Air University Review, September-October 1967
The Role of the Army Air Arm in
Latin America, 1922-1931
Dr. Wesley Phillips
Newton
In the early twentieth century the United
States became increasingly concerned about the nature and
degree of extra-hemispheric attention to Latin America.
With the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914, the United States had added reason for
concern about such outside interest. It sometimes implied a threat to the
Canal, besides being a part of the economic and, beginning in the 1920s,
ideological competition among the major powers. Following World War I the
threat appeared to grow because of the progressive development of the airplane.
The airplane also provided a stimulant to the economic aspect of the competition.1
It is not surprising, then, that the United States Army Air Service*
played an important role in the government’s reaction to the threat and
competition.
General defense of an interocean canal was a concern of the United States government before, during, and
after the actual acquisition of the Panama Canal Zone
in 1903. But defense of the Canal against a threat from the sky was not an
immediate cause for anxiety, for aviation as a military weapon or
transportation boon was slow to develop after the first manned heavier-than-air
flight in 1903. In April 1913, however, a U.S.
civilian aviator, Robert Fowler, made the first flight over the Panama Canal. His flight generated enough alarm in
governmental circles to bring about the initial regulatory measure pertaining
to aviation and the Canal, an executive order of 7 August 1913 prohibiting
unauthorized flights over the Canal Zone.
During World War I various other Presidential orders broadened the original
one. After the war the government allotted an Air Service observation group and
a small number of Navy planes to the Canal Zone.2 These and
antiaircraft batteries were to provide an air defense that probably was
sufficient for any practical assault that could have been mounted at the time.
By 1922 a few Army airmen as well as a few diplomats and politicians saw the
need for additional defense for the Canal because of certain European
commercial endeavors in Latin America, mainly originating after World War I:
the sale of civil and military aircraft and the establishment of flying schools
and rudimentary airlines in an area that needed air transportation but had
little aviation of its own. In the first few years after the war the United States
had been little interested in this competition for aviation sales and service.
In December 1922, however, the United States Minister to Guatemala, Arthur H. Geissler, sounded an alarm
to the State Department about European aviation activities in Central
America. He coupled his warning with suggestions that the United States establish its own airline services
in Central America and that military and naval planes from the Canal Zone be sent on missions of courtesy to Central
America.3
Motivated by the warning, Secretary of War John W. Weeks soon wrote
Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes that there was a genuine threat to the
Canal from commercial planes potentially convertible to bombers. He stated his
opposition to any but United States
control of airline service in Central America.
The Chief of the Army Air Service, Major General Mason M. Patrick, had assured
him, Weeks informed Hughes, of the availability of private U.S. capital and
personnel if such an airline proved feasible. Concerning Geissler’s suggestion
that planes be used in diplomacy, Weeks reported to the State Department that
five Air Service planes were available in the Canal Zone for missions of
courtesy to Central America. He pointed out
that the logical time for such flights would be between November 1923 and April
1924, when the weather would tend to be favorable.4
Washington
had thus decided to use the Air Service as a diplomatic instrument to
counteract the alleged threat to the Canal. It did not take an entirely new
orientation for the Air Service to assume this duty. Since the war various
individuals in that service had been interested in Latin America as a logical
area for the expansion of United
States aviation. They had advocated official
air missions or displays of U.S.
aviation products at expositions attended by Latin Americans. On the other band
the Air Service had at times failed to take advantage of such opportunities to
promote U.S.
aviation.5
What kind of environment were foreigners to encounter in Latin
America following World War I? The influence of the industrial
revolution, given impetus by World War I, was at work in parts of Latin America. The area had over a century’s history of
attracting foreign investments, necessary for its development. A dubious effect
of foreign investment was that it sometimes served as one prop for ruling oligarchies
and caudillos. Many countries in the 1920s continued to welcome foreign
loans, private and governmental, and various other forms of investment, while a
few, like Mexico,
were taking steps to limit investment. The Mexican attitude had contributed to
a time of tension with the United
States.
Certain past U.S.
policies, like the Roosevelt corollary to the
Monroe Doctrine and Dollar Diplomacy, had provoked increasing Latin American
ill will toward the northern neighbor. The continued occupation of Haiti and broadened involvement in Nicaragua
beginning late in 1926 were other examples. During the 1920s these policies
underwent change, however, as evidenced by the Central American Flight in 1924,
the Pan American Flight in 1926-27 (about which more later), and as climaxed by
the Good-Neighbor Policy of the 1930s.
It was in a milieu of some tension, then, that the Air Service prepared to
involve itself in a Latin American diplomatic mission. Flights of planes from
the Canal Zone to surrounding Latin American
areas for official purposes were not new in 1923. Navy planes from the air
station at Coco Solo, C.Z., had previously flown to points in South
America on courtesy visits. These flights had aroused enthusiasm
among South American businessmen for aviation. The proposed Army venture,
however, had wider implications. In a letter of 17 July 1923, Weeks outlined to
Hughes the purposes of the projected flight to Central America: (1) sowing of
good will, (2) charting of air routes and gathering of data on available
airfields, (3) serving as forerunner of a United States airmail service from
New Orleans to Central America, and (4) aiding the United States aviation
industry to establish a market in Central America. Samuel S. Bradley,
post-World War I figure in the United
States aviation industry, recognized early
in the era that “only through the development of commercial aviation will we be
able to maintain a sufficient aeronautical establishment to meet the needs of
national security.”6 In seeking to promote overseas sales of
American aviation products by the Central American Flight, the Air Service gave
evidence that it had come to appreciate fully the relationship of a healthy
industry to preparedness.
In August 1923 the Adjutant General of the United States Army authorized the
Commanding General of the Panama Canal Department to send three planes to
Central America for visits of courtesy and for charting “such airways in the
Central American Republics as would be of value to the respective governments
as well as to the Army Air Service in the event of an emergency….”The flyers
also were to collect photographic data in support of airways reports. The air
route to be surveyed was to run no farther north than “the southern Mexican
border.”7 Although not previously cited as a motive for the flight,
the existence of airways for “emergency” use was to become of prime interest to
the Army. This motive will be apparent in the subsequent account of Pan
American Airways in Central America. Such an
airway naturally related to the general theme of protection of the Canal.
