DEFENDING 'ALOHA'

摘要

Aircraft remained something of an unknown quantity to the US Army Signal Corps on June 29,1913 - the date that Lt Harold Geiger and 12 enlisted men set out from San Diego, California to establish an air base in Hawaii. Equipped with two well-used and unreliable seaplanes, a Curtiss E and a Curtiss G, Lt Geiger was further constrained by an uncooperative Hawaiian commander who would not sanction regular flying instruction or participation in manoeuvres. Frustrated at every turn, Geiger returned to the US mainland a year later after completing just a handful of flights. While his experience on Oahu, the third largest of the islands, was underwhelming, a similar detachment in the Philippines managed to demonstrate the useful function aviation could fulfil in support of coastal artillery. It was based on this evidence that the Signal Corps decided on April 9, 1915 to organise squadrons for service in the Philippines, Hawaii and the Panama Canal Zone.