An Incipient Mutiny: The Story of the U.S. Army Signal Corps Pilot Revolt. Dwight R. Messimer. Lincoln, NE: Potomac Books, 2020.
How should junior officers in the field deal with inept commanders and incompetent management from higher headquarters? How do military institutions organize, train, and equip forces employing new technologies? What is the role of the press in highlighting mismanagement of military organizations? In An Incipient Mutiny, Dwight Messimer recounts a little known historical case study to engage with these issues.
Despite the title, this book isn’t really about a mutiny or a revolt. Rather, it describes in detail the early days of the military application of fixed-wing aviation under the Army’s Signal Corps, explains how pilots were mistreated by a community that didn’t understand flying, and shows how junior officers and an unexpected 1915 court martial shaped the way the Army reorganized its flying mission. This is an expertly-told story of strong personalities, challenges in training for new technological capabilities, and the development of personnel policies in a vacuum. Even though the events happened over a hundred years ago, many of the issues described in this book echo across history and still ring true today.
Dwight Messimer—an Army veteran, former police detective, and emeritus history professor from San Jose State University—is a brilliant storyteller. His previous works on naval and airpower history from World War One and the inter-war era—such as Find and Destroy; Escape from Villingen, 1918; and No Margin for Error—served him well in writing this book.
He clearly masters the primary source documents and demonstrates a solid understanding of service culture in the years leading up to the Great War. Messimer’s archival research at the Air Force Historical Research Agency, U.S. National Archives, and San Diego Aerospace Museum, as well as the use of key published memoirs, provide a rich collection of sources for this book. Anecdotes about officers’ daily routines and norms of interactions between superiors and subordinates show how well the author understands the Army of the early 20th century.
The key event of this story is the Goodier Court Martial of 1915, where junior aviators testified about the Signal Corps’ inept management of military aviation and the press leveraged its coverage of the proceedings to highlight these shortcomings to the nation and to Congress. Much of Messimer’s book provides the context leading up to the trial as well as the political maneuvering by Signal Corps leadership, which requires some explanation.
The Signal Corps’ initial interest with aviation developed during the 1890s, when Brigadier General Adolphus Greely served as the Chief Signal Officer (CSO) and pushed to establish a Balloon Section for the U.S. Army. The purpose of this capability was to provide reconnaissance, using the height advantage of a balloon. After some limited success with ballooning during the Spanish-American War, Congress approved appropriations for additional balloons and facilities for the Signal Corps. In 1907, a new Chief Signal Officer, Brigadier General James Allen, established an Aeronautical Division to oversee all aviation matters, to include ballooning and air machines for the Signal Corps. The Army purchased its first airplane—the Wright Military Flyer, known as SC-1—on 2 August 1909.
"The Wright Brothers at Ft. Myer - July 30, 1909," by John McCoy (U.S. Air Force Art Collection)
The Signal Corps continued to purchase aircraft from the Wrights, and later from Glenn Curtiss, over the next several years. The manufacturers initially provided civilian instructors as flight instructors for officers detailed to new Signal Corps aviation schools. Army policy allowed officers to be detailed away from their primary branch for a maximum of four years, at the end of which they had to return to their infantry, cavalry, or artillery branch of origin. This “Manchu Law,” as it was known, made it very difficult to develop a pilot force with long-term flying expertise. Additionally, much angst developed among the pilots over administration of flight pay—seen as the equivalent of today’s hazardous duty pay, given that one in four pilots were killed in aircraft accidents prior to 1914—as well as shoddy aircraft manufacturing standards. A venomous competition soon grew between pilots trained in Wright aircraft versus those trained in Curtiss aircraft, each having different systems of controls and cockpit layouts. Aircraft accidents, sometimes fatal, also generated blame between the two camps.
In June 1913, the Signal Corps, at this time led by Brigadier General George Scriven, moved all flight training operations to North Island, California, and established a new Signal Corps Flying School under Captain Arthur Cowan. Cowan was a signals officer who had no knowledge of aviation operations. Problems with his junior pilots soon arose. Cowan would accuse his lieutenants of unauthorized stunting when accomplishing a simple go around after an aborted landing attempt, or flying dangerously over hangars when setting up for a landing. Often, he singled out particular junior pilots as targets of his ire. He also opposed requests for experiments with firing machine guns or dropping bombs from aircraft. Cowan even mismanaged his budget for spare parts, and then blamed his subordinates for not keeping the aircraft airworthy.
