Photo By Lori Stewart | Courier Cpl. Roland McFall receives plates from Observer 1st Lt. James B. Harvey at...... read more read more
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by Lori S. Stewart, USAICoE Command Historian
15 APRIL 1918
On 15 April 1918, a 1st Aero Squadron crew flew the first reconnaissance mission for the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) over an enemy-held section of France. The pilot, Maj. (later Maj. Gen.) Ralph Royce, has also been credited with being the first American Army pilot to fly an airplane in combat. The combination of airplane and camera created an invaluable instrument of warfare that remains essential to intelligence operations today.
Photographer Lt. Fred E. D'Amour gave a dramatic illustration of the risks these fliers faced:
“Protection had been promised by the First Pursuit Group. We landed at Saints where the fighters were based and agreed to meet their patrol over Conluise at 1,000 meters. Rendezvous made. Started for the front. Low clouds blocked our flight path and we lost our fighter protection. Went ahead anyway to get the assigned pictures. The photographs were to be obliques of strong points in the rear of the German lines.”
D'Amour recounted the camera jammed shortly into the mission. Behind enemy lines already, they decided to make a visual reconnaissance of the enemy rear. Taking average fire at first, “as we neared the front lines on our return flight, the ground fire became extremely active. When we were still about 12 kilometers inside the German lines an antiaircraft shell exploded directly underneath the motor, tearing a large piece off the end of the propeller blade and stopping the motor.”
The aircraft began a rapid descent before the motor suddenly started again at forty meters altitude. The pilot made a low-level escape. The harrowing adventure paid rewards, however.
“Some days later the chief of the army corps visited the field and stated that the photographs taken that day had given them information of valuable importance, and that dugouts sheltering an entire regiment of enemy troops had been located and destroyed by our artillery after being detected on one of our pictures.”
These reconnaissance flights became one of the mainstays of the U.S. intelligence-gathering effort during the war. Between 1 July and 11 November 1918, the Army reported 1.3 million aerial photos were taken and used for intelligence purposes. During the battle of Meuse-Argonne alone, 56,000 aerial shots were printed for use by the Army. By the end of the war, the products were approaching a “real time” usefulness as the time between taking a photo and developing, printing, and interpreting that photo was as little as twenty minutes.
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| Date Taken: | 04.10.2023 |
| Date Posted: | 04.10.2023 10:58 |
| Story ID: | 442320 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 69 |
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