U.S. Army Signal Corps

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Early members of the Signal Corps ballooning program, and a dog.

The Signal Corps, established in 1860, is a division of the U.S. Army primarily responsible for information and communication.

Its original mandate included weather forecasting, and it had jurisdiction over the U.S. Weather Bureau from its inception in 1870 until 1890 when it was transferred to the Department of Agriculture.

In 1893, Adolphus Washington Greely created a new balloon program within the Signal Corps. In the Spanish-American War one balloon was used during the battle for San Juan Heights, east of Santiago de Cuba.[1]

In 1907 the Signal Corps created an Aeronautics Section, which was spun off in 1918 as the Army Air Service.

Also in 1907 the Signal Corps issued Signal Corps Specification Number 486, a request for bids to construct an airplane, with notoriously stringent requirements. The contract was awarded to the Wright Brothers who delivered the army's first airplane, the Wright Military Flyer (a.k.a. Type A, Model A, Signal Corps No. 1), to Fort Myer, Virginia. The Aeronautical Board created oversee trials of this airplane included Frank Lahm and Frederic Humphreys. In 1909, the army brought in Wilbur Wright to train Lahm and Humphreys as the first military aviators at a field in College Park, Maryland.[2]

On 3 March 1911, Congress made its first official appropriation for aviation: $125,000. The Signal Corps used these funds for training at San Antonio and in June 2011 to formalize the flying school at College Park. By the end of the year the American air force had five planes, three balloons, and six pilots.[3]

In 1912–1914 the Signal Corps set up an aviation base at North Island near San Diego, establishing the Signal Corps Aviation School at a site already used by Glenn Curtiss.


Organization names Army Signal Corps
Entity type
Country US
City
Affiliated with United States Army, U.S. Weather Bureau
Scope national
Started aero 1893
Ended aero
Keywords
Key people Adolphus Washington Greely, George Owen Squier, Benjamin Delahauf Foulois, William A. Glassford
Wikidata id Q736213


Links

References

  1. Jerome V. Martin, "Balloons, U.S. Signal Corps"; in The Encyclopedia of the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars, vol. 1, ed. Spencer C. Tucker; ABC CLIO, 2009, p. 43.
  2. Catherine Wallace Allen, "Wright Military Training at College Park, 1909", Air Power History, Winter 2002.
  3. Sweetser, 1919, The American Air Service, pp. 11–12.

People affiliated with U.S. Army Signal Corps

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