[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> Well, the DH4 played a large part in the development of aviation in America >> and the world.

But it's kind of like George Washington's horse.

Everybody remembered George Washington, but nobody knew the name of this horse.

>> Suffice it to say that the Army s land based aviation featured the DH4 >> as the only American built combat airplane >> to see war service on the front in World War [MUSIC] >> 1.

The DH4 Liberty Plane deserves its place as one of the most significant aircraft in aviation history.

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> This program was made possible by General Atomics Aeronautical.

Remotely piloted aircraft that support global humanitarian and disaster relief efforts.

General Atomics Aeronautical.

Pioneers of unmanned flight.

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> At the turn of the twentieth century, innovation and invention were hallmarks of the American experience.

[MUSIC] The potential of manned flight, however, was just emerging.

[MUSIC] A pair of bicycle shop owners from Dayton, Ohio would change all that.

The [MUSIC] >> Wright brothers, of course had invented the airplane here, and made the first flights here in the United States.

But after that, in between 1903 and 1914, aviation had been allowed to stagnate in the United States because of the Wright s being overly protective of their patents.

they were tied up in litigation with their Chief rival, Glenn Curtis, and I think most Aviation historians would tell you that that also played a role in in sort of holding back progress in American Aviation.

>> With his company tied up in American courts over their copyrights, Wilbur Wright took the Wright Flyer to France.

This would be the first public demonstration of the invention he and his brother created five years earlier.

[MUSIC] >> nobody really took the Wright brothers seriously until Wilbur Wright made his famous demonstration flights in Paris in 1908.

And that sort of electrified the European continent.

And Europe grabbed the lead from the United States and aircraft companies sprung up all over the continent.

At >> one of these aerial demonstrations, a 26 year old English engineer was captivated by what he saw.

Born the second son of an Anglican vicar, young Geoffrey de Havilland returned to England with a vision.

[MUSIC] >> He borrowed a thousand pounds from his father-in-law and he decided he was going to build his own airplane...

So luckily he had a very generous father-in-law who believed in him and gave him the money... His wife helped him sew the fabric on the wings and his best friend helped him build the structure.

So they pulled the airplane out >> and they decided to give a test flight.

And they crashed it on the first flight.

>> Geoffrey was undeterred though, he built a second airplane, which he successfully flew.

de Havilland s success was duly noted by others.

In 1914, the newly formed Aircraft Manufacturing Company Limited, better known as Airco, recruited him as their Chief Designer.

He would go on to become one of the most prolific aircraft designers in Europe.

[MUSIC] Even after the Wright Brothers successful European flights, the aeroplane was still a novelty in the United States, a symbol of untethered adventure.

In 1910, to help spur its development, publisher William Randolph Hearst offered a $50,000 prize for the first aviator to cross the continent by air in less than 30 days.

Answering the challenge was a 31 year old adventurer from Pittsburgh named Calbraith Perry Rodgers.

He learned to fly after only 90 minutes of instruction from Orville Wright.

It took Rodgers 49 days, 76 stops and 16 crashes before he and the Vin Fizz reached California.

While Rodgers didn t capture the prize for a 30 day crossing, he did ignite America s enthusiasm for manned flight.

[MUSIC] The American Government however, remained skeptical, even as tensions were growing in Europe.

>> So by the time World War 1 broke out in 1914, that's when Europe really surged ahead, of necessity, because it was now relevant to the, to the war.

And the airplane was demonstrating its potential as a weapon.

>> And so by the time we got involved in the war in 1917, we were light years behind.

There were no aircraft in the United States inventory that were capable of serving on a war footing in Europe.

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> April 6th, 1917.

The United States enters the War.

European Allies had been battling German aggressors for nearly three years.

>> Personnel, supplies, armament, food and morale were at an all-time low.

So the expectations of a massive infusion from the Americans was substantial.

[MUSIC] The French Premier, Alexander >> Rebot, requested that the United States accept >> the challenge of building about 20,000 or more aircraft and supplying more than 50,000 mechanicians.

And sending all that to Europe by about the middle to late 1918 >> It was beyond amazing in terms of the Ask.

It was huge.

It was manifestly impossible.

However, the United States agrees to it.

>> In order to darken the skies over Europe with American aircraft as it had optimistically promised, the U.S. would need to secure the money >> Congress appropriated 640 million dollars to the cause of building combat Aviation to send across the ocean.

640 million dollars.

