List of Training Section Air Service airfields
With the purchase of its first airplane, built and successfully flown by Orville and Wilbur Wright, in 1909 the United States Army began the training of flight personnel. This article describes the training provided in those early years, though World War I, and the immediate years after the war until the establishment of the United States Army Air Corps Flight Training Center in San Antonio, Texas during 1926.
The history of aviation training in the United States military began on 8 October 1909, when Wilbur Wright began instructing Lieutenants Frank P. Lahm and Frederic E. Humphreys on Signal Corps Airplane No. 1, which the Army had recently purchased from the Wright brothers. Each of the two men received a little over three hours training before soloing on 26 October 1909.
The Army airplane trials had been held at Fort Myer, Maryland in 1908 because of its proximity to Washington, headquarters of the Army and its Aeronautical Division, but the commandant at Fort Myer (a cavalry and field artillery post) refused to relinquish the parade ground for further flight training. He was already disgruntled because the trials had disrupted his summer training schedule of mounted drills. Moreover, the Wright Brothers expressed reluctance to teach beginners to fly on the small, enclosed area.
Another site was found near College Park, Maryland, about eight miles northeast of Washington, D.C. The Signal Corps agreed to lease the site. However, the winter weather meant the College Park site could not be used for year-round training. Various sites in the south and west were used during the early 1910s at Fort Sam Houston, near San Antonio, Texas, North Island, San Diego, California, and Augusta, Georgia. However flying training in the Army remained on a small scale until the USA joined World War I in April 1917. In February 1913, the Aviation School contingent in Augusta, Georgia, along with two pilots who had been training in Palm Beach, Florida, transferred to Texas City, Texas, to join ground forces on duty along the border. This meant that the Army Aviation school was concentrated on North Island, San Diego.
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