Hero of the Angry Sky. David S. Ingalls
the navy in March 1917, he began corresponding with his parents in Cleveland, Ohio, a practice he continued until late November 1918. Someone in his father’s offices at the New York Central Railroad transcribed the handwritten letters and pasted them into a scrapbook containing materials documenting his military career.5
Ingalls’s letters reveal a lighthearted and affectionate relationship with his parents, and they are often filled with valuable insights into the tasks he performed, though he shielded his folks from the true dangers he faced. He limned his most hair-raising experiences with the glow of a sportswriter discussing a star athlete’s exploits. Though the letters contain much information about his social life in Europe, the teenage flier did not tell his mother about the “short arm” inspections he performed on enlisted men, searching for signs of venereal disease.
Upon sailing to Europe in September 1917, the recently commissioned junior officer commenced keeping a detailed diary, eventually filling two compact notebooks. Ingalls also compiled an informal record of his flight activities by jotting down spare notations throughout his diary, listing hours and types of aircraft flown. Surprisingly, no official logbook survives. These daily entries have a very different texture from that of his letters, being more matter-of-fact and more cryptic yet still recording the major and lesser activities that structured his days and the days of those around him. He expressed frustration with endless training, occasional boredom, dislike of army fliers, and hints of fear and nerves, an altogether less sugarcoated version of reality. While training in Scotland, the neophyte aviator transcribed lengthy notes during various lectures and from technical publications. He also produced a formal analysis of instruction at Ayr and Turnberry. Both are reproduced here.
Shortly after the war but likely no later than 1924, a more mature Ingalls prepared a hundred-page typescript memoir, incorporating much of the language of his diary and letters verbatim, interspersed with material reporting additional events, descriptions drawn from memory where no letters or diary entries survived, or editorial comments about his experiences. The memoir offers yet another interpretation of Ingalls’s activities, the tone by turns analytical and dramatic, with something of the flavor of a pulp novel. Wartime terror and boredom are gone, replaced by the occasional smirk or wink. His descriptions of social life and visits to nightclubs seem wiser, more knowing, as he speaks with the voice of a grown man recounting the escapades of a teenage boy.
Despite his officer status, Ingalls provided a distinctly civilian view of military life in his writings, albeit a rather privileged version of that existence. For him, this was all a great adventure, not a career. The navy’s decision to keep its regular young officers with the fleet and not train any as aviators meant volunteer reservists such as Ingalls filled the ranks of combat units.6 And like him, many came from affluent, socially prominent families. The young Ohioan thus had much to say about the social scene in London and Paris, and his experiences differed greatly from the hardships suffered by enlisted bluejackets at sea or doughboy infantrymen in the mud and trenches.
Ingalls’s story also, in the words of author Henry Berry in Make the Kaiser Dance, partakes of the persistent aura of glamour attached to the young Americans who flew their fragile, dangerous machines above the Western Front. Anyone who has ever raced across the sky in an open-cockpit biplane knows something of that feeling. Of Ingalls and his peers, Berry remarked, “Their names seem to conjure up the list of the romantic aspects of war—if shooting down another plane in flames, or suffering the same fate, is glamorous.” In a world of mud, horror, anonymity, and mass death, they became celebrities. The less-than-unbiased Gen. William “Billy” Mitchell proclaimed, “The only interest and romance in this war was in the air,” and historian Edward Coffman observed, “No other aspect of World War I so captured the public imagination.”7
Concerning his aviation duties, Ingalls offered insight into the lengthy, varied, sometimes contradictory, and often ad hoc instruction received by the first wave of navy fliers preparing for wartime service. He bemoaned the fact that training never seemed to end. Reassignment from flying boat–patrol training, to land-based combat instruction, to seaplane escort duty, and to cross-lines bombing raids, followed by more escort duty, then training in large bombers, and finally assignment to a British combat squadron reflected the navy’s continually shifting plans and priorities. The fleet entered the war with no aviation doctrine, precious few men, and little matériel, and it took many months to get the program headed on a winning course. As Capt. Thomas Craven, commander of naval aviation in France in the final months of the conflict, noted, his bases and squadrons, like John Paul Jones, “had not yet begun to fight,” even as Germany prepared to surrender.8
Among the first collegiate fliers to jump into the game, David Ingalls began training even before Congress declared war. In the months that followed, he mastered command of flying boats, seaplanes, pursuit aircraft, and bombers, more than a dozen machines in all. Ingalls’s work took him from Florida to New York and then to England, Scotland, and France. He became a trailblazer for the many that followed, and his duties included antisubmarine patrols, bombing raids, test flights, at-sea rescues, dogfights, and low-level strafing attacks. In all his assignments, he displayed intelligence, exuberance, and technical skill. His superiors entrusted him with significant responsibility, and he more than fulfilled their expectations. Ingalls achieved great success in all his endeavors and despite his youth earned the praise, admiration, and respect of those around him. His experiences mirrored the course of the navy’s first venture into the crucible of aerial combat. David Ingalls’s story is naval aviation’s story.