>> The United States faced the colossal task of finding a warplane that could be quickly manufactured.

With the War raging in Europe, and no time to design one from scratch, >> they chose to explore warplane designs already being built.

How do we do that?

Send experts.

We sent >> the Bolling commission.

>> The Bolling Commission was headed up by Raynal Bolling.

Bolling was Chief counsel for U.S. Steel, and he was also a pilot himself and had been involved in aviation in New York.

And so he visited Great Britain and France and Italy >> Among all the different airplanes considered, they chose the most practical and the most mass-produce-able.

That turned out to be the DeHaviland Dh4.

[MUSIC] Geoffrey de Havilland could be conventionally considered a genius in World War One, his designs were so successful and influential that, by 1918, a third of British Air power was de Havilland designs.

>> The DH4, which became operational with the Royal Flying Corps in 1917, was one of his most recent and successful designs.

It was a large, well-armed two seat craft with good flight performance that could serve in multiple combat roles.

[MUSIC] Contracts were awarded to three American companies to build 9,500 DH4s: the Dayton-Wright Company, Fisher Body Works and Standard Aircraft Company.

On August 14, 1917, the Dayton-Wright Company, with Orville Wright serving as a consultant, began work.

The goal to build the first flying prototype in 90 days was astonishingly aggressive.

One of the challenges with building >> the deHavilland DH4 was that you needed a lot of raw materials.

>> you needed millions of board feet of not just wood, but a specific wood.

Sitka Spruce.

>> Sitka spruce was a strong, but lightweight wood found in the forests of the Pacific Northwest.

The wood to build ten thousand DH4s was plentiful.

The manpower to cut and mill it, was not.

>> The U. S. Army Signal Corps set up a special division called the Spruce Production Division which consisted of several Spruce squadrons, so called, comprised of about 30,000 men.

>> Harvesting, drying, and cutting the wood was just the beginning.

Finding a staff to operate the manufacturing facilities required outreach to all parts of the American public.

>> And the manpower consisted of not only men, but also women.

[MUSIC] and women were found to be particularly adept at forming intricate parts, small metal parts >> and doing the intricate stitching of the Irish linen that goes over the wood frames.

One [MUSIC] of the most unique and significant aspects of the DH4s that were built in the United States in WW1 was the engine that was used.

[MUSIC] >> While the British eagerly shared plans for the DH4, three years of war had depleted their supply of engines.

Therefore the Americans would have to design and build their own motor to propel the large aircraft.

the >> US government asked two designers to get together Jesse Vincent from the Packard Motor Company and Albert Hall from the Hall Scott motor company >> and they asked them, we need this Aviation engine design and we need it now.

Jesse Vincent and Albert Hall were sequestered in a hotel in Washington DC and told do not come out until you have an engine suitable for the DH 4 .

And when they came out five days later, they had complete >> construction drawings for the Liberty V12.

>> The 12 cylinder, 400 horsepower engine weighed in at 786 pounds.

Rival automobile manufacturers, stepped up to mass produce 20,748 of the machines, appropriately named the Liberty engine.

[MUSIC] Equipped now with one of the most powerful aircraft engines in the world, production of the DH4 Liberty plane was in high gear but who [MUSIC] was going to fly them?

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> Aviation in 1914 to 1918 was, it was exciting, it was adventurous.

Military aviators earned lots of military medals, they earned lots of attention from the press, from the public, and also from the young ladies.

>> You know, the characteristics to be a flyer in World War 1 were kind of open-ended They wanted guys >> who were Sports trained.

They liked guys who knew how to ride a horse because they thought it gave him a sense of balance and speed.

They >> liked people who were mechanically inclined [MUSIC] >> It would take an aspiring pilot 6 to 8 weeks of training, including 40 to 50 flying hours, to become a military aviator.

Less than half of the 23,000 men who signed up would receive their wings.

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] With the newly enacted draft, Floyd Pickrell, a 20 year old student from Kansas faced a tough decision.

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> Another Kansas native, Erwin Bleckley, the son of Margaret Alice and Wichita Banker Elmer Bleckley, signed up.

Irwin graduated from Wichita High School in 1913, then secured a position in his father s bank.

>> He was a very bright student.

He was a good-looking guy, young guy.

All the girls loved him.

He liked math.

So he had a lot of skills Paul Carpenter, >> a 19 year old graduate of the Newman School, a private Catholic prep school in New Jersey, decided to enlist on July 5, 1917.

