The Wright Military Flyer during flight tests held at Fort Myer in northern Virginia just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., 1908. Orville Wright was at the controls. The Flyer is shown over a gate and wall of nearby Arlington National Cemetery.
This was America's air force until Congress approved $125,000 in 1911 for its expansion, despite the objection of one member: "Why all this fuss about airplanes for the Army? I thought we already had one." In Wright and Curtiss aircraft early Army flyers began stretching aviation's limits with bomb-dropping, photography, and strafing while forming their first unit, the 1st Aero Squadron, on December 8, 1913. These achievements convinced Congress to give the Army's air force official status on July 18, 1914 as the Aviation Section, Signal Corps, which absorbed the Aeronautical Division and its 19 officers, 101 enlisted men, 1 squadron, and 6 combat aircraft.
Orville Wright's first flight in 1903 had lasted twelve seconds; by 1916 flights of four-hours duration had become possible. This progress was soon tested. Brigadier General John Pershing pursued Pancho Villa in Mexico from 1916 to 1917 to bring the Mexican revolutionary to justice for attacking an American border town, Columbus, New Mexico. Captain Benjamin Foulois, with ten pilots and eight aircraft of the 1st Aero Squadron, straggled against winds, storms, and high mountains to locate Villa; but a series of disasters, some comic, some tragic, stood in