As a companion project to the Central American Flight, Secretary Weeks
suggested that treaties be sought with Central American countries for the
exchange of aviation privileges and for mutual regulations pertaining to
airplanes. The Air Service influenced this suggestion. General Patrick had been
one of the U.S. delegates to
a meeting in Paris
in 1919 at which the first major international aviation agreement, the Paris
Convention, was written. It was the basis for exchange of aviation privileges
between contracting countries but at the same time asserted that a nation had
sovereignty over its airspace. The United States had signed but for
various reasons had never ratified the convention. The Air Service believed
that expansion of U.S.
aviation was limited by the failure to ratify. Individual treaties with Central
American countries were to serve in lieu of ratification of the Paris
Convention by these countries and the United States. Post-master General
Harry S. New and Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover favored these treaties, but
Secretary of the Navy Edwin Denby presented the objections of the influential
Navy General Board to the effect that reciprocal agreements might boomerang
against the United States in the long run. Whether or not the Navy attitude was
decisive, the treaties never developed. When it was evident they were a dead
issue, General Patrick expressed his disappointment. They would, he believed, “afford
to our Nationals the requisite assurance of their right to the continuing
operation of such aerial transportation lines as they may see fit to establish
in these Republics…”8
Thus the flight remained the central focus of the project. Hearing of the
plans for a flight, the aviation industry’s Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce
wrote to the Information Division, Army Air Service, requesting that the flight
commander disseminate accurate facts about the United
States aviation industry and gather data on the market
potential in Central America. In reply the
Information Division stated that one mission of the flight was to gather
information that would aid the United States aviation industry but that it
could not go beyond this, for the main objective of the flight was to
disseminate good will, and Central American countries would resent an “advertising
campaign” carried on by a “purely mercenary expedition….”9
Certain events in 1923 and 1924 made the flight seem urgent. In 1923 the Republic of Panama
initiated negotiations with the United States
for a recognized voice in matters pertaining to aerial navigation in Panama. United States officials in the Canal Zone,
including Department Air Officer Major Raycroft Walsh, were cautious in the
beginning talks, desiring control of aviation in all of Panama to protect
the Canal. These talks soon became part of general United States—Panamanian
negotiations toward revising treaty arrangements with respect to the Canal Zone. At some point in 1923 an airline company in Colombia, La Sociedad Colombo-Alemana de
Transportes Aéreos (Scadta), commenced to apply pressure on the United States government for landing privileges
in the Canal Zone. The Canal Zone was a
requisite stopover for a survey flight preliminary to an extension of Scadta’s
services to the United States
via Central America and the Caribbean.
Domination of Scadta by German and Austrian interests made its overtures
especially unwelcome to United
States officialdom. These events were
perhaps capped early in 1924 when the chief umpires of the recently completed
joint Army-Navy maneuvers in the area stated that air attacks against the Panama Canal would have an excellent chance of success.10
On 4 February 1924 Major Raycroft Walsh led the Central American Flight of
one Martin bomber and two de Havillands on a journey that was in many respects
a considerable undertaking. The flyers were not the first in Central
America, but they were the first to attempt an elaborate
diplomatic flight on a rigid time schedule. The lumbering Martin set an uneven
pace that made it difficult to estimate the time of arrival at stops, where
expectant crowds and tense officials waited. An ironic contrast existed: the
flight carried radio equipment with which it performed plane-to-plane and
air-to-ground experiments, but the maps of the navigation officer were not
aerial maps, and landing fields were often primitive. In a sense the flyers
were hostages to wild terrain, jungle, swamp, volcanoes (the latter “fat and
majestic” in the words of the navigation officer), and on one occasion to some
of the roughest air many of them had ever encountered.11 Like the conquistadores
of old, they were explorers with political motives.
In spite of the impediments, the flight proceeded up Panama to Costa
Rica, Nicaragua,
El Salvador, and Guatemala, avoiding Honduras, where there was
revolutionary turmoil. At each stop cordiality and enthusiasm were evident.
Through a misunderstanding, the Nicaraguan chief executive was not on hand on
the outward journey, but he gave a banquet for the flyers on their return trip
and went up for a joy ride. In Guatemala,
President José Maria Orellana led the crowd in three cheers for the United States,
a compliment the aviators did their best to return. Although wearied by flying
and the demands of formal and informal receptions, the flyers, according to
observers, performed with finesse. Central Americans were particularly
impressed by the fact that the visitors managed to arrive at scheduled stops on
time. They were undoubtedly impressed by another statistic: the flight returned
to the Canal Zone on 24 February 1924 without
serious accident or loss of life.12
In his official report Walsh pronounced the goodwill and route-chartering
phases of the mission accomplished. To expedite the successful conclusion of
the other two phases—a United States airmail service to Central America and aid
to the American aviation industry —he recommended that the United States send
official air missions to Central America to offset the influence of Europeans,
whose aviation activities in Central America the flight had affirmed, and that
the United States government promote an airline, either official or private, in
the area. Such a line would have to connect with both the United States and the Canal
Zone to be profitable. To boost its aviation industry, the United States needed to establish service and
supply facilities in Central America and
choose with care a plane for the airmail service.13
The Central American Flight was the pioneer effort of major good-will
endeavors in Latin America by the Air Service
and its successors. It had another and broader importance for the future: the
flight was a harbinger of the Good-Neighbor Policy and its subsequent
variations, whereby the United States recognized the value of demonstrated
good-will.14 It cannot be denied that the flight was also in certain
respects a continuation of Dollar Diplomacy, in that it sought to promote
American economic investment in Latin America for the advancement of diplomatic
aims. But an avowed and sincere objective of Walsh and his men was to spread
good will. The success of that objective is revealed in the Central American
response to the flight.
