Elliott Roosevelt - Military Service

Military Service

Elliott Roosevelt had always been interested in flight, and in 1933 he briefly served as general manager of Gilpin Airlines of Glendale, CA, a small airline owned by Rep. Isabella Greenway (D-AZ), a close friend of the family. Later that year he became aviation editor for the William Randolph Hearst papers. After controversial involvement in the Air Mail Scandal and a secret attempt to sell bombers in civilian disguise to the USSR, he was hired as vice president of the Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce (see Aerospace Industries Association), a post he held until 1935, when he moved to Fort Worth, Texas and involved himself in broadcasting. His eyesight did not permit him to hold a pilot’s license.

Roosevelt received a captain's commission in the United States Army Air Corps on 23 September 1940, his 30th birthday. Elliott’s appointment in the middle of the 1940 election campaign caused a furious political row, although General Henry H. Arnold, the Chief of the Air Corps, asserted that there was no pressure or nepotism involved. After brief service at Wright Field, Ohio, Elliott took an intelligence course and served with the 21st Reconnaissance Squadron at the new U.S. facility in Gander, Newfoundland.

In the summer of 1941, he searched for and located air base sites in Labrador, Baffin Island, and Greenland, and reported on conditions in Iceland and along the rest of the embryonic North Atlantic ferry route. During this time he coordinated closely with FDR, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and General Arnold. Elliott was the first to interest Churchill in American bases in Africa (first, Bathurst in the Gambia, now Banjul), a step for which his father was not yet ready. He served as a procurement specialist, navigator, and intelligence and reconnaissance officer and rose to brigadier general by January 1945. Despite having poor eyesight and being classified 4-F (unfit), he also became a pilot and reportedly flew 89 combat missions by the time of his inactivation from the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) in August 1945.

While Elliott operated from Gander in August 1941, FDR detached him and brother Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr. to attend the Argentia (Atlantic Charter) summit between Churchill and FDR. In January 1943, Roosevelt accompanied FDR as a military attaché to the Casablanca meeting and the subsequent Cairo and Tehran Conferences in November-December 1943. At an alcohol-drenched dinner during the Tehran Conference, Elliott Roosevelt applauded Joseph Stalin's proposal for large-scale executions of German POWs, which earned him Churchill's vocal and lasting hostility, but Stalin's cheers.

Following a navigator/bombardier course in the fall of 1941 and a brief stint on anti-submarine patrol duty with the 6th Reconnaissance Squadron at Muroc AAB, Elliott received a top-secret assignment to carry out clandestine reconnaissance flights over the Sahara, with emphasis on French West Africa, with which the United States was not at war. Having been successful with this (Project Rusty), he was given command of the new 3d Reconnaissance Group at Colorado Springs. From Gibraltar and then Oran, Algeria, he led this unit in Operation Torch, the invasion of Northwest Africa in early November 1942. Elliott (with a pilot) flew the first U.S. reconnaissance missions over the theater in a borrowed RAF de Havilland Mosquito. This led to a long campaign for the U.S. adoption of this British aircraft, as Elliott held the American counterparts (modified Boeing B-17Cs and early Lockheed P-38s) to be inadequate and unlikely to survive in contested airspace.

From Maison Blanche, Algeria, and after the fall of Tunis, La Marsa near Carthage, Elliott pioneered new tactics, including night aerial photography, and obtained before and after imagery of Rome during that city’s first heavy bombing on 19 July 1943. During this period, top Allied commanders recognized him as the leading air reconnaissance expert in the European Theater.

After his detachment to investigate reconnaissance issues in the United States (see the Hughes scandal section below), Elliott received command of the 8th Air Force’s reconnaissance wing in England: the 8th Provisional RW, later renamed the 325th Reconnaissance Wing. During this period, Elliott worked on the shuttle-bombing project with the USSR, and participated in the May 1944 mission to the USSR which inspected the new American bases at Poltava, Mirgorod, and Piryatin. His units also supported the invasion of Normandy and the bombing campaign against V-weapon sites.

Following threats of resignation and pressure from “very high topside,” in January 1945 General Arnold ordered General Carl Spaatz in England to appoint Elliott a rated pilot, and the president submitted his son’s name to the Senate for promotion to Brigadier General. By standard rules, Elliott was eligible for the rank, but not for the pilot’s wings. Elliott continued in that rank in Europe until his father’s death on 12 April 1945. After VE-Day, the Air Forces could no longer find a “suitable vacancy” for him, and he was on leave and had staff duties in the United States. By coincidence, his last day of service was VJ-Day.

Roosevelt commanded the following units:

• 3d Reconnaissance Group, 11 July–13 August 1942 at the rank of major; 30 September 1942–1 March 1943 ending at the rank of colonel

Assigned to Twelfth Air Force and flew aboard numerous aircraft types during reconnaissance missions for the North Africa campaign in Algeria and Tunisia

• Northwest African Photographic Reconnaissance Wing, February 1943--November 1943, as lieutenant colonel and colonel. This was a composite unit with U.S., British, South African, and French squadrons.

• 90th Reconnaissance Wing, 22 November 1943–25 January 1944 at the rank of colonel.

Assigned to Twelfth Air Force, command and control organization that provided photographic reconnaissance to both Twelfth and Fifteenth Air Forces. Operationally controlled both 3d and 5th Reconnaissance Groups in Tunisia. The 90th's subordinate units reconnoitered airdromes, roads, marshaling yards, and harbors in Italy after the Allied landings at Salerno.

• 325th Reconnaissance Wing, 9 August 1944–17 January 1945 at the rank of colonel; 22 January–13 April 1945 ending at the rank of brigadier general.

Assigned to Eighth Air Force, command and control organization that through subordinate units, flew reconnaissance over the waters adjacent to the British Isles and the European continent to obtain meteorological data. Wing aircraft collected weather information needed in planning operations; flew night photographic missions to detect enemy activity; and provided daylight photographic and mapping missions. The wing also flew photographic missions over the Netherlands in support of Operation Market Garden in September 1944 and operated closely with tactical units in the Battle of the Bulge (December 1944–February 1945).

Roosevelt stated that he flew 89 combat missions and 470 combat hours prior to being called back for his father's funeral in April 1945 (he did not return to active theaters). These numbers were disputed at the time. His decorations included the Distinguished Flying Cross. He also received the Order of the British Empire, the Croix de Guerre and Legion d'Honneur, the Moroccan Order of Ouissam Alaouite, and the U.S. Legion of Merit. He ended the war holding the Air Medal with reportedly eleven clusters. As a chase pilot for the Operation Aphrodite flights in 1944, Elliott said he witnessed the death of Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. over Blythburgh, England.

After the war, Elliott Roosevelt no longer played a significant role in aviation, although he maintained a private pilot’s license and owned a small aircraft. He briefly served as president of short-lived Empire Airlines of New York (1946), citing his influence with the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), which however did not result in route awards. Reported attempts to assist Howard Hughes’s TWA in obtaining air routes to the USSR also did not succeed.