Carpenter came from a prominent Milwaukee, Wisconsin family.

He enrolled in the U. S. Army School of Military Aeronautics at Princeton University.

In less than three months the young aviator would sail for England.

There he would train as a member of the second Oxford detachment , the group of cadets made famous by the classic novel "Warbirds .

[MUSIC] In Chicago, the only surviving son of a locksmith, Harold Goettler, was a natural athlete, tall in stature, who excelled at all sports.

>> When he signed on his draft card that he might want to request an exemption from the draft, not because he was afraid or necessarily anything like that but he did have a mother who he had been taking care of for quite some time.

She was more elderly.

>> his religious beliefs would not necessarily allow him to take somebody else's life.

So he got into the Aero part of the military because he felt like he would not have to shoot at anybody that he would be flying an airplane.

>> In Midway, Kentucky, a telegraph operator joined the Kentucky National Guard on September 1st, 1915.

Bee Rife Osborne was considered an old man at the age of 28.

>> Osborne reported to Newport, Virginia, for flight training at the Curtiss Air School and was then assigned to the Signal Corps Flight School One in upstate New York.

>> In fact he is described, later on, as being a stocky, hard-nosed pilot, and >> would fly anything that he could get off the ground.

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> These aviators came to New York City from all across America.

They had learned the joy and freedom of flight, and experienced the losses caused by dangerous wind shifts and fragile air frames.

Yet, they were ready for battle.

Floyd Pickrell, the aviator from Kansas, had never been this far east.

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> Clara Mallen, who met Harold Goettler in Chicago, joined him in New York for his bon voyage.

She arrived in time to spend Valentine s Day with her beau There s this really cute picture of her >> that was taken in 1917 I think.

I mean, she looks like the original flapper.

>> Moved by Harold s commitment to the war effort, Clara enlisted in the Red Cross Ambulance Corps as a driver.

But for now, the two would have to settle with writing letters [MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> The Atlantic crossing normally took 10 days and introduced the Yanks to their first taste of War the German U-boats.

[MUSIC] If they made it safely across, most would disembark in England or France and report to their various assignments.

The first shipments of the American manufactured DH4 Liberty Planes arrived at the large Air Service Production Center at Romorantin, France on May 6, 1918.

What was a forest in January was now nearly 3 million square feet of building area, 7 miles of roads and 425 acres of flying fields.

Here existing Allied aircraft were repaired and the new DH-4s assembled.

>> Bee Osborne was placed in charge of the testing of aircraft.

And Osborne is going to be the test pilot for this new airframe.

He states that when he walked out onto the Airfield, he had never seen that airframe before and never flown it before and he was scared.

Because this is a brand new aircraft that he'd never been in but the other surprise was the fact that he didn't realize that they were going to have a huge ceremony [MUSIC] and you had dignitaries from the United States, high-ranking officers from France, from Britain and so forth.

>> This shy aviator from Midway Kentucky, became the first American pilot to fly the American-made DH4 in France I think the real big significance >> of this flight was the fact that it proved to the world that the United States >> was totally vested in the war.

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> Observation was the main reason for aviation in WW1.

The only reason for the fighters in was to defend the observation aircraft.

>> The first American squadron to receive the DH4 was the 135th Aero Squadron.

Formed on August 1st, 1917 at Rockwell Field, near San Diego, its ranks were filled mostly with California boys.

They had crossed the Atlantic and had been in Europe since December of 1917.

They became known as the Liberty >> Squadron, the first to defend freedom in American-built DH4s over the war torn skies of France.

They [MUSIC] >> got 16 to 18 aircraft together and the cameras were rolling because the propaganda machine was going to make the most out of this.

Led by Brigadier General Benjamin Foulois, they took off into murky weather and never even made it to the front because the weather fouled everything [MUSIC] >> up.

However, the film rolled and the mission was touted as, this is a success.

We have the people, the airplanes, the engines and the organization and we're launching [MUSIC] >> missions.

By late summer, American Army Air Service Squadrons flying DH4s at the front, numbered 12.

Five were >> bombing, the other seven were observation.

>> There were also two Navy and Marine squadrons flying the Liberty Planes along the coast of >> Belgium.

World War 1 aviators generally were insanely Brave.

The >> amount of nerve it took to fly a World War 1 airplane in combat had to be tremendous.

By modern standards they re fire traps just sitting there, filled up with gasoline and oil.

But they're built out of primarily wood and fabric covered with, with cellulose dope.

