Happy 73rd birthday to USAF

Very young compared to the first flying service of the United States.
 
yasotay said:
Very young compared to the first flying service of the United States.
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Indeed, especially if you count the foundation of U.S. Army aviation as the creation of the Union Army Balloon Corps in 1861. If not, then the creation by the United States Army Signal Corps of a balloon company in 1893 would probably mark the start of Army aviation proper.
 
Flyaway said:
yasotay said:
Very young compared to the first flying service of the United States.
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It’s young if you compare it to the RAF.
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Pretty much any flying service is younger compared to the RAF. Unless of course you count @Grey Havoc historic considerations above (#4) for military operation of vehicles operating elevated off the ground, which I fully endorse. In which case the United States Army is the oldest. Unless of course Napoleon did something of that sort. Having thrown the rock I now do my best Bugs Bunny retreat into my lavishly appointed hole. :cool:
 
If it is British Army aviation we are talking about, then the British Army's first major experiments in Ballooning took place at Aldershot around 1862, though it wasn't until 1878 that such experimentation was put on a really official footing, with the setting up of the Balloon Equipment Store at Woolwich Arsenal. Experiments with man-lifting kites began in 1892, but it was the efforts of a certain Samuel Franklin Cody in the early 1900s that really got the British Army engaged in that particular area of aviation.

For a bit more on the ballooning side of things: https://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/resear...tion-1862-1912/early-military-ballooning.aspx
 
Grey Havoc said:
If it is British Army aviation we are talking about, then the British Army's first major experiments in Ballooning took place at Aldershot around 1862, though it wasn't until 1878 that such experimentation was put on a really official footing, with the setting up of the Balloon Equipment Store at Woolwich Arsenal. Experiments with man-lifting kites began in 1892, but it was the efforts of a certain Samuel Franklin Cody in the early 1900s that really got the British Army engaged in that particular area of aviation.

For a bit more on the ballooning side of things: https://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/resear...tion-1862-1912/early-military-ballooning.aspx
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1862... that would be the year AFTER 1861. Damn that Thaddeus Lowe fellow!
 
On this the august 73rd birthday of the United States Air Force, I offer this wonderful thought.

The Army sleeps under the stars
The Navy navigates by the stars
The Air Force picks their hotels by the stars

Happy Birthday Blue!
 
yasotay said:
In which case the United States Army is the oldest.
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The French Royal Army did some some experimentation subsequent to the Montgolfier brothers' successful efforts to send a man aloft in 1773. Joseph Montgolfier had even jokingly suggested in 1772 that the French could fly an entire army suspended underneath hundreds of paper bags into Gibraltar to seize it from the British. However with the chaos of the French Revolution, it wasn't until 1794 that a French Army would be able to formally organise a ballooning arm, at the initiative somewhat ironically of the infamous Committee of Public Security, this being the French Aerostatic Corps. Even more ironically, progress would eventually end up stalling under Napoleon (though to be fair, it had been the Directory who had begun dissolving the Aerostatic Corps in 1799). It wouldn't be until the Franco-Prussian War in the early 1870s that French military ballooning would be really revived.
 
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