After a few years of such mistreatment—a period witnessing the deaths of several student pilots and instructors in flying accidents—and then the discovery that Cowan had been drawing flight pay without actively being in the flight training program, several junior pilots drew up charges against Cowan and took them to the Western Department Judge Advocate, Lieutenant Colonel Lewis Goodier, for advice. Goodier happily assisted, since his son, Ned, had been a student at Cowan’s school, so he knew of the toxic leadership environment at North Island.
Lieutenant Colonel Lewis Edward Goodier, Sr. (Wikimedia)
The young lieutenants submitted their charges of financial mismanagement and illegal drawing of flight pay in April 1915, but Cowan’s connections at Signal Corps headquarters ensured the charges would be dropped. In a surprise move, Signal Corps leaders turned the table and charged Lieutenant Colonel Goodier with inappropriately advising the lieutenants due to his personal interest in the case, stemming from his son’s former status.
Goodier’s court martial was a highly publicized event in October and November of 1915, ten years before Billy Mitchell’s more famous trial. Prosecutors made the mistake of asking the young lieutenant witnesses open-ended questions that allowed them to expose Cowan’s poor leadership and the Signal Corps’ mismanagement of the Army’s aviation program. The press had a field day. In the end, the Army punished Goodier with only a reprimand, but the trial demonstrated the Signal Corps had no interest in experimenting with the military use of fixed wing aviation beyond simple reconnaissance. By contrast, European aviators were pushing the capabilities of aircraft as offensive weapon systems over the trenches of the Western Front.
The wider impact of the Goodier court martial was immediate. An Army inspector general soon visited North Island and exposed numerous shortcomings. Congress conducted its own investigations, just as the Preparedness Movement—a national effort to ready the United States for entering World War One—gained traction with the American public. Newspaper coverage of the Army’s mismanaged aviation program increased. The resulting National Defense Act of 1916 expanded the authorized number of active-duty Army pilots from 60 to 148 and created a reserve structure, but Army aviation remained under the Signal Corps. When the United States entered World War One and deployed the Army to Europe, General John Pershing finally forced the issue and established an Air Service in France in late 1917 , separate from the American Expeditionary Force’s Signal Corps. Army Headquarters soon followed suit.
In An Incipient Mutiny, Messimer fills the gap between the Wright Brothers’ first military aircraft sale in America and the legacy of the US Air Service in World War One.
An Incipient Mutiny reveals why airmen later sought and won the policy—or dictum as many would argue—that aviators must lead air units in both training and in combat. The Army’s FM 100-20, The Command and Employment of Air Power, finally codified this concept in July 1943. Indeed, Messimer’s primary argument is that the Signal Corps had no business leading the Army’s aviation efforts due to their lack of experience with airplanes. All of the author’s evidence and contextual explanations surrounding the Goodier court martial make this case clearly and effectively. Messimer’s work also sheds light on why flying training and flight duty pay are so thoroughly regulated in the military today. And over one hundred years later, it reminds us how military organizations in our country must be accountable for their responsibilities to the public, to the Press, and to Congress. In An Incipient Mutiny, Messimer fills the gap between the Wright Brothers’ first military aircraft sale in America and the legacy of the US Air Service in World War One.
John Abbatiello received his Ph.D. in War Studies from King’s College London and is a retired U.S. Air Force aviator. He currently serves as a civilian faculty member at the U.S. Air Force Academy. He is the author of Anti-Submarine Warfare in World War I: British Naval Aviation and the Defeat of the U-Boats. The views expressed are the author's and do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
Have a response or an idea for your own article? Follow the logo below, and you too can contribute to The Bridge:
Enjoy what you just read? Please help spread the word to new readers by sharing it on social media.
Header Image: Crashed Wright Flyer, September 17, 1908 (Wikimedia)