Documents

Why England and not Italy?

 

Dwyer’s list of American officers and cadets killed in training in Great Britain.
List labelled "casualties under training" with thirty-four names with military rank and dates of each casualty.
A list compiled by Geoffrey James Dwyer of American officers and cadets killed while training with the R.F.C. / R.A.F. in England and Scotland (part of Dwyer’s “Report on Air Service Flying Training Department in England”).
Dwyer’s table showing ratio of fatalities to flying hours by type of plane.
A table titled "Ratio of Fatalities to Flying Hours by Types of Machine. The first column list the plane type, the second the number of hours flown, the third the number of fatalities, the fourth the ratio, with a fifth column indicating in three cases that the fatality was a passenger. The most fatalities involved Camels, but because the number of hours flown is relatively low in Spads, the ratio of hours to fatalities is worse for Spads.
A table compiled by Geoffrey James Dwyer showing ratio of cadet fatalities to number of flying hours in each type of plane (part of Dwyer’s “Report on Air Service Flying Training Department in England”).
Dwyer’s memo on non-flying commissions.
A typed memo from Geoffrey J. Dwyer to 1st Lt. Foss regarding non-flying commissions.
This copy of Dwyer’s memo regarding the non-flying status of some of the cadets is among the papers of Fremont Cutler Foss. “R.M.A.” stands for Reserve Military Aviator; on the test, see Hudson, Hostile Skies, pp. 29-30, and his source, Woodhouse, Textbook of Military Aeronautics (1918), p. 189. The test appears to have been a work in progress and the requirements for second Oxford detachment men were almost certainly different from those listed by Woodhouse.
R.A.F. graduation requirements, taken from Foss’s R.F.C. Training Transfer Card
Because Pershing’s cablegrams recommending men of the second Oxford detachment for their commissions were often dated not long after the men’s R.F.C. graduation, I for some time assumed that the recommendation for a commission was prompted by graduation. I realize now that this was a misapprehension. I have not found a document spelling out the requirements for a commission for men of the second Oxford detachment, but there was an understanding that the main requirement was that one had to have flown twenty hours solo. See, for example, Hooper, Somewhere in France, letters of December 28, 1917, and January 31 and February 14, 1918; Deetjen, diary entries for February 14 and 23, 1918; and Milnor, diary entry for January 16, 1918. 
List of “Casual Officers Air Service” returning to the U.S. on the Mauretania, departing Liverpool November 25, 1918.

Lahm’s list of “best types of Pilots and Observers”
A two-page memo signed by "F. P. Lahm" on the subject of "Report of Pilots and Observers."
Frank Purdy Lahm’s memo is part of “Officers who Demonstrated Exceptional Ability (List of),” which is included in Volume J.1 (Training Section, Air Service, A.E.F., France) in Gorrell.