The aftermath of the flight, however, was for those who desired a successful
outcome a story of apathy, frustration, and delay. Secretary Weeks’ reaction to
Walsh’s report did not contain the urgency he had expressed earlier. While
Weeks advocated some type of action, he stated that no authority existed for
air missions to Latin America. It was not
until six months after the flight that an interdepartmental conference met in Washington to discuss
the matter. Meeting on 20 August 1924, with Walsh representing the War
Department, the conference recommended that the Post Office Department
investigate the practicality of an airmail route to Central America.15
Accordingly, the Post Office Department selected postal specialists Vincent
C. Burke and Joseph V. Magee to conduct an investigation. They were supplied
such pertinent information as the high degree of interest in Central
America for an airline and airmail service. The Mexican ambassador
indicated that his country might cooperate in the establishment of a route. United States diplomats repeated Walsh’s point
that a successful airline must connect the United
States and Panama. Even then, they warned, the
line might not pay at first, but military and economic reasons made the route
imperative.16
In November 1924, after arriving in the Canal Zone,
Burke and Magee consulted with various officials, among them Major General
William Lassiter, commanding the Panama Canal Department. Lassiter pointed out
several benefits to be derived from a Panama—United States
airline. He suggested that its facilities would be especially beneficial to the
Air Service in wartime. After a short stay in the Canal Zone and a quick visit
to Costa Rica, Burke and
Magee returned to the United
States. In their report they stated that
they found from statistics in the Canal Zone, from talks with officials, and
from the trip to Costa Rica
that an airmail service was not economically feasible and so, from a postal
standpoint, not justifiable. They offered the view, however, that the service
was probably justified from a strategic standpoint. Thus they did not reject an
airline out of hand, but the report set off a chain reaction that brought a
halt to progress. Postmaster General New felt that further action was not “desirable……at
this time.” On the basis of this decision by the Post Office Department, both
the State and War Departments decided to terminate their efforts. But it was
not without protest from the Air Service. General Patrick felt the
investigation was not a true test, for the inspectors had not gone to Guatemala,
where sentiment for airline service was the strongest. Defense of the Canal,
Patrick warned, made such service urgent. He tried to reopen the matter twice,
in January and February 1925, but each time the War Department disapproved.17
While it was the end of action for a time, it did not end various
repercussions. Mr. Geissler in Guatemala
continued to warn of the consequences of failure to establish a service to Central America. General William (“Billy”) Mitchell, who
had advocated an airline to Latin America,
accused the War Department of almost criminal negligence in not heeding Patrick’s
importuning. The matter became an issue at his famous court-martial late in
1925. At one point the defense called on Raycroft Walsh, who reviewed the
Central American Flight, his report, General Patrick’s concurrence, and the
lack of concrete action. Meanwhile, Walsh testified, foreign interests had
gained a foothold in Central America,
threatening the Panama Canal.18
Walsh was apparently referring to moves in 1925 by Scadta, the
German-and-Austrian-controlled airline company, to extend its operations
northward from Colombia into
the Caribbean and to the United
States. Early in 1925 the company’s suave
managing director, Dr. Peter Paul von Bauer, visited the United States and wheedled permission for
company planes to stop over in the Canal Zone
on a flight to survey the proposed extension. A member of the survey flight, he
apparently impressed both Air Service personnel and diplomats in Panama when the flight visited the Canal Zone in August 1925. In Central
America, Von Bauer and other flight members obtained contracts for
service from several governments. After the flight ended in Cuba, Von Bauer continued on to Washington. There in the
fall of 1925 he consulted with postal authorities, other executive branch
members, and military and naval officials and also paid a courtesy call on
President Calvin Coolidge. The Air Service played a kibitzer’s role in the
diplomatic game between Washington and Von Bauer, who sought official backing
for his plan to extend Scadta’s service to the United States and desired an
airmail contract. 19
Von Bauer had chartered a company in Delaware
to conduct the proposed new service, hoping that the United States government would
allow the new company to use Scadta resources and personnel, thus stamping it
with a Scadta imprint. At a series of interdepartmental meetings to consider
approval of Von Bauer’s proposal, the Air Service’s influence was a major
factor against acceptance. The War Department representative reported on the
meetings as they developed to Major Walsh, Patrick’s liaison. During the meetings
both the Post Office and Commerce Departments’ representatives leaned toward
Von Bauer. The War Department representative sought to have the conferees
advance ways by which the United States,
rather than Scadta or some subsidiary in disguise, would have control of air
routes in Central America and the Caribbean.
In reply to the War Department’s request for specific recommendations as to
achieving control, Patrick suggested passage of pending legislation authorizing
air missions to be sent to Latin America and administrative action to promote
an airline to Central America. For the most
part the conferees evaded Patrick’s suggestions, but neither did they approve
Von Bauer’s plan. Major Henry H. (“Hap”) Arnold
also had a part in the Air Service effort against Scadta. Alarmed at the
company’s proximity to the Canal, he proposed that a purely American company be
organized immediately as a counterweight. He and Major Carl Spaatz drew up a
prospectus for such a company, which became a government weapon to counter Von
Bauer’s plan. In addition to War Department and Air Service resistance,
opposition by United States
business elements helped to thwart Scadta.20
The Air Service was not content to let conferences and interdepartmental
decisions determine the fate of an airline to Latin
America. During 1925 and on into 1926, it planned and shaped a new
flight, soon known as the Pan American Good Will Flight. Major Herbert A.
Dargue was to command it. Early in the planning Dargue listed the
objectives for Patrick; the flight’s strategic, economic, and diplomatic
objectives were to counteract foreign influence potentially harmful to the
Canal by showing Latin Americans the superiority of United States equipment
over foreign, to demonstrate the feasibility of commercial air service along
the airways of Latin America, and to convey good will. Assistant Secretary of
War for Aeronautics F. Trubee Davison, in a letter of July 1926 to Secretary of
State Frank B. Kellogg, expressed some of the same objectives but placed a slightly
different emphasis. Davison stressed the need for “American-controlled airlines
throughout Central and South American countries . . . [necessary] from both a
commercial and national defense standpoint………”Such airlines would boost the U.S.
aviation industry, whose expansion was vital to meet any future “national
emergency.” These airlines would also “counteract the creation of alien
activities in Central and South America….”The Pan American Flight, Davison
felt, would supply the necessary data for the establishment of a United States
airline. After extensive preparation, the flight started on 22 December 1926,
when five Loening amphibians took off from Texas and flew to Mexico.21
From the outset the Pan American Flight bucked psychological currents, with which
the Central American Flight had not had to contend. Late in 1926 the United States
government committed itself intensively in Nicaraguan revolutionary strife. The
timing was unfortunate: the flight progressed in a period when Latin Americans
voiced their disapproval at what many of them considered unwarranted U.S.
