Did U.S. forces in WWI (Air Service of the American Expeditionary Force or U.S. Navy or U.S. Marines) actually use any monoplanes during the period of U.S. involvement in the war (April 1917-November 1918)?
Arjen said:A page from 'United States Military Aircraft since 1909' by Gordon Swanborough and Peter M Bowers, Putnam 1989.
I am not sure what is meant by the 'grass-cutting' technique in the MS-12 Roleur item. I assume it refers to using training-craft with wings too small for flying.
Aeronautical ratings were established on 23 February 1912, by War Department Bulletin No. 6, as a new measurement of pilot skill.[7] Before that time most pilots of the Aeronautical Division, Signal Corps soloed by the "short hop method" (also known as "grass-cutting"), in which student pilots, flying alone, learned to handle airplane controls on the ground, taxied in further practice until just short of takeoff speeds, and finally took off to a height of just ten feet, gradually working up to higher altitudes and turns. The practice resulted in the first pilot death only a month into training. At least three of these pilots had been previously instructed by Glen Curtiss at North Island field, California. Concurrently, two pilots (future General of the Air Force Henry H. Arnold and Thomas DeWitt Milling) were instructed by the Wright Brothers and certified by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) in July 1911.