By any reckoning, David Sinton Ingalls of Cleveland, Ohio, lived an extraordinary life. Long before he flew into aviation history, he seemed destined for high achievement. It was in his blood. Born into an affluent, socially and politically prominent midwestern family, he enjoyed great success as a youthful athlete. His exploits in World War I made him a national hero. The postwar era brought further accomplishments—degrees from Yale and Harvard; marriage to an heiress and a busy family life; a high-profile career in politics, law, business, and publishing; a busy and productive stint as undersecretary of the navy for aeronautics in the Hoover administration; distinguished military service in World War II; extensive activity as a sportsman and philanthropist; and a lifelong commitment to his passion for flying as both a pilot and an aviation enthusiast. And whatever activity he pursued, he did so with energy and zest.
David Ingalls’s family tree incorporated some of Ohio’s most prominent citizens. On his mother’s side, he descended from David Sinton (1808–1900), whose parents arrived from Ireland and settled in Pittsburgh. Described much later as a man of “irregular education,” Sinton was known as “a large, strong person with strong common sense.”9 He eventually relocated to southern Ohio, made a fortune in the iron business, and was at one time perhaps the richest man in the state. His elegant, Federal-style Cincinnati home survives today as the Taft Museum of Art. Sinton’s only daughter, Anne (1850–1931), inherited $20 million from her father. She married Charles Phelps Taft (1843–1929), son of Alphonso Taft (1810–91), a man of solid Yankee stock. Originally from West Townshend, Vermont, the elder Taft graduated from Yale (Phi Beta Kappa) and Yale Law School and by 1859 had settled in Cincinnati, where he attained legal and political prominence. He ultimately served as U.S. secretary of war and attorney general and later ambassador to Austria-Hungary and Russia.
Alphonso Taft’s son Charles, the older half brother of William Howard Taft (the future judge, secretary of war, president, and Chief Justice of the United States), became a prominent lawyer in his own right, as well as a congressman and publisher of the Cincinnati Times-Star. According to Robert A. Taft’s biographer, “Wealthy brother Charley” often provided financial assistance to his justice sibling, while emerging as one of Cincinnati’s leading philanthropists. Charles and Anne Taft lived in David Sinton’s mansion until the late 1920s. Their only daughter, Jane Taft (1874–1962), was David Ingalls’s mother. She exhibited a lifelong interest in the arts and became a patroness of many museums and organizations. She also earned a local reputation as a talented painter and sculptress.10
Paternal grandfather Melville Ingalls (1842–1914), another Yankee, hailed from Maine and moved to Massachusetts, where he gained distinction as a lawyer and politician. After relocating to Cincinnati, he fashioned a remarkable career in railroads and finance. In time, he became president of several rail lines,