And so it was just a fire hazard looking at >> it.

So in the morning, after you know what your orders are, you d go out to the field, the airplanes would probably be lined up for you.

If it was an early morning mission, the airplanes would be out there and, like the DH 4 which was a water-cooled engine which needed to be warmed up before flight, those airplanes [MUSIC] >> probably running [MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> already.

So they would get themselves strapped into the airplane.

You re sitting in an airplane, a wooden airplane, that s, it s kind of alive.

Sure it s made of wood and wire and fabric, but it s alive.

They would open the throttle and take off into the air.

[MUSIC] And that take off is a lot of air blowing, things, swirling around.

And the airplane starts accelerating down >> the runway.

Now remember, a runway back then is not like a runway today, it was some farmer s field.

So it wasn t necessarily very smooth.

So the airplane would bounce around and bump and hit every >> pothole and eventually when it d get enough flying speed, it will get light on the wings and then there would be an instant sense of calm once you leave that rough ground and transition [MUSIC] >> into the air.

And so the airplane would kind of climb nice and slowly while you d line up with the rest of your squadron and head out over enemy lines.

[MUSIC] It was a very, very dangerous environment that WW1 airman operated >> in.

Whenever they went up over the lines, they were going to face a very, very competent enemy in a superb airplane that was well armed and that man was trying to kill you.

So these men lived in fear.

the [MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> American aviators liked the DH4, it was very easy to fly.

It was light in the controls and you could get good visibility and it was pretty robust.

So they did like the airplane a lot.

What they didn't like was the fact that the pilots sat in the front.

There was a fuel tank in the middle and the Observer sat in the >> back.

DH4 fuel tanks were not self-sealing like some Allied aircraft.

So if they were pierced by gunfire, the fuel tank might catch fire.

This led to the plane being dubbed a Flaming [MUSIC] >> Coffin .

To help even the odds, the Liberty Plane was well armed.

The pilot had two fixed Marlin 30 caliber machine guns synchronized to fire through the [MUSIC] propeller.

The observer had two Lewis machine guns attached to a swivel mount, allowing for maximum fire [MUSIC] [MUSIC] power.

Aerial combat transformed the newly trained aviators from America into seasoned military pilots.

However this transformation took a toll on both the men and [MUSIC] >> machines.

the Diaries are the primary source for the real story.

They are >> unvarnished, they re not filtered for letters home.

You're not leaving anything out because you don't want Mom to hear about it.

It's exactly what's going on at the [MUSIC] >> time.

Let's say your flight was successful.

Either you shot the enemy down or you didn't get shot down yourself.

Well, you came back to base and you landed.

They came down >> in different ways.

Some Pilots got very quiet and they went off on their own.

Other Pilots needed a drink.

Some Pilots would like to go brag about it and couldn't wait to go back up.

So it really depended on the individual personality.

But I can tell you this, after three or four flights in a day, you slept very well that night because you were very, very [MUSIC] >> tired.

Once you were done with your mission, that was it.

You didn t have any other responsibilities for the day typically.

So you could do whatever you want.

If there was a local town, you could go there.

If there wasn't a local town, you had to find out whatever entertainment that was on the field, you know [MUSIC] cards, drinking, sleeping, writing letters home, whatever the, whatever the impetus [MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> was.

If the Squadron had a victrola and a record collection, and most of them did, there would be music.

There sometimes, some units had a piano, some units even had a full-blown [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> Orchestra.

The Meuse-Argonne operation, known as the 100 Days Offensive, began officially on September 26th, 1918.

At 5:30 am, after a six hour long bombardment 37 divisions of French and American armies advanced on the Germans.

The battle was designed to break through enemy lines and emplacements the German had [MUSIC] >> spent four years fortifying.

What would become the deadliest single battle in U.S. Military history would include the [MUSIC] >> fledgling American Air Service.

For many of the aviators of the 166th Bomb Squadron, this was only their second combat mission.

As they climbed into their cockpits, there was an understanding that their aircraft, with its payload, left them with limited defenses against fierce anti-aircraft fire and well >> equipped German fighter planes.

And so they would have been probably overloaded.

The typical bomb load for a DH4 was 220 pounds of bombs.

And again this >> affected their ability to climb and it affected their ceiling and contained them to a lower ceiling about 15,000 feet.

It hampered their top speed.

Instead of the 118 or so they normally would have had out of a DH, they re probably [MUSIC] about 112...

