Document created: 31 December 03
Air University Review, January-February 1972

Harold E. Hartney: Pursuit
Group Commander and Author

Dr. James J. Hudson

Many students of World War I consider the 1st Pursuit Group the finest air combat force put into the field against crack German Jagdgeschwaders by the fledgling U.S. Air Service. The roster of this highly effective fighter organization contained such names as Eddie Rickenbacker, Frank Luke, James Norman Hall, Quentin Roosevelt, Douglas Campbell, Raoul Lufbery, Reed Chambers, James Meissner, Wilbur W. White, and Alan Winslow; but the man who left his imprint deepest in the soul of the unit was a Canadian, Lieutenant Colonel Harold E. Hartney. As group commander during the last three months of the war, he transformed the 1st Pursuit Group from a good outfit to a superb one. His book Up and At ’Em, * the story of his own and the group’s activities in World War I, proved to have value to fighter organizations in the Second World War.

Hartney was born in Pakenham, Ontario, Canada, on 19 April 1888. He graduated from the University of Toronto in 1911 and some three years later took his law degree from the University of Saskatchewan. During his student days at the latter institution he served as a lieutenant in a Canadian military unit, the Saskatoon 105th Fusiliers. Shortly after the outbreak of the war the 105th was mobilized, and in May 1915 it was sent overseas as a part of the 28th Battalion, Canadian Infantry. Although recently married, Hartney eagerly accompanied his men to England. Much to the dismay of the Canadians, further training was required before they were transferred to the battlefields of France. It was during this period that Harold Hartney witnessed one of the early Zeppelin raids on the English countryside and was “bitten by the flying bug.” He applied for a transfer to the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and, after a wait of several weeks, was accepted in October 1915.

Training on Maurice Farmans (both “Longhorns” and “Shorthorns”) and FE-2B pushers, Hartney made rapid progress toward becoming a full-fledged pilot. However, in January 1916 he was felled by rheumatic fever and spent the next several weeks in a British hospital. After still further rest under the watchful eye of his young wife Irene, who had arrived in England in the autumn of 1915, Hartney returned to flight training. Upon completion of his training at Norwich, the impatient young Canadian was posted to the RFC’s Number 20 Squadron, then flying FE-2Bs on the Western Front. During the next several months Hartney participated in many photographic and bombing raids and chalked up five aerial victories over German aircraft. On 14 February 1917, while photographing enemy positions near Ypres, he was shot down by enemy fighters. Although Hartney was able to crash-land in friendly territory, he sustained severe injuries and was invalided to England, where he spent seven months recuperating.

Upon returning to duty in September 1917, he was transferred to the United States, with the rank of major, and ordered to take command of the 27th Aero Squadron, then training in Canada. A few weeks later the 27th was moved to Hicks Field near Fort Worth, Texas. It was at Hicks that the seasoned, hard-driving Hartney whipped the squadron into battle shape. Convinced that hundreds of hours of simple “banks and turns” were of little value, the wiry, mustached major drove his pilots through one emergency situation after another—mock combat, acrobatics, forced landings. (Those responsible for fighter training in World War II did not miss this technique.)

In February 1918, after some five months of rigorous training, the 27th Aero embarked for Europe. The squadron was scheduled for further flight training at Issoudun, France, but Hartney managed to convince Air Service authorities that his outfit was ready for combat, and on 1 June 1918 the 27th joined the 94th and 95th Aero Squadrons at Toul. These units, plus the 147th, which arrived at the front at approximately the same time as the 27th, made up the 1st Pursuit Group, America’s only pursuit group in combat at that time. The 185th Aero Squadron, a night pursuit unit, became a part of the 1st Pursuit Group a few weeks before the end of the war.^l

Under Major Hartney’s aggressive leadership (he scored his sixth victory during June), in the Toul operation and the Château-Thierry campaign the 27th became the hottest pursuit squadron in the American Air Service. Hartney protested vigorously when the group changed to Spad XIIIs from the maneuverable little Nieuport 28s (“The thing flies like a bloody brick, you know,” p. 183); but Billy Mitchell and the Air Service seemed to hold no grudges.

On 21 August, Hartney, soon to be a lieutenant colonel, was appointed commander of the 