In fifteen months those schools graduated more than five thousand men. The Shipping Board Training Service also undertook the training of seamen, firemen, cooks and stewards and later on developed a system of training crews with a fleet of training ships based at Atlantic and Pacific coast ports, with a ship authorized for the Gulf and another for the Great Lakes. On these training ships there were about five thousand apprentices. The course of instruction was six weeks, which was followed by actual sea service on the American vessels. The extraordinary success of the program of the United States Shipping Board naturally depended very largely upon the fidelity of the workmen employed at the government plant, and upon their enthusiastic co-operation in the speed-up program. The titanic task of bridging the Atlantic with a procession of ships had been thoroughly understood by the American Government from the beginning of the war. "We have to bridge two thousand miles of dangerous water to strike the blows which are required to end the menace of ruthless militarism," declared the Secretary of War. "Not a bullet can be fired, nor a mouth fed by Americans over there unless a rivet has first been driven home here." The work done by the Shipping Board was under severe handicap. America had ceased to be a maritime nation-its flag had almost vanished from the seas. And with exception of a few widely scattered shipyards, merchant marine construction had almost become a lost art in America. Then came the sudden call to outdo the rest of the world in the upbuilding of a merchant marine. A call coming at a moment when the navy was undergoing the greatest expansion in its history, when most if not all of the established yards were feverishly engaged in rush construction of dreadnoughts, destroyers, submarines, fuel ships, tenders and other auxiliary craft, and when munition makers were absorbing that part of skilled labor which had not been called to remote navy yards nor private shipbuilding plants. So it was a case of not working from the ground up but of first securing the ground, upon which to make a start. At the time of our entrance into the war, there were only thirty-seven steel shipyards in America and probably less than fifty thousand men were employed in them. By the fall of 1918 there were 171 shipyards, of which seventy-six are steel, eighty-six wood, seven concrete and two composite. Instead of fifty thousand shipworkers, there was an army of nearly four hundred thousand, with another two hundred and fifty thousand in training. The program of the Shipping Board, which was never completed, because of the unexpected ending of the war, was an enormous one. Contracts had been made for the construction of 2,249 passenger, cargo, refrigerator and tanker ships, ranging from 3,500 to 12,000 tons each, with an aggregate deadweight tonnage of 13,212,712. It had contracted for forty-two concrete ships, with a deadweight tonnage of 381,500, 170 wooden barges, 279 steel, wood and concrete tugs, of one thousand horse-power for ocean and harbor service, one hundred trawlers, and twentyfive harbor oil barges of a deadweight tonnage of fifty thousand. "The men who built the ships," said Secretary of Navy Daniels, "as truly did their part in winning the war as did the men who were on the ships and in the trenches." " CHAPTER XXVIII DEATH FROM THE SKY MERICA'S share of the thrilling war in the air naturally fell under two heads. The amazing work of AM our industrial army in aircraft production was not less wonderful than the work of the American government in enlisting and training American aviators for aviation service. When war was declared in April, 1917, the United States could hardly have been worse off than it was either in aircraft production or the training of aviators. She had then two aviation fields and 224 airplanes, of which only fifty-five were considered serviceable. The national Advisory Committee on Aeronautics advised that fifty-one of these airplanes were obsolete and the other four obsolescent. Some of these airplanes had been used during General Pershing's expedition into Mexico in his pursuit of Villa, and had shown serious defects. The American air service, which at that time was part of the signal corps, had been given in 1914 an appropriation of $250,000 for the purchase of new airplanes and equipment. Five officers had been sent to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a course in aeronautics. When the war broke out in Europe in 1914 these men were the only technically trained officers in the air service of the United States. When America entered the war there were sixty-five officers, with an enlisted and civilian personnel of 1,330 men, and yet if there was one branch of warfare in which the people of the United States expected America to take the lead, it was in the warfare in the air. The airplane had been invented in America, both theoretically by Professor Langley, and practically by the Wright Brothers. It had been improved by American inventors, and many aviators of America had become famous. More over, many adventurous young men in the United States had early in the great war enlisted in the allied aero squadrons in France. Many of these had gained great fame. The service especially appealed to adventurous and daring young men. It was almost the only service in which men of unusual courage and physical ability were sure to obtain distinction. The young man who might become a lieutenant in the infantry or the artillery might serve with the greatest valor and never be heard of by the general public, but the daring aviator was a hero. Among the Americans who enlisted at the beginning of the war in the French Foreign Legion as infantrymen, and afterwards were transferred to the aviation service, were William Thaw, Kiffen Rockwell and Victor Chapman. These, with Norman Prince, who had already flown in America, were sent to the French Aviation School and with Cowdin, Hall, Masson and the famous ace, Raoul Lufbery, trained in the art of fighting in the air. From the beginning they seem to have had an idea of forming a squadron of American pilots. The French Ministry of War did not at first approve of this proposition, for America at the time was strictly neutral, and to have an American fighting unit among the French aero squadrons certainly might suggest a breach of neutrality. After a time, however, through the persistence of Norman Prince and Major Edmund Gros an American organization was formed, commanded by a French Captain, and was called the Escadrille Americaine. This squadron was financed by Mr. and Mrs. W. K. Vanderbilt. It was composed of Captain Thenault and Lieutenant de Laage de Meux of the French service, with Lieutenant William Thaw, Sergeants Norman Prince, Elliott Cowdin, W. Bert Hall and Corporals Victor Chapman, Kiffen Rockwell and James McConnell. Soon after came Raoul Lufbery, Charles C. Johnson and Clyde Balsley. Later on, before the United States entered the war, more than two hundred American volunteers at one time or another, were members of this squadron. It became famous. On November 16, 1916, it was notified by Colonel Barrès, Chief of French Aviation, that it could no longer be known as the Escadrille Americaine. Bernstorff had protested to Washington that Americans were fighting on the French front, that French official statements contained the name Escadrille Americaine, and that these impudent Americans had even painted the head of a red Sioux Indian in full war paint on their machines. It appeared that Count Von Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov PRODUCTION OF AIRPLANE ENGINES TO THE END OF EACH MONTH. THE TOTAL Washington as in duty bound had protested to France. Major Gros then suggested as a name which would not lead to diplomatic disputes, Lafayette Escadrille. THE LAFAYETTE ESCADRILLE The American pilots of the Lafayette Escadrille were transferred from the French to the American service Decem |