The 166th in particular [MUSIC] went out with 13 airplanes.

In one of those airplanes was Paul Carpenter and Richard >> Steele.

Paul Carpenter was the pilot.

Paul Carpenter, the young Milwaukeean who had attended ground school at >> Princeton, was flying Aircraft #12.

They would have been very nervous about >> what was going on; very inexperienced.

On the way in they have no resistance.

When they got over the target there was still no resistance from Fighters, but they were getting Archie very heavily, the World War 1 term for anti-aircraft fire.

So they get over the target.

The [MUSIC] entire four squadrons drop their bombs and turn around >> to come back off the target.

Based on the reports from the time, it sounds like that Jasta 12 was launching Fokker D7s, blue fuselages and Squadron markings with various personal Insignia, but colorful planes, and launched them to go intercept these DH4s.

>> Pilots of Jasta 12, led by 31 year old ace Leutnant Hermann Becker, took to the sky >> to intercept the returning Liberty Plames.

The D7 is generally considered the best single-seat fighter of World War 1.

So, >> they're up against a formidable enemy.

One [MUSIC] Archie exploded right next to us.

It blew out the side of the fuselage and I dropped about 800 feet out of control fortunately, it doesn't wound either of the crew members.

Almost coincidental with that, eight or ten [MUSIC] German Fighters attacked the formation.

And a couple of them come after Steele and Carpenter.

They're having trouble with their engine, and they drop down a [MUSIC] >> little bit lower than the formation so they made up their minds to shoot Steele and me down as we were badly crippled and alone.

So down they came, six >> of them to set about us Carpenter says three flying wires, the things that are holding the wings on, disappear.

He notices that one complete Wing strut is missing.

And he's saying to himself, I don't even know >> how the airplane is holding together.

There's holes in the radiator.

Water s leaking out of the >> airplane.

The Observer, Steele, is wounded four times during this Mission and he still manages to stand up in that back cockpit and keep the Germans off of em.

Steele and Carpenter manage to [MUSIC] >> knock down one German airplane.

And, and the DH4 >> stays together, miraculously stays together.

Carpenter had little control over his mutilated plane, and he believed he was in enemy territory, on the edge of the forest.

As he struggled to land, he hit a section of German ground wire, swung, hit [MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> a shell hole and flipped.

The airplane ends up upside down.

So Carpenter crawls >> out of the airplane and he goes around the back cockpit, and he starts dragging Steele out and he sees from a wood nearby soldiers coming towards him.

And he doesn't know whether their Allied or German.

And so his primary thing is my observer s wounded, I have to get this guy out.

And if he needs medical help I >> have to do what I can.

So he gets him out of the airplane and just as he does that he looks and he sees the >> soldiers running towards them and they're American.

American Medics tend to Steele s injuries and Carpenter returns to his airfield.

There, he wrote a letter to his parents, describing >> in detail his harrowing mission.

And I love the send-off of the letter.

The letter >> says, it details all of this.

Missing strut, Observer wounded.

Steele s got four bullets in him.

German Fighters.

Upside down.

All of this stuff.

And the, and the sign off for the letter is, I have to close now, [MUSIC] >> we have another mission to fly Lt. Richard Steele was awarded a Distinguished Service Cross for his actions and injuries in battle that day.

Paul Carpenter, the pilot who brought both men back to safety, received no military award.

The 166th will fly 192 sorties, 13 combat missions and shoot down 6 enemy [MUSIC] [MUSIC] aircraft before the end of the war.

Much of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive took place on the battlefield, but one of the War s most famous operations resulted in Medals of Honor for a DH4 crew in early October of 1918.

On the morning of October 2, elements of three Infantry battalions and two machine gun companies of the 77th Division, under the command of a 33 year old Lawyer from New York, Major Charles Whittlesey, moved through a gap in the German defensive line in the Argonne forest.

While they reached their objective, troops on both flanks were driven back and 554 American soldiers found themselves isolated deep in enemy territory, surrounded now by the Germans they sought to defeat.

The 77th had prepared for a lightning strike, carrying with them only enough >> In fact he is described, later on, as being a stocky, hard-nosed pilot, and off from their other troops in the Argonne [MUSIC] >> Forest.

How to find them?

Observation aircraft.

Pilots and observers were not only called on to locate the 77th, they were also charged with executing a [MUSIC] >> maneuver never before attempted, called Aerial Resupply.