interference in Nicaraguan affairs. The flight was a natural target for that
disapproval. In the generally unfavorable atmosphere, old antagonisms
sharpened, as in Mexico,
where the flight’s reception was in the main cold. In Colombia, where there were still memories of the
loss of Panama,
the flyers avoided certain places where violence threatened. But in other
countries, like Peru and Brazil, the reception was friendly, for there
relations with the United
States were above average for Latin America.22
In Argentina
the flight experienced a climax of bad luck. It had previously suffered delays
and damages to planes, but no loss of life. Over Buenos Aires, two of the planes suddenly
collided, and, locked together, they spun in. The parachutes of one two-man
crew billowed, but the other two flyers, having neglected to wear parachutes,
perished. Argentina
had been officially friendly, privately unfriendly; but Latin hostility and
indifference quickly turned to sympathy. It was sympathy for the dead
and their comrades, however, not for the flight itself. The survivors regrouped
and finished the tour.23
In some respects, the flight was a failure bordering on disaster. Dargue’s
own report belies the flight’s success in encouraging good will in much of Latin America. Its delays, accidents, and loss of life
did not contribute to a positive image of a United States airline. Yet it did
contribute something toward such an enterprise. Some of the airplanes were the
first to cover the principal airways of Latin America
in one journey, evincing further the airplane’s potential for transportation
and commerce. Dargue’s official report contained a wealth of data relating to
the Latin American scene. The flight itself was an accurate gauge of Latin
American feelings toward the United
States. American officials seem to have had
its experiences in mind when planning certain future moves concerning good
will.24 Despite the partial failure of the good-will mission,
largely through circumstances beyond control of the flight, it was significant
of future United States’ change of attitude toward Latin America that official
references to the flight included both “Pan American” and “Good Will.”25
In an address before the Inter-American Conference on Commercial Aviation at
Washington in May 1927, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Aeronautics William
P. MacCracken, Jr., predicted that with the cooperation of business and
industry a United States airline soon would be established over a “large
portion” of the Pan American Good Will Flight’s 20,000-mile route.26 He
was not indulging in idle speculation. MacCracken was to be one of the select
group who, a little over six months after the flight, made a very vital policy
decision with respect to a United States-controlled airline in Latin America.
This decision did not come as an immediate result of the Pan American
Flight. Between May and December 1927 other events transpired to influence
decisive United States
action. The Air Corps did not play a major role in the shaping of these
May-to-December events, but on the other hand it cannot be denied that its
action was part of a chain of events extending back to 1922. The first of these
1927 events was the great transatlantic flight of Charles A. Lindbergh in May
of that year.27 This flight brought new life to United States
aviation, reviving and exciting public and official interest. In October 1927 a
small new United States airline company, Pan American Airways, Incorporated
(PAA), began to fly mail between Key West and Havana. Realizing that PAA was a
genuine competitor, Scadta, through the Colombian government, began to apply
pressure on the United States
government for permission to use the Canal Zone
as a necessary berth in any northward extension. Off came the velvet gloves as
Scadta mounted a strident propaganda attack in Colombia
and Panama, meant to force
the United States
to give in. This pressure led to a meeting in Washington,
in November 1927, of representatives of executive departments, including
MacCracken, at which it was decided the government should give strong
encouragement to a United States
airline to extend through all of Latin America,
PAA was to be that line. President Calvin Coolidge quickly approved the
decision.28
By early 1928, Pan American Airways, Incorporated, with the assistance of
the interdepartmental conferees and Postmaster General New, was planning its
extension into Latin America. The company was
the beneficiary of the past as well as the “chosen instrument” of current
governmental policy. The routes it surveyed in the Caribbean, Central America,
and South America had already been largely
charted or tested by the Marine Corps, the Central American Flight, and the Pan
American Flight. In the Foreign Air Mail Acts of 1928 and 1929, PAA was given
an indirect subsidy; and by virtue of a provision in these acts that the Post
Office Department could award a contract to a low bidder best suited to advance
the interests of the United
States, PAA could be and was favored in the
awarding of contracts. The Department of State gave PAA extraordinary support.
PAA also hired key personnel with experience in various branches of the
government, including the military.29
The Air Corps gave needed assistance to PAA in its efforts to span Latin
American air routes. Early in 1929, for example, the United States Legation in Costa Rica sent an urgent telegram to Washington; unless Lieutenant John Jones of the Air Corps
was given leave to pilot the PAA plane in Costa Rica, the company’s service
there might have to be discontinued. Such a breakdown, the Legation warned,
would adversely affect delicate PAA contract negotiations with the Costa Rican
government. That same day the State Department wired back that the Air Corps
approved. A short time later Costa Rican authorities signed a contract with
PAA. Also in 1929 Washington forwarded the
discharge papers of Lieutenant Robert Williams to its ambassador in Chile, to keep the lieutenant from having to go
to the Canal Zone for discharge. Williams, who
became Pan American—Grace Airways (Panagra) manager in Chile, and
other key Panagra personnel were involved in negotiations with Chile.30
The Air Service’s effort toward an airline to Latin
America was not its only activity in the post-World War I
competition for pre-eminence in Latin American skies. As mentioned, the Air
Service early in the postwar era recognized the need for preserving a vigorous
aviation industry in time of peace so that wartime demands might be met. The
Air Service’s interest in synergy with the aviation industry has continued to
the present, but in the 1920s Air Service policies and industry’s wishes were
not always synonymous. Whereas the British, French, and Italians after World
War I sent to Latin America military air missions whose demonstrations and
allocations of surplus planes aided the sale of their respective national
products, the United States
government resisted sending military air missions of any kind. Major General
Charles T. Menoher, Chief of the Air Service from 1918 to 1921, opposed
missions and the sale of military aviation equipment on the grounds that there
were no surplus planes or engines to spare for missions or for foreign
countries generally, that countries like Mexico might use military planes against
the United States, and that private industry ought to make sales abroad
directly. Also, doubt existed in some government circles that the Air Service
had sufficient authority to send air missions. From time to time private
industry importuned the Air Service to aid it in establishing more of a
foothold in underdeveloped areas by easing restrictions on sales and giving
direct assistance in the form of air missions.31
Under General Patrick, the Air Service did modify its position on missions
and sales of government aviation equipment abroad, advocating increasingly a
pragmatic approach in the matter of sales. At certain times it accepted the
lead of the State Department. In 1924, following a request from the State
Department, the Air Service released, without opposition, military planes to
the Mexican government which used them to help in quelling a revolt. Patrick
urged passage of legislation that would clearly permit the sending of military
air missions to advise Latin American governments. In 1926, when the Air
Service became the Air Corps, Congress passed an act that allowed the sending
of such advisers to Latin America. This was
pioneer legislation, marking the first real step in a process that, while slow
in developing, has seen air personnel influence Latin American military
training. Today Air Force resources assist underdeveloped areas, like some in Latin America, to progress. 33
Another legislative act of 1926 affected the Air Corps role in Latin
American affairs. This act gave the President authority to detail Air Corps
officers to work with the Commerce Department in its promotion of commercial
aviation. Even before passage of the act, the War Department, at Patrick’s
prompting, gave Lieutenant James H. Doolittle leave to make a sales tour of several
South American countries for the Curtiss company. His salesmanship, which
included demonstrating a plane in Chile despite the handicap of two
broken legs, helped persuade the Chileans to purchase nine Curtiss aircraft.
