JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO, Texas –
While known for being the “father of U.S. military aviation” with his historic flight at Fort Sam Houston March 2, 1910, Benjamin D. Foulois was also the owner of many other aviation-related “firsts.”
1908 – First flight as a dirigible pilot
After seeing American inventor Thomas S. Baldwin demonstrate a dirigible at the St. Louis air meet in 1907, Brig. Gen. James Allen, Chief Signal Officer, discussed purchasing one for the Signal Corps. The Signal Corps had long urged the U.S. Army to buy a dirigible, and many European armies had them by the turn of the century.
During the summer of 1908, the Army tested a Baldwin non-rigid dirigible – and formally accepted it as Signal Corps Dirigible No. 1.
After Foulois, a first lieutenant, graduated from Signal Corps School at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., in July 1908, he was assigned to the Office of the Chief Signal Officer in Washington, D.C., and on Aug. 28, Lts. Frank Lahm, Thomas Selfridge and Foulois were taught to fly SC-1.
1909 – First observer on an aircraft cross-country
As one of the three officers in the Army to operate the first military airplane purchased by the government from the Wright Brothers in 1909, Foulois participated in the trials of the Wright Flyer.
During the trials, Foulois was on board in the observer’s seat of the Wright Flyer with Orville Wright and clocked the airplane’s landmark 10-mile flight time from Fort Myer to Alexandria, Va., at a speed of 42.5 miles per hour that qualified that airplane for acceptance into the Army. The flight also broke three world records – speed, altitude and duration cross-country. The one-man Aeronautical Division of the Signal Corps was born.
In his memoirs, Foulois jokingly stated that he was chosen on the basis of intellectual and technical ability, but he realized later that it was his 5-foot-6-inch stature, 126-pound weight, and map-reading ability that qualified him for the flight.