First Responders

Larry Callahan was a tall, laid-back, 23-year-old from Kentucky who had cut short a career in finance to serve his country. A gifted ragtime pianist, he had a passion for liquor, women, and cards. His talents extended to the air. He and other American pilots trained with the Royal Flying Corps in England before being assigned to Allied airbases in France. As a fighter pilot with the 85th Squadron and the 148th Aero, he became an ace.

George Vaughn was a student at Princeton University in 1917, when he put his name down to join the fledgling Aviation Corps. He wrote his family on May 4 to explain that after undergoing an equilibrium and eye test, he was subjected to a thorough medical “that has put a good many fellows out of the Corps.” In fact, he was one of only 36 Princeton men out of more than 100 volunteers who would meet the rigorous medical requirements to become a pilot. During the war, Vaughn destroyed 13 enemy aircraft. “All you had to do was fly the plane and shoot the guns,” he said modestly, shortly before his death in 1989 at age 92.

Awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross, Lloyd Hamilton was shot down and killed flying with the 17th Aero Squadron in August 1918. Hamilton’s body was identified a year later and interred in an American military cemetery in France. In 1921, at his parents’ request, he was exhumed and laid to rest in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. In 1932, the U.S. Army Air Corps dedicated a new airfield north of San Francisco in Hamilton’s honor; Hamilton Air Force Base remained active until the 1970s.

Major John Andrews, commander of the Royal Air Force’s 209th Squadron, was a leading British ace who had dueled with both the Red Baron and Max Immelmann (the first German ace of World War I). Andrews was a patient flight instructor to the young American men assigned to his squadron.

Open-cockpit airplanes offered no protection from the cold, so pilots improvised, as this one did by wearing a leather mask. In a letter to his family, one American pilot wrote: “My ears are very sore from high altitudes and long dives and my eyes are rather sore from flying without goggles.” He added that no one wore goggles when “you’re out hunting,” since painful eyes were a small price to pay for an unobstructed view. Being exposed to the elements resulted in other afflictions: split lips, frostbite, and headaches.