Doolittle was also part of a quickened sales effort by the United States in 1928, when he was given leave
to accompany a Curtiss sales team to South America.
At the same time Lieutenant Leigh Wade of the Air Corps was in South America with a team representing Consolidated
Aircraft Corporation. The two teams, both under the aegis of the Commerce
Department, faced heavy foreign competition. The Curtiss force was successful
in selling Chile
a sizable order of planes.34
Pan American Airways, Incorporated, also successful in 1928 in “selling” its
services to a number of Latin American governments. inaugurated in 1929 its new
lines connecting the United States
with the Caribbean, Mexico,
and Central America. Lines spanning and
joining the coasts of South America and much
of the interior soon followed. Air Corps personnel played roles in the process,
and the dream of an airline for the sake of the Canal was nearer reality.
A related Air Corps expectation moved toward fruition in the years 1928-31.
When Air Corps First Lieutenants James E. Parker and Robert W. Douglass flew
from the Canal Zone to Washington, D.C., and back in the summer of 1926, they tested the two
most plausible routes for flying between the United
States and the Canal Zone.
On the way north, traveling through Central America and Mexico, they found good facilities only at the
Marine Corps base at Managua,
Nicaragua, and
at one Mexican field. They found the return trip by way of Cuba and Central America
a better one but only because it was shorter. They noted that PAA used a field at
Havana but had
nothing beyond that. In 1928 the Air Corps was not flying many of its planes
back and forth between the United States
and Latin America because of the lack of
adequate facilities.35
In the summer of 1929, First Lieutenants Westside T. Larson and Lawrence J.
Carr, flying a Curtiss A-3, made a trip testing the Caribbean—Central American
route to the Canal Zone, then flew the Central
American-Mexican route back. They reported PAA installations or leased fields
at Havana, Belize,
and several places in Mexico.
They had praise for PAA services and personnel “from Managua
to Miami.” When
they bent a propeller at Belize,
a PAA plane soon brought them a spare from the Canal Zone.
Larson and Carr recommended that Air Corps flights between the United States and the Canal
Zone should be “allowed and encouraged.”36
By the spring of 1930, PAA had a string of stations from Miami
and Brownsville, Texas,
to the Canal Zone. The company was supplying
an increasing number of Air Corps flights with fuel, rest, and storage
facilities, where available, and communications services at its landing fields
along the two main Air Corps ferrying routes to and from the Canal
Zone. These flights had to obtain clearance from the government of
each country visited. In September 1930 Juan T. Trippe, President of PAA, wrote
Major General James E. Fechet, Chief of the Air Corps, that his company was
more than glad to assist the Air Corps and hoped to provide increased service
in the future. Concerning use of PAA’s communications service, however, Trippe
reported that in several countries restrictions limited the use of that
facility to company business, but PAA hoped to make arrangements that would
terminate this inconvenience. General Fechet replied that he understood PAA’s
delicate position; the Air Corps did not wish to jeopardize the company’s
status in Latin America, and he would be
content with those services PAA could extend. By December 1930 Trippe was able
to tell Fechet that his company was in a position to offer its communications
service without restrictions.37
One of the most valuable communications services offered by PAA to the Air
Corps was that of position reports to Washington
and the Canal Zone on Air Corps planes flying between the Canal Zone and the United States.
Flying in often turbulent skies over inhospitable stretches of land and water,
Air Corps pilots were undoubtedly comforted to be able to check frequently with
one or the other of PAA’s radio stations. This safety network PAA had perfected
with its own planes. Other special PAA assistance to the Air Corps included
cooperation in securing clearance at ports of entry. In Mexico, for example, local Mexican officials
were alerted by PAA personnel at Brownsville in
time to check with Mexico City
about clearance for a scheduled Air Corps flight. The Mexican government
usually granted permission for such flights but was often slow in notifying
check points.36
In 1931 General Fechet made a flight from the United
States to the Canal Zone
over the Brownsville-Panama route, touching down at the various PAA fields
along the way. After his return he wrote Trippe that he found PAA’s airway to
Panama to be excellent and its services carried out with the greatest
efficiency.39 Fechet’ praise for PAA was not a shallow formality:
the company offered in some respects a substitute for a military airway
connecting the United States and the Canal Zone.
By 1931 PAA had bested, pulled abreast of, or struck a bargain with
its more important rivals in Latin America,40 with the firm support
of the United States
government. It was fitting that by 1931 PAA was rendering the Air Corps
assistance, for in part it was through persistent Air Corps efforts that such a
giant as PAA had risen astride the air routes of Latin
America. The future would reveal one indisputable value of PAA’s
existence in Latin America: during World War
II the company helped to mitigate a threat to hemispheric security. Among its
contributions were assistance in “de-Germanizing” Scadta, airport development
at several strategic points in Latin America,
and services for the Air Corps such as radio broadcasts for the safety of
military planes.41
The Good-Neighbor Policy, hinted at in the 1920s and fully developed in the
1930s, proved essential to Latin American cooperation with the United States
against a common threat. A manifestation of that policy was the good-will visit
of U.S. Flying Fortresses to Brazil
in 1939. The visit was “the means …..for publicizing Brazilian-American
friendship”42 during one of those crisis times when solidarity is a
shield.
Today, more than forty years after the young Army Air Service sent its
Central American Flight winging from the Canal Zone, the United States Air
Force has one of its major commands, the USAF Southern Command, stationed in the
Canal Zone. USAFSO backs up the U.S. hemispheric policies embodied in the Rio
Pact, the Military Assistance Program, and the Alliance
for Progress, thus continuing a vital role of U.S. military aviation.
Auburn,
Alabama
*The Air Service was renamed Air Corps in
1926, but the title appropriate to the time will be used in this study.
Notes
1. It was not until the rise of Hitler in the 1930s that aviation and
ideology became inseparable components of the international competition in Latin America. Recent situations in which airborne
objects figured in ideological rivalry in Latin America were the Bay of Pigs episode and the Cuban missile crisis.
