Navy's First Ace Helped Transform Naval Aviation

摘要

An irony of World War Ⅰ was that most of the Naval Academy graduates who trained for big-gun combat basically sat on the sidelines. ADM William S. Sims would later lament "that many of our Annapolis men" who desired to engage the enemy "had to stay on this side, in order to instruct these young men from civil life." An example was the emerging naval air arm. Naval Reservists accounted for almost all the 16,000-plus men operating 500 aircraft in the European theater. Besides scouting and reporting the presence of Uboats, some of the American aircraft were able to launch attacks.