The 50th Aero Squadron, which was operating about 20 miles south of there, was called upon to fly >> over the ravine in the face of thousands of German guns that had been firing on the men of the Lost Battalion that were now firing upward at them.

So they >> ran a gauntlet, they were sitting ducks.

They don t call them the Lost Battalion for nothing.

We knew where they were approximately, but [MUSIC] >> we did [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> not know precisely where they were.

The big Liberty planes lifted off again and >> again, flying low.

As the day continued, Lieutenants Phillips and Brown s aircraft was riddled with bullets but they managed to return to the airfield unhurt.

In all, 13 flights were scheduled that day.

The beleaguered men of the Lost Battalion had been without food, water and ammunition for three full days.

The temperatures had dropped >> below freezing and they had no blankets.

It was a cold 6th of October, cold day.

A miserable day for flying but I believe these guys had this intestinal fortitude saying those guys on the ground have a lot worse than we do.

So >> we're going to we're going to fly.

On the field that day were Lieutenants Harold Goettler, pilot, and Erwin Bleckley, observer.

These two young mid-Western men from different backgrounds had flown as a team previously.

They liked each other.

They both believed strongly >> in the cause they were fighting for.

I think the man was a >> real patriot, he was brave, he knew he could contribute to the war effort hoping he could have a job where >> he didn t have to kill anyone.

And he ended up in an observation squadron, >> so it was the perfect fit for Harold Goettler.

Lieutenant Bleckley, the Observer, had an idea.

He wanted to intentionally draw fire from the ground, in order to determine where the Lost Battalion was by process of elimination.

Where the fire >> wasn't coming from, that's where they were.

Irwin would mark that on his map that that's where the bad guys are because they're shooting at us.

When they got the airplane to the aerodrome, it had over 40 machine gun bullets [MUSIC] >> in it.

Just, it grounded the airplane.

He was very mature, an >> intelligent man, he was a good pilot, and he was well liked and [MUSIC] respected by the men around him.

The two men, right at dusk, they took off with their parcel >> to drop over to the Lost Battalion.

And they flew the twenty miles north up to the pocket, as it was called and approached [MUSIC] >> the ravine again, this time even Lower They've got to try to run this gamut of fire that is being thrown up by everybody in order to make this drop in, to get it in an area where the 308th might actually be able to [MUSIC] >> recover the supplies that were intended for them.

So there is high ground on both sides of them up a ravine with a Ridgeline.

I'm sure they came [MUSIC] >> over from the French side near Binerville, France.

And I think they made a loop and came back up that one last time to make [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> sure >> that that they were hitting the target.

Lieutenants Goettler and Bleckley never returned.

It would take nearly 15 months before the Americans learned the fate of their squadron mates.

An American ambulance driver who witnessed the last few minutes of their >> flight described the events of that fateful day.

As Goettler pulled back to clear the slopes of the ravine for a second pass, the forest was ablaze with tracer rounds and gunfire.

Enemy machine gun fire tore through the >> aircraft windscreen, hitting the pilot.

Harold died immediately.

So this leaves Bleckley without a pilot.

Now Irwin in the backseat of the DH4 he has access to controls.

Irwin's not a pilot, you have to understand that.

So he took the controls that he had in the back and he tried to fly the airplane.

And I think once he gets control of their airplane, he comes up the ridge over the ridge.

As his plane came up flying straight level for a short [MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> ways.

Then it tilted.

And then it nosedived.

And when the airplane crashed, Bleckley lived, but not >> for long.

He died in a French ambulance.

So Goettler and Bleckley sacrificed their lives trying to save the men of the Lost Battalion.

And what they did was above and beyond the call to duty and for this reason they were awarded the Medal of Honor, two of only four U.S. Army Air >> Service Medal of Honor awardees from WW1.

And so that heritage of >> facing all the fire and all the danger in order to achieve a combat resupply mission by air, that was a first for American Air [MUSIC] >> power and that's what makes that so important.

One day after the heroic efforts of Lieutenants Harold Goettler and Erwin Bleckley and the 50th Aero Squadron, the decimated Lost Battalion was rescued.

Of the original cadre of 554 American doughboys, 194 walked out, >> and 190 wounded were carried out.

For the 50th Aero Squadron, the toll was steep.

Two of their best men, Lieutenants Goettler and Bleckley were dead, and another crewman, Lt. McCurdy was seriously wounded.

Three aircraft were lost and 10 others were damaged beyond repair.

By wars end the 50th Aero Squadron had flown 343 sorties, [MUSIC] lost 29 DH4s and eleven airmen.