2. Dispatch with enclosures of Alban G. Snyder to William J. Bryan, 29 April
1913, file 811f,796/-, Record Group 59, Diplomatic Branch, National Archives
(Record groups in the National Archives hereinafter cited as R/G; Diplomatic
Branch, as DB-NA); “Panama Canal ‘Forbidden’ to Aeronauts,” Flying, II
(September 1913), 28; Presidential Executive Order #1810, 7 August 1913. Annual
Report of the Isthmian Canal Commission and the Panama Canal for the Fiscal
Year Ended June 30, 1914 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1914), p.
560; 38 Stat. 2041; 40 Stat. 1668: 40 Stat. 1753-1754; Manufacturers Aircraft
Association (comp.), Aircraft Year Book, 1921 (Boston: Small,
Maynard & Company, 1921), p. 204; Year Book, 1920, p. 299; Annual
Reports of the Navy Department for the Fiscal Year 1921 (Washington:
Government Printing Office, 1921), p. 60 (hereinafter cited as Navy Annual
Reports, 1921).
3. Wesley Phillips Newton, “International Aviation Rivalry in Latin America,
1919-1927,” Journal of Inter-American Studies, VII (July 1965), 346-50;
telegram of Arthur H. Geissler to Charles E. Hughes, 16 December 1922, file
813.796; dispatch of Geissler to Hughes, 5 January 1923, file 813.796/4, R/G
59, DB-NA.
4. Letter of John W. Weeks to Hughes, 12 January 1923, file 813.796/5 weeks
to Hughes, 2 March 1923, file 813.796/ 17, R/G 59, DB-NA.
5. Newton,
pp. 347-49.
6. “Naval Aviation in South America,” Aviation
and Aircraft Journal. X (10 January 1921), 54 (Naval aviators also made
some of the early postwar flights between the United
States and the Canal Zone.
See Navy Annual Reports, 1921, p. 55.); Major Raycroft Walsh, Official Report
of the Central American Flight, n.d. Correspondence and Report re Central
American Flight, file 373, R/G-18, Army and Navy Section, War Records Branch.
National Archives. Official Report hereinafter cited as Walsh Report.
Correspondence hereinafter cited as Central American Flight Documents. Section
hereinafter cited as ANS-WRB-NA; letter of S. S. Bradley to Mason M. Patrick, 9
November 1921, file 360.01, Commercial Aviation to Policy-Civil Aeronautics,
R/G 18, ANS-WRB-NA.
7. Letter of Adjutant General to Commanding General, Panama Canal Department,
31 August 1923, Central American Flight Documents. Because of tension between Mexico and the United States, it was decided to
exclude that Latin American country from the charting for the time being. See
letter of J. E. Fechet to Chief, Training and War Plans Division, 11 September
1923, reports (by country) Central America to Germany,
file 360.02, R/G 18, ANS-WRB-NA (hereinafter referred to as Reports, Central
America to Germany).
8. Letter of Harry S. New to Hughes, 6 September 1923, file 813,796/35;
Herbert Hoover to Hughes, 13 September 1923, file 813.796/36: Edwin Denby to
Hughes, 27 September 1923, file 813.796/37, R/G 59, DB-NA; first indorsement of
Patrick, 25 January 1924 to a letter of Weeks to Hughes, 5 December 1923,
Reports, Central America to Germany.
9. Letter of Luther K. Bell to Information Division, U.S. Air Service, 29
October 1923; Ira A. Rader to Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce, 5 November
1923, Reports, Central America to Germany.
10. Note of R. J. Alfaro to Hughes, 26 February 1923, file 819.796/2; Alfaro
to Hughes. 15 March 1923, file 819,796/ 3; letter of weeks to Hughes, 30 March
1923, file 819.796/4; Weeks to Hughes, 6 June 1923, file 819.796/7; dispatch of
J. G. South to Hughes, 5 December 1923, file 819.796/12. R/G 59, DB-NA; William
D. McCain, The United States and the Republic of Panama (Durham:
Duke University Press, 1937), pp. 230-33; letter of Carlton Jackson to
Director, Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Department of Commerce, 21
November 1923, Aviation Reports (by country) Italy to South America, file
360,02, R/G 18, ANS-WRB-NA; “Panama Vulnerable to Air Attack,” Aviation,
XVI (4 February 1924), 131. In 1926 the United States and Panama signed a
treaty, several provisions of which gave the United States tight control of
aviation in the whole Panamanian area in peace or war. The Panamanian
government, however, ultimately rejected the treaty, and the United States
government had to resort to a web of regulations to limit, but not prohibit,
flying in the area of the Canal from 1929 on.
11.Report of First Lieutenant Leland W. Miller on the Central American
Flight, 16 April 1924, Central American Flight Documents; Walsh Report; report
of First Lieutenant L.L. Berry on the Central American Flight, 6 March 1924,
Central American Flight Documents (the latter report herein-after cited as
Berry Report).
12.Walsh Report; Berry Report: dispatch of John E. Ramer to Hughes, 5 April
1924. Central American Flight Documents; report of Captain H. M. Gwynn to
Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, War Department, 22 February 1924; dispatch of
Geissler to Hughes,14 February 1924, Central American Flight Documents: report
of First Lieutenant B. T. Burt to Major Herbert A. Dargue, 24 November 1926,
file 373-Aerial Operations-Pan American Flight, January 1927—October 1926, R/G
18, ANS-WRB-NA (hereinafter cited as Pan American Flight Documents).
13.Walsh Report.
14. In an early expression of one of the ideas implicit in the Alliance for
Progress. Walsh advocated in hit report the fullest participation possible by
Central Americans in any airmail service. It was necessary, he felt, for their
national pride. Added evidence of the “harbinger” role of the Central American
Flight is the fact that the War Department had authorized a flight of Air
Service planes to participate, in December 1923, in Costa Rican municipal
fiestas, after previous such requests by Costa Rica had been turned down.
Ostensibly the reversal was to open the way for training experience in future
flights of this nature, but the December flight undoubtedly was also a
good-will gesture to pave the way for the Central American Flight. By 1923 the
United States was beginning to see that demonstrations of good will might accomplish
much. See letter of Commanding General, Panama Canal Department, to Adjutant
General, 27 November 1923, Central American Flight Documents, and “France Field
Pilots Fly to Costa Rica,” Aviation, XVI (18 February 1924), 183.
