Royal Flying Corps in Texas 100 years ago!

[Griff Murphey]

Hard to imagine it's been 100 years... In 1917 as a result of a reciprocal agreement between the US, Canada, and Britain, three airfields were built in Fort Worth, Texas. They were the first British military forces in America since the War of 1812. Over 200 planes were involves, mainly Canadian built Jennies. All told over 1500 pilots graduated. Flight ops began October, 1917 and the fields were turned over to the US in April of 1918.

May 29th, on Memorial Day, a remembrance service will be held at the RFC CEMETERY, an official British commonwealth war grave, within Greenwood Cemetery in Fort Worth, Texas. We will remember the whiskey drinking Brits, Canucks, and American Viounteers at 10:15 AM on that day. We have Canadian LT. GEN. St-Amand deputy NORAD commander coming in as well as Brigadier Gen. David Kettle who is the Secretary General of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission for Canada. I am working on a Stearman fly over and an F-16 flyover, I have a great pipe band coming in. I hope some local readers will join us. I keep thinking about an electric RC model fly by but I don't think I want to try flying in a cemetery in front of several hundred people!

[Griff Murphey]

Photos

[pkf3]

Interesting

[Griff Murphey]

Thanks. We had a good ceremony with close to 500 people there on Memorial Day 2017. On Feb. 15th of this year we had a small ceremony on th 100th anniversary of Captain Vernon Castle who died in Fort Worth saving the life of his student. Castle was a famous British dance and movie star who had left a successful career here in Hollywood and gone on to England to fly and fight in France. The wind was pretty high but I overflow the graves with my Eflite micro Stearman.

[AEAJR]

Maybe next year you can arrange a scale model fly by of planes of that era. The crowd would probably really enjoy it.

[Griff Murphey]

It’s possible. I brought some of my stick and tissues with me but the wind was gusting 15-20 mph and the best I could do was a virtual crawl through the headwind straight ahead with my well worn beater Eflite micro Stearman.
One year when we could not get anything 1:1 scale, (maybe 25 years ago) a local rc guy, a brit at GEC Marconi named Ernie Harwood was going to overfly with a 1/5 scale pup but the wind was too high - he cranked it up but elected not to launch. There are two oak trees shading the graves but there is a large open area to the north. In the past we have put our air panels to guide the real Stearmans.