Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps
The Aviation Section, Signal Corps, was the military aviation service of the United States Army from 1914 to 1918, and a direct ancestor of the United States Air Force. It replaced and absorbed the Aeronautical Division, Signal Corps, and was succeeded briefly by the Division of Military Aeronautics, and then by the Air Service, United States Army. The Aviation Section organized the first squadrons of the aviation arm and conducted the first military operations by United States aviation on foreign soil.
The Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps was created by the 63rd Congress (Public Law 143) on July 18, 1914 after earlier legislation to make the aviation service independent from the Signal Corps died in committee. From July 1914 until May 1918 the aviation section of the Signal Corps was usually known by the title of its administrative headquarters component, named variously Aeronautical Division, Air Division, Division of Military Aeronautics, and others. For historic convenience, however, the air arm is commonly referred to during its existence as Aviation Section, Signal Corps, and is the designation recognized by the United States Air Force as its predecessor for this period.
The Aviation Section began in turbulence, first as an alternative to making aviation in the Army a corps independent of the Signal Corps, then with friction between its pilots, who were all young and on temporary detail from other branches, and its leadership, who were more established Signal Corps officers and non-pilots. After Lieutenant Colonel George O. Squier was brought in as chief to bring stability to Army aviation, it soon found itself wholly inadequate to the task of supporting the Army in combat after the United States entered World War I on 6 April 1917. It attempted to expand and organize a competent arm but its efforts were largely chaotic and in the spring of 1918 aviation was removed, first from the jurisdiction of the Office of the Chief of Signal where it had resided since its inception, and then from the Signal Corps altogether.
Read more about Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps: Punitive Expedition, Chiefs of The Aviation Section
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