An Incipient Mutiny: The Story of the U.S. Army Signal Corps Pilot Revolt

An Incipient Mutiny covers the period 1892 to 1918, the years during which Army Aviation was a part of the Signal Corps. This is a historical account of mismanagement, criminal fraud, and cover-up, as well as self-promotion, shortsightedness, and political intrigue. The author has focused on the personalities of the pilots who formed the rebellion and on the Signal Corps officers whose mismanagement brought it on. The official air force histories have ignored what happened at Texas City in the spring of 1913. They rarely mention the Goodier court martial in 1915, and they gloss over the outcome and the findings of the Garlington Board and the Kennedy Committee in 1916. The official histories say nothing about the poor construction and design flaws in the airplanes the Signal Corps bought that killed 25 percent of the officers who were rated pilots between May 1911 and July 1914. The death rate among army pilots was so high that no life insurance company would issue them a policy. At the same time, there were airplanes on the market that were superior in every way to the planes the army was using, and less expensive to buy.