Sopwith Camels, Dunkirk and the life of a WWI ace

SALISBURY — Geoff Rossano, history teacher at the Salisbury School and the editor of “Hero of the Angry Sky,” spoke about the extraordinary career of David S. Ingalls, who at the tender age of 19 became America’s first naval ace during World War I.

His talk was at the Scoville Memorial Library on Sunday, Nov. 9.

Rossano said that Ingalls came from a prominent Ohio family. Born in 1899, he was related on his mother’s side to the Sinton iron fortune — and his uncle, William Howard Taft, was both a U.S. president and the chief justice of the Supreme Court.

Ingalls attended St. Paul’s in New Hampshire, where he excelled at ice hockey, and began at Yale University in 1916 at the age of 17.

As the likelihood of American involvement in World War I grew, a Yale student, Trubee Davison, gathered together a group of young men who wanted to learn to fly. The students were all from wealthy families, who supplied airplanes, and in the summer of 1916 what became known as the First Yale Unit began its initial training.

Ingalls was recruited, and the men enlisted in the Navy in March 1917, two weeks before the U.S. entered the war.

The Millionaires Unit (as it was known in the press) went to Palm Beach for training on a plane — a Curtiss F, a “pusher with a rear-mounted propellor,” Rossano said, showing a photo of the aircraft. “Imagine flying with the engine roaring right behind your head.” 

It was the first of several planes Ingalls would learn to fly between the age of 18 and 19 and a half.

The group included Kenneth MacLeish, brother of poet Archibald MacLeish. MacLeish was five or six years older than Ingalls and much more serious, with a fiancée at home.

“He saw the war almost as a Christian crusade,” Rossano said.

Nonetheless he and the exuberant Ingalls became fast friends and, along with Shorty Smith, the best pilots in the unit.

The unit arrived in France in the fall of 1917, and trained for anti-submarine patrol in a plane that was designed to make a right turn almost impossible to execute.

Ingalls, MacLeish and Smith were picked as the three squadron leaders and as fighter escorts for the submarine patrol. They were stationed at Dunkirk, which was dangerous because it was under constant bombardment by air, land and sea.

It was also tricky because there was only one direction in which to take off. If the wind was blowing in the wrong direction, just getting airborne was difficult.

Back in England for yet more training, the three were introduced to the famous Sopwith Camel plane. Rossano said the Sopwith Camel pilots racked up some 1,300 kills, but it was a dangerous machine to fly, with the rotary engine, guns and fuel tanks all packed into the first six feet of the plane.

In March 1918, the Germans mounted an all-out assault, hoping to end the war before the Americans arrived in earnest.

At the request of the British, Ingalls and MacLeish went to Flanders for a month (Smith was grounded for persistent air sickness).

After that, the decision was made to skip the ineffective submarine patrols and bomb the submarine bases directly.

And once again Ingalls and MacLeish trained on a new plane.

The mission wasn’t very successful. The bombers had to fly very high to avoid anti-aircraft fire, and “with the technology of the time, if you got your bomb within a mile of the target you’d done pretty well,” Rossano said.

Then Ingalls went back to flying the Sopwith Camel with the British and notched the five kills that made him an ace.

MacLeish took Ingalls’ place in October 1918 when Ingalls was reassigned. MacLeish was killed soon afterward, just before the end of the war on Nov. 11.

Ingalls was back home in December 1918, just 19 and a half years old. He finished up at Yale, attended Harvard Law School and married a Standard Oil heiress.

Ingalls subsequently served in the Ohio state Legislature; as assistant secretary of the Navy for air; ran for Ohio governor (and lost in the primary); and spent much of the 1930s and early ’40s working for his cousin, Robert Taft, U.S. senator from Ohio.

In early 1942, Ingalls was back in the Navy. He eventually retired as a rear admiral. He then turned back to politics with Taft in 1952.

Later in life, Ingalls had interests in broadcasting, newspapers, philanthropy. He flew until he was 80. He died in 1985.

“He led a truly wonderful life,” said Rossano.