On November 11, 1918, the War to end all wars came to a close.

The American-built DH4 had been engaged in combat for less than 90 days.

196 Liberty Planes had been flown by five American >> bombardment and seven observation squadrons at the front.

Four of the six Medals [MUSIC] of Honor were awarded to DH4 aviators.

Captain Bee Osborne left the military, and began a new job with the Railroad.

He would never fly again.

Lieutenants Steele and Carpenter returned to [MUSIC] the U.S. and resumed their university studies Floyd Pickrell went back to Kansas and [MUSIC] >> married his wartime sweetheart.

He would never fly again.

Harold Goettler s fiancé, Clara Mallen [MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> was heartbroken and remained unmarried for many >> years.

the war ends and production stops abruptly.

They decided it was more economical just to leave the airplanes there in France.

It wasn t even worth bringing them home.

And what they did was bring all the airplanes together and they had a >> large bonfire, and they burned all the airplanes.

The Liberty Plane and aviation faced an uncertain future when William Billy Mitchell returned to the United States.

He had been promoted to the war-time rank of Brigadier General and assigned command of US aerial combat units while in France.

Just shy of his 40th birthday, the young officer was passionate about >> aviation.

His career was both turbulent and controversial.

Billy Mitchell was not liked by everybody.

He was, as we know from his later experience, an iconoclast, famous, [MUSIC] >> brilliant, capable, but not everybody's favorite dinner guests.

So Billy Mitchell understood that the only way that the United States was going to develop Aviation and Aviation Technology was if the commercial sector stepped up.

He needed to sort of create an industry out of nothing.

And to do that, you needed to create demand.

so he conceived the idea of this transcontinental airplane race essentially to galvanize public opinion and enthusiasm around Aviation.

He [MUSIC] >> wanted to show them what airplanes could do.

>> The United States sits on a big continent.

And being able to fly from one end to the other, or the top to the bottom, or between two very distant cities was an >> idea that, that people really wanted to develop.

And so he orchestrated this airplane race under the guise of a, sort of technical reliability test.

But it was a little disingenuous.

I >> mean, it was really a massive publicity stunt.

Officially called The First Transcontinental Reliability and Endurance Test, it was open to all members of the military.

The proposed goals were safety and reliability.

At the last minute it was decided >> that the race would be a round trip.

Just ten years earlier, it had taken the Vin Fizz 49 days to cross the continent.

Mitchell anticipated a one >> way trip in less than a week.

The overarching reason for the reliability tour was this is the opening Salvo of >> Billy Mitchell's campaign on behalf of Air Power Forty-eight teams signed up on the >> east coast and 15 on the west coast.

There was a wide assortment of military aircraft.

But the largest contingent by far was the DH-4.

There were forty-four!

The 63 aviators and their mechanics came from all walks of life Lieutenant Belvin Maynard served in France as a test pilot, his skills and experience so unique that he once flew 318 continuous loops in 67 minutes.

Maynard grew up in rural North Carolina and entered Wake Forest Seminary.

Married with two young daughters, he was accompanied by his mechanic, Sergeant William Kline.

>> They christened their DH4 Hello Frisco .

He sort of came out of nowhere and then, that sort of introduced him to the American public, and he acquired the nickname that stuck [MUSIC] >> with him thereafter, which was the Flying Parson.

On the morning of >> October 8th, 1919, the race began.

Each pilot took off, circled around to wave and then departed for the next control stop, Binghamton, N.Y., [MUSIC] 142 miles >> to the west.

Lieutenant Maynard prepared to depart.

His wife, daughters >> and a German shepherd named Trixie gathered planeside.

Trixie was hanging out of the cockpit with her paws like this barking furiously, tongue hanging out.

And the crowd of course went wild because, he was flying with, he taken off with, with his dog in the cockpit.

But Belvin Maynard seized the lead very early in the race in a DH4 and he was a very skilled pilot in all kinds of ways, but he just flew faster than anyone else.

He got to Chicago the [MUSIC] first day.

That s farther than anyone else got.

And he really pushed the engine.

He felt like he had a real understanding [MUSIC] >> of the Liberty and in fact he did.

Maynard, Klein and Trixie returned to New York on October 18th, just nine [MUSIC] days, four hours and 25 minutes after departing.

They won the race in record breaking time despite replacing >> a Liberty engine in Nebraska on their return.

This was the biggest story in the country for a week or two.

