By Aaron M. Lisec
Title: World War I Aviators Papers
Predominant Dates:1917-1918
ID: 1/7/MSS 338
Extent: 1.0 Boxes
Arrangement: By individual pilot into personal and official papers.
Date Acquired: 11/01/2014
Subjects: World War, 1914-1918, World War, 1914-1918 - Aerial operations, American
Forms of Material: Air pilots, Military - United States - Correspondence
Languages: English
Wilmer Krusen Bond (1896-1971) was a Philadelphia native and graduate of Temple University. He enlisted on September 21, 1917, and graduated from the School of Military Aeronautics at Princeton, New Jersey. After completing flying school he was commissioned in May 1918 as 2nd lt., r.m.a. (reserve military aviator), m.a. (military aeronautics), a.s. (aviation section), of the Signal Corps. Bond arrived in France in October 1918, a month before armistice. After the war he served as a reserve officer in the Army Air Service. In World War II he was recalled to duty in the Signal Corps and served as finance officer at Edgewood Arsenal, Aberdeen, Maryland; he rose to the rank of lt. col. by 1952.
Robert Stone Oliver (1894-1985) graduated from Yale (1916) and completed the School of Military Aeronautics course at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in December 1917. In March 1918 he was commissioned 2nd lt. in the aviation section of the Signal Corps. Sent to France in May, he spent the remainder of the war as a flight instructor. From 1942 to 1947 he served in the Army Air Material Command, flying missions in the U.S. and South America. Promoted to lt. col., Oliver was assigned to the retired reserve in November 1954.
John Hay Thompson (1890-1971) was born in Ohio to Scottish immigrants and raised in Cleveland. He enlisted in the army in January 1918, completed the Army Air Service Flying School at Kelly Field in San Antonio, Texas, and in July 1918 was appointed 2nd lt. in the Air Service of the Signal Corps. Thompson spent the last months of the war stationed at air fields in Texas and Oklahoma. His correspondence from that time includes letters from a woman named Constance on tour with an unnamed show in Kansas and Oklahoma. His papers include few postwar items.
The collection also includes one letter from Charles Henry Ramsey (1895-1980) of Albany, New York, who graduated from Cornell in 1917, trained at the army's ground school at M.I.T., the Signal Corps aviation section and flying school at Mineola, New York, and an overseas flying school. Promoted to 1st lt., Air Service, Ramsey was stationed in France in June 1918 when he wrote to his cousin Margaret Beasom of Nashua, New Hampshire.
Repository: Southern Illinois University Special Collections Research Center
Access Restrictions: Unrestricted.
Use Restrictions: To quote in print, or otherwise reproduce in whole or in part in any publication, including on the World Wide Web, any material from this collection, the researcher must obtain permission from (1) the owner of the physical property and (2) the holder of the copyright. Persons wishing to quote from this collection should consult Special Collections Research Center to determine copyright holders for information in this collection. Reproduction of any item must contain the complete citation to the original.
Acquisition Source: M. Benjamin Katz, Fine Books/Rare Manuscripts, Toronto.
Acquisition Method: Purchased.
Four letters from Wilmer K. Bond to his mother, Alice W. Schuler, 1917-1918, from Princeton, New Jersey, and France.
One undated 3-page memorandum on World War I era service stationery describing his first solo flight during training.
List of members for the World War I Overseas Flyers Reunion held June 3-5, 1966, in Dayton, Ohio (6 typed pp.).
Letter concerning 1980 reunion at Dayton.
Letter of January 23, 1985, to Bob and Ruth Oliver from Henrietta and Herbert Hibbs (ALS, 4 pp.).
Circa 1980 tourist map of Indre-et-Loire department of France.
Flyers and catalogs for books on World War I aviation history.
Photocopy of "Pilot's Book" recording training and flight hours beginning with ground school in December 1917. Covers instruction on several airplane types through 1918. Continues with log of transport missions flown from 1942 to 1947.
Two single cloth stripes sewn on shoulder straps.
World War I era photograph in uniform.
Reunion photographs circa 1960s-1970s.
