Aerospace Heritage in The American Legion

Aeronautics is one of the oldest commissions in The American Legion.  After having celebrated our centennial, most of us know the story about how The  American Legion was formed in Paris by service members waiting to return to the United States.

Those service members saw first-hand how advances in technology, specifically aviation, had broken the stalemate of trench warfare.

When they returned, those veterans were determined that the United States would not fall behind in its ability to defend itself, especially in the area of air power.

However, when the legionnaires returned, congress cut the budgets of every aviation unit, and sold almost every last airplane as surplus.  This sell-off fueled the barnstorming period of aviation with cheap airplanes, but left the nation without air power for defense.

On the west coast, aviation was an important, fledgling industry from San Diego to Seattle. Many on the west coast saw aviation as the only defense technology capable of detecting and preventing a foreign power from landing on our shore.

Nationally, The American Legion led the push to build our aviation capabilities in the military for defense, as few veterans truly believed that the Great War had ended the possibility of ending all future wars.

Legionnaires did not find success in lobbying congress, as old generals were afraid of their budgets being cut from traditional weapons to fund the new technology.  Thus, The American Legion turned to building the infrastructure in commercial aviation so as to support the industry in case it was ever needed.

In 1922, the national convention in New Orleans reorganized the committees, so that national director of aviation became the national Aeronautics Committee under the National Security Commission, as did the Military Affairs, National Defense and Naval Affairs committees.

The national Aviation Committee was directed to “coordinate with the U.S. Army Air Service and other nationally-recognized institutions and organizations devoted to the interests of aeronautics, and through the medium of local posts, county, and state organizations and national organization, to arouse the people in the development of commercial aviation, at such times and places as conditions and circumstances may warrant.”

Even today, the Department of California has this division of aerospace matters divided so that commercial aviation and research falls under the Aerospace Commission and military aerospace is under the Foreign Relations and National Security Commission.

There was no system of navigation for aviation in 1920, so American Legion Posts all across California put the name of the city, town or village in big letters across the roof of their meeting facilities.

By 1941, some 13,000 markers had been painted on the roofs of posts, barns, hangars, buildings, oil tanks and train stations across the United States at the urging of the Legion to guide pilots. Most of them had an arrow underneath pointing towards the nearest airfield in case pilots needed fuel or developed engine trouble while in flight.

The American Legion saw that the purpose of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the precursor to NASA, fit in with their goals of promoting the advancement of aviation, and gave the NACA their support.

This helped the NACA’s expanding role and led to the creation of its first research and testing facility in 1920, the Langley Aeronautical Laboratory. Continued support from The American Legion led to the construction of a second NACA laboratory for urgent research in aircraft structures at Moffett Field in California.

The national convention at Omaha in 1925 had President Calvin Coolidge in attendance and the floor passed a resolution supporting a plan put forth by the Aeronautics Committee to build more airfields, expand air mail, and provide more research into the advancement of aviation.

It was noted that, “By far the most important of these and the one which will do the most to benefit the others is the development of landing fields throughout the country, for without the fields, the finest air services conceivable and all the airliners of the world would be more useless than the navy and merchant marine without a dock, fuel station, or repair ship.”

The following year at the convention in Philadelphia, posts were implored to assume at least one worthwhile, constructive act of service for the benefit of its community. The Legion reminded them of their pledge “to inculcate a sense of individual obligation to the community, state, and nation.” The list of projects coming in was long and varied, and many of them were pledged to support the goals of the Aeronautics Committee.

All across California, American Legion Posts purchased property and improved them into landing fields.  Some were maintained by The American Legion, while others were taken over by municipalities at the urging of the local Legion posts to be made into public airports, such as Remco Field in Salinas.

Many of these airports endured, such as the “American Legion Airport” in Tracy, California. Meanwhile, these airports sponsored American Legion flying shows and air meets.

Civilian aviation was getting a big boost from The American Legion and it was changing the public’s perception from the dangers of the barnstorming days, to aviation becoming a reliable means of transportation.

This work continues today as the Aerospace Commission reports on new technologies affecting our nation, and helps to set policy through resolutions and community action.