War Bird Ace: The Great War Exploits of Capt. Field E. Kindley

Preface

Preface New books and articles about World War I, the so-called “Great War” and the “War to End All Wars,” continue to appear. To the historian, more information seems to materialize even when the subject appears to have reached a state of exhaustion. Clearly, new interpretations and insights come from renewed examination of old accounts, data, and concepts. The new publications illustrate the well-known axiom that profit can be derived from continual analysis of the past. Such is the case with this biography of the little-known Capt. Field E. Kindley, a World War I air ace. His life story, including his first published family correspondence, offers some new thoughts about World War I. Tracing the exploits of this young aerial warrior deepens our understanding of this first worldwide conflict, the heroic actions of many men, and especially the beginning of war in the air. The term “Great War” sounds strange when placed beside other major wars later in the twentieth century, such as World War II. To the individuals living during that period, however, it was truly a global war, one that fully engulfed the United States. Through a series of events leading to the U.S. declaration of war in 1917, especially submarine attacks on U.S. ships, high emotions built up, accompanied by a patriotic fervor not seen in many years. The actions of a relatively obscure Arkansas lad who joined this fight, and the process through which he evolved into a leading air ace, provide insight as to how individual Americans responded to the war and what motivated them to do battle in distant France. Kindley’s letters reveal a driving force to join in the patriotic struggle against the Germans, or “Huns,” as they were frequently called. While this account is one man’s reaction to a world at war, it typifies the actions of many, particularly those who volunteered to serve in the American Air Service. One can begin to grasp what prompted these young men to put their lives on the line and caused them to do some incredible deeds. In that way, Kindley serves to ably represent a generation. John Morrow, in his book German Air Power in World War I, states that World War I aviation accounts fall basically into three categories: XII | PREFACE the experiences of individuals, warplane technical works, and more general histories of ground and air operations. He goes on to find fault with each of these separate groupings. Morrow argues that some heroic individual works and more especially general military histories often left the impression “that the air war was peripheral and thus essentially unimportant” and that the air arm was relegated to the role of “providing heroes to raise the morale of soldiers and civilians.”1 Another aviation historian, John Cuneo, declared that “the personalized stories of individual experiences and feats, while furnishing exciting reading, provide little or no clue to the over-all importance of the air weapon in battle or to the overall strategy or tactics of a battle in which the air weapon played a part.”2 Certainly this biography of Capt. Field E. Kindley falls into Morrow’s first category and Cuneo’s “personalized stories of individual experiences .” While Kindley’s wartime and immediate postwar exploits established him as the fourth-ranking American air ace and a war hero, and provided a heroic example for others, his life story also enters into the problem of balance pinpointed by Morrow’s and Cuneo’s remarks. Kindley’s many detailed efforts in ground support operations in 1918, although agreeably small in the big picture, assist in countering, at least to some degree, the claimed peripheral and unimportant role of aviation in World War I. Throughout this biography, then, one objective has been to maintain a middle course between the general military analysts, who virtually ignore the role of airpower, and the aviation enthusiasts, who see and describe only that element of World War I. Still considering balance, the Kindley story provides an engrossing account of the American role with the British forces, a needed correction to the heavily weighted historical coverage of Americans flying and fighting in the French sector of the Western Front. As one would expect, air and ground training, tactics and strategy, organization, and attitudes differed between the French and British. Capt. Field Kindley experienced and absorbed British ways. In addition, the two Britisharea American squadrons, the 148th and 17th, never received the attention that their...