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Show UNPREPARED IN FLYINGJRANCH War Finds America With Few Aviators and Machines. Ingenuity and Enterprise Develop Under Necessity Neces-sity Stress. By Universal Service. x . WASHINGTON. Dec. 8. Tho actual facts concerning this country's utter unpreparedncss un-preparedncss In all branches of aviation at the outbreak of the war are revealed for j the first time In the annual report of the chief signal officer of the army, made public today. Due to long years of neglect neg-lect of aeronautics since the Wright broth-, broth-, ers brought out the original flying ma- J . chines, the beginning of hostilities found tho United States with but a handful of fliers and very few machines. There was practically no aviation industry and the number of trained designers and engineers engi-neers was so small as to bo negligible. Outside of a few men, there was no one in the United States with experience in building or training places. The aviation avia-tion section of the army consisted of only fifty-two officers and 1100 enlisted men and a few civilian employees. The military mili-tary department increased the personnel of the section within fourteen months to 16,084 officers, 147,932 enlisted men and 9838 civilian employees. Sent Abroad to Study. An appeal was immediately made to France, England and Italy to send to this country trained filers, aeronautical engineers and designers. Foreign officers fulfilling these requirements came here. At" the same time a technical commission commis-sion of Americans was sent abroad to study', at first hand conditions there. A few days after the outbreak of war an arrangement was made with Canada by the war department for use of the Canadian Cana-dian designs for flying fields. To expedite expe-dite training, American cadets were sent to Canada, France and Italy to be trained in their flying schools. In addition, an arrangement was made by which ten flying squadrons of the air service were to be trained by the British government and also equipped with machines ma-chines and transports, complete and ready for service at the front, in exchange for : providing flying facilities for the Royal flying corps of Canada during the winter' months. Work at Top Speed. Vacancies in allied training schools were filled to the maximum of capacity by American students. Tho department bought from France combat planes for tbe immediate use of Pershing's forces. Work of establishing training schools and flying fields in this country was conducted con-ducted at top speed. In an amazingly short time hundreds of factories were engaged en-gaged in producing machines and engines. The production of spruce had to be tremendously tre-mendously increased. Involving the building build-ing of mills, railroads and other equipment. equip-ment. Before July 1 of the present year there had been purchased or made M88 airplanes. air-planes. 12.626 engines. 411 balloons, 115,000 instruments of various kinds, 33,909 items of motor transport, and 2717 hangars had been erected. American Ingenuity. The American-made De TIaviland battleplane, bat-tleplane, modified to receive the Ijlberty enginc another conception and creation of American genius Is today regarded as one of the best battleplanes used on any front in the war. Other achievements of American ingenuity inge-nuity and enterprise developed under the stress of necessity are enumerated In the report as follows: The creation of special radio apparatus, the details of which are withheld, permitting per-mitting new control of the operation of airplanes en masse, and the development of a fabric as a substitute for the formerly for-merly used linen fabric at only a little more than one-half the cost of the latter. |