It was front page news.

It really sparked [MUSIC] >> just a tremendous amount of interest and enthusiasm.

Mitchell s ultimate goal of promoting >> aviation was clearly achieved, but not without sacrifice.

In the end, there were 54 crashes, 42 of them disabling the aircraft.

During a race that lasted just 11 days, only 8 of the 67 aircraft that entered the competition completed the round trip.

[MUSIC] >> Worst of all, the race cost nine lives.

So many young men had died in the war and now these men were, had died needlessly for, to what end.

Mitchell defended >> a lot they learned a lot from it.

It creates enough publicity that, you know, people are caught up publicity that, you know, people are caught up >> in aviation, they're starting to take an interest.

Lots of parts of the United States that the race went over had possibly never even seen >> an airplane before.

So it's an important event.

This strong public interest in aviation and newly developed navigational aids created by the race, spurred the military to expand the role of the airplane.

One experiment would change the capabilities of military aviation forever To increase the range of flight, more fuel was needed.

A gravity-fed hose lowered between two >> DH4s proved air-to-air refueling was possible.

An activity that >> today makes our air power what we call globally capable.

Global reach comes from air refueling and air refueling comes from experiments with DH4 [MUSIC] >> s in the mid-1920s.

It was used in helping develop instrument flight characteristics.

It was used in a lot of different sort of testing the envelope of flight experiments, but the primary role that I think it's remembered [MUSIC] >> for the post-war is the air mail experience.

The United States Postal Service began limited regular >> airmail service in May of 1918, using six JN4H Jennys from the Army Air Service.

These smaller planes could handle the routes between Washington, D.C. and New York, >> but expanding the service would require larger aircraft.

They found that surplus DH4s were able to handle more letters and more fuel [MUSIC] for longer flights and immediately ordered 100.

The Boeing Company of Seattle, Washington modified the DH4 to carry mail.

They rebuilt >> the fuselage with metal tubing to increase strength and moved the cockpit 16 feet to the aft to allow a large cargo hopper to be installed between the pilot and engine.

The added weight required larger and sturdier landing gear, made of metal tubing and larger wheels were added to take the abuse of rough, unimproved landing fields.

The modified DH4 was now capable of tackling >> one of the greatest challenges of its history.

The Postal Service wanted to do the entire United States.

So they got the Transcontinental route started.

There were no navigational facilities and basically no Maps.

They knew which towns they were supposed to go to and approximately which direction to go, and if their compass worked right, they could probably find that town.

And then with [MUSIC] >> the weather, they were supposed to go anyway.

They called themselves the Suicide Club.

One out of nine would die in the profession they chose.

The biggest risk was the weather and the Postal [MUSIC] System s credo that The mail must go through.

The pilots who were members of the club were generally restless men who found solace in >> the risk and serenity of being up there.

It was their wildness, when put into the open cockpit of the mail plane, that got the mail through.

Along the routes >> they flew, they became legends for their daring.

Over the Rocky Mountains, not the southern pass where it s a little easier, literally over the Rocky Mountains.

And part of the reason it was proven possible because of the [MUSIC] >> reliability of the airframe, of the DH4.

They were paid by the mile and >> only if they showed up, rain or shine.

They were all Daredevils.

Somebody dared em to do it.

So they did it.

Just like grandpa said, the dern fool didn t know he couldn t do it, so he went ahead >> and done it!

That s the way they operated.

While the sturdy DH4 brought with it great risks, it also brought fame to those lucky enough to sit in her 28 inch wide cockpit.

>> a lot of well-known names including Charles Lindbergh operated as air mail pilots flying DH4s [MUSIC] >> before Lindbergh's famous flight across the Atlantic.

Of all the legends and lore created by the daring air mail pilots, one rose above the rest.

Jack Knight flew his open cockpit DH4 over the Rocky Mountains at night in sub-zero temperatures, [MUSIC] with only a compass and a road map.

His daring feat was celebrated in newspaper headlines and books worldwide, helping to establish America s first all air, [MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> overnight transcontinental Airmail route.

It carried the mail, it carried passengers.

It trained Navigators, it trained Gunners, it trained pilots.

So it did a lot of things [MUSIC] >> and it did a lot of things well.

It was our first combat aircraft, and as such it was the forerunner of all the great military aircraft that had been built and that had served in our [MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> country in both wartime and peacetime in the 100 years since then.

The legacy of the DH4 Liberty plane is American air power.

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