, and was discharged on October 5, 1917. This man is listed as suffering from neurasthenia, and his age is given as 31 years, 8 months {which agrees with Lamb's age on the specified discharge date}. Lamb also married in England in 1917.

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