Shortly before the Central American Flight departed, General Patrick stated
that he understood the Administration was attempting “to foster the goodwill of
the Central American countries by all means within its power.” See memorandum
of Patrick to Secretary of War, 23 January 1924, file 452.1-3295-Sales of
Planes Abroad, February 1930—July 1919, R/G 18, ANS-WRB-NA (file hereinafter
cited as Sales of Planes Abroad).
15. Letter of Weeks to Hughes, 14 May 1924, Pan American Flight Documents;
memorandum of D. G. M. (Dana G. Munro), 20 August 1924, file 811.71213/15, R/G
59, DB-NA.
16. Letter of Colonel Paul Henderson to Joseph V. Magee, 26 September 1924,
Records Relating to Central American Air Mail Service 1924-26, Division of
International Postal Service, Bureau of the Second Assistant Postmaster
General, R/G 28, Social and Economic Branch, National Archives (hereinafter
cited as Central American Air Mail Records, R/G 28, SEB-NA); memorandum of E.
D. K. to Francis White, 21 October 1924, file 811.71213/8, R/G 59, DB-NA;
report of Roy T. Davis to Hughes, 23 October 1924, Central American Air Mail
Records, R/G 28, SEB-NA; letter of Acting Secretary of War to Hughes, 31
November 1924, file 811.71213/11. R/G 59, DB-NA.
17. Letter of Beery to Walsh, 12 November 1924, Central American Flight Documents;
Dispatch of Davis to Hughes, 13 November 1924, file 811.71213/14, R/G 59,
DB-NA; radio-gram of Magee and Vincent C. Burke to Henderson, 11 November 1924.
Immediate Office Correspondence Relating to the Air Mail Service, 1921-1927,
Bureau of the Second Assistant Postmaster General, R/G 28, SEB-NA; letter of
Major General William Lassiter to Adjutant General, 11 November 1924;
Preliminary Report of Magee and Burke to Henderson, 19 November 1924, Reports,
Central America to Germany; memorandum of New to Henderson; 8 December 1924,
Central American Air Mail Records, R/G 28, SEB-NA; letter of Patrick to
Adjutant General, 19 January 1925; first indorsement of Adjutant General, 2
February 1925, to Patrick letter of 19 January 1925; second indorsement of Patrick
[7 or 10 (?) February 1925] to Patrick letter of 19 January; 3d indorsement of
Adjutant General, 20 February 1925, to Patrick letter of 19 January, Reports,
Central America to Germany.
18. “The Mitchell Trial,” Aviation, XIX (23 November 1925). 747; New
York Times, 13 November 1925.
19. Release of Post Office Department Information Office, 14 October 1925; Panama
Star & Herald, 14 August 1925, Central American Air Mail Records,
R/G 28, SEB-NA; letter with enclosures of Dwight F. Davis to Secretary of State
Frank B. Kellogg, 9 September 1925, file 821,796Sca 2/34, R/G 59, DB-NA;
Newton, “Aviation in the Relations of the United States and Latin America,
1916-1929,” unpublished Ph. D dissertation, University of Alabama, 1964,
pp.208-9, 149-54.
20. Report of Major Follett Bradley to Commanding General, Panama Canal
Department, 17 August 1925, file 821. 796 Sca 2/34, R/G 59, DB-NA; New York
Times, 11-12 December 1925; memorandum of Major W. G. Kilner to Executive,
War Plans Division, War Department, 10 November 1925; Major A. W. Lane to
Assistant Chief of Staff, War Plans Division, War Department, 9 January 1926;
note with inclosure of Kenneth Macpherson to Major George V. Strong, 9 January
1926; memorandum of Strong to Walsh, 12 January 1926: Walsh to Strong, 14
January 1926; Lane to Assistant Chief of Staff, War Plans Division, War
Department, 15 January 1926, Central American Flight Documents; General H. H.
Arnold, Global Mission (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949), pp.
114-16; report of conversation between L. H. (Leland Harrison) and Viktor von
Bauer, 7, December 1926, file 821.796 Sca 2/106, R/G 59, DB-NA.
21. Memorandum of Dargue to Patrick, 22 July 1925, Pan American Flight
Documents; letter of F. Trubee Davison to Kellogg, 26 July 1926, Reports (by
country) Italy to South America, file 360.02, R/G 18, ANS-WRB-NA; Official
Report of the Pan American Flight, n.d., pp.4-25, 21 December 1926—2 May 1927,
file C71.6, R/G 18, ANS-WRB-NA (hereinafter cited as Pan American Flight
Report).
22. Letter of Major Ira C. Eaker to Patrick, 22 January 1927, Pan American
Flight Documents; Pan American Flight Report, pp. 291-99; reports of Lieutenant
Colonel Edward Davis to Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, War Department, 28
December 1926, and Charles Forman to State Department, 10 February 1927, Pan
American Flight Documents; Pan American Flight Report, pp.299-301.
23. Pan American Flight Report, pp. 87-89; Samuel Guy Inman, “Results of the
Pan-American Congress.” Current History, XXVIII (April 1928), 97-98;
telegram of Philander L. Cable to Kellogg, 2 March 1927, file 811.2310/246;
dispatch of Cable to Kellogg, 7 March 1927, file 2310/284. R/G 59, DB-NA; New
York Times, 3 May 1927.
24. The State Department withheld approval temporarily of Charles A.
Lindbergh’s good-will flight to pans of Latin America in late 1927 and early
1928, probably because of the Pan American Flight’s experiences earlier in
1927. See telegram of Robert E. Olds to Dwight Morrow, 3 December 1927, file
811.79612L64/1, R/G 59, DB-NA.
25. In his report Dargue stated that his good-will mission (“men of war
carrying a message of peace and good will”) was a success in Latin America, but
this mission was not understood in the United States.
26. New York Times, 4 May 1927. MacCracken was not the Commerce
Department representative who had favored Von Bauer at the interdepartmental
meetings in 1926.
27. Although a reserve officer in the Air Corps, Lindbergh’s efforts toward
furthering a United States airline in Latin America cannot be credited to the
Air Corps. His efforts were individual or, as in his 1927-28 flight to Latin
America that indirectly helped pave the way for such an airplane, were in
conjunction with the State Department.
28. Newton, “International Aviation Rivalry in Latin America,” pp. 355-56;
memorandum of F. B. K. (Frank B. Kellogg) to White, 29 November 1927, file
813.796/127, R/G 59, DB-NA.
29. New York Times, 10 and 13 January 1928; memorandum of Roger
Willock to Wesley Phillips Newton, 8 November 1962; letter of Vernon F. Megee
to Wilbert Brown, 28 June 1965; 45 Stat. 248 (as amended by 45 Stat.
1449-1450); memorandum of Joseph W. Stinson to Secretary of State Henry L.
Stimson, 7 March 1931, file 810.796/35-1/2. R/G 59, DB-NA. PAA employed, for
example, a former career diplomat with experience in Latin America, Evan E.
Young, and a former Commerce Department transportation expert, P. E. D. Nagel,
both men with invaluable experience and potential contacts.
30. Telegram of Roy T. Davis to Kellogg, 13 March 1929, file 810.79611 Pan
American Airways, Inc./321 (this file hereinafter cited as 810.79611PAA); Kellogg
to Davis, 13 March 1929, file 810.79611PAA/327; Davis to Stimson, 17 July 1929,
file 810.79611PAA/541: Stimson to American Embassy, Santiago de Chile, 10 July
1929, file 810.79611PAA/535; dispatch of Ellis D. Briggs to Stimson, 13
July1929, file 810.79611PAA/ 576, R/G 59, DB-NA.
31. Newton, “International Aviation Rivalry in Latin America,” pp. 347-49;
memorandum of Major General Charles T. Menoher to Chief of Staff, 9 July 1919,
Foreign and International Affairs and Relations, file 336-December 1919—April
1917 (hereinafter cited at Foreign and International Affairs); Menoher to Chief
of Staff, 14 July 1919; letter of Colonel Oscar Westover to Chief, Engineering
Division, McCook Field, Ohio, 6 December 1919. Foreign and International
Affairs; S. S. Bradley to Menoher, 16 December 1919, file 452.8-Liberty
Motors-Sales and Transfer, March 1920 to September 1918; Bell to Rader, 5
November 1923, Foreign Aviation Reports, August 1934—January 1919, file 360.02,
R/G 18, ANS-WRB-NA.
32. Memorandum of [joint Air Corps-Navy] Aeronautical Board to Secretary of
War, 7 October 1926; Adjutant General to Chief of Air Corps, 14 January 1930,
Sales of Planes Abroad; note of Manuel C. Téllez to Hughes, 4 January 1924,
file 812.24/202, R/G 59, DB-NA; memorandum of Jacob E. Fickel to Chief,
Property Requisition Section, 18 February 1924, Sales of Planes Abroad; 44
Stat. 565.
33. See three articles by Colonel Frank R. Pancake, Dr. A. Glenn Morton, and
Majors Mathew T. Dunn and James B. Jones, Air University Review, XVIII,
1 (November-December 1966) for current Air Force programs affecting Latin
America.
34. 44 Stat. 915; memorandum of Patrick to Chief of Staff, 9 April 1926,
Sales of Planes Abroad; Harry Bruno, Wings Over America (New
York; Robert M. McBride & Company, 1942), p. 230; dispatch of U.
Grant-Smith to Kellogg, 9 September 1926, file 833.24/16; telegram of Kellogg
to Rudolf E. Schoenfeld, 7 January 1928, file 820.7961 Dept. of Commerce
Flight/7, R/G 59, DB-NA; Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of
the United States, 1928. I (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1942),
p. 813; dispatch of Edwin V. Morgan to Kellogg, 17 July 1928, file 820.7961
Dept. of Commerce Flight/27, R/G 59, DB-NA; New York Times, 26 October
1928.
35. Reports of First Lieutenants James E. Parker and Robert W. Douglass, 25
July 1928, file 373-Aerial Operations-Flights to and from Panama, R/G 18,
ANS-WRB-NA; memorandum of Eaker to Chief of Air Corps, 25 October 1928, file
373-Aerial Operations.
36. Report of First Lieutenants Westside T. Larson and Lawrence J. Carr, 5
August 1929, file 373-Aerial Operations.
37. Memorandum of Major Willis H. Hale to Major Frank Andrews, 22 January
1930; report of First Lieutenant John M. Davies, 17 September 1930; report of
First Lieutenant Donald F. Fritch, 1 November 1930; Directive of Chief of Air
Corps to Commanding Officer, 28 December 1931; letter of Juan T. Trippe to
Fechet, 29 September 1930; Fechet to Trippe, 18 October 1930; Trippe to Fechet,
3 December 1930, file 373-Aerial Operations.
38. Memorandum of Kilner to Chief, Materiel Division, 11 December 1930;
telegram of Communications Department of PAA to Army Message Center, 20
February 1930; Communications PAA Miami to Chief of Air Corps, 30 November
1930; PAA to Chief of Air Corps, 3 and 5 December 1930; memorandum of Colonel
R. C. Foy to Air Liaison Officer. Air Section, G-2, 20 August 1931; letter of
Trippe to Lieutenant Colonel Ira Longanecker, 24 September 1931, file
373-Aerial Operations.
39. Letter of Fechet to Trippe, 13 June 1981, file 373-Aerial Operations.
40. Letter of Trippe to Stimson, 21 August 1930, file 810.79611PAA/865 (this
letter informs the State Department that PAA had bought out its principal
United States rival in Latin America); dispatch of R. Henry Norweb to Stimson,
22 May 1931, file 810.79611PAA/1006, R/G 59, DB-NA (this dispatch tells that the
French Aéropostale Company, one of PAA’s main foreign rivals in South America,
was feeling the effects of the depression and that its desire for “route
dominance” had abated “for the time…..”); Albert E. Carter, The Battle of’
South America (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1941), pp 262-63.
(This book records how PAA bought a controlling interests in Scadta in 1931.
Scadta was not finished, however, as a thorn in the United States’ flesh. It
merely did not give PAA too much competition thereafter.)
41. For the story of the United States and Latin America in hemispheric
defense, including the roles of the Air Corps and PAA, see Chapters VIII
through XII by Stetson Conn and Byron Fairchild, The Framework of
Hemispheric Defense (“United States Army in World War II”;
Washington: Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the
Army, 1960).
42. Ibid., pp.269-70.
Dr. Newton’s work on this article was supported in part by a Research
Grant-in-Aid from the Graduate School, Auburn University.
Contributor
Dr. Wesley Phillips Newton (Ph.D.,
University of Alabama) is Associate Professor of History, Auburn University. He
was a contributing author and consultant to Air Force Combat Units of
World War II (1960), edited by Dr. Maurer Maurer. His article on aviation
in the international rivalry of the 1920s in Latin America was published in the
Journal of Inter-American Studies (July 1965).
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this
document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression,
academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official
position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air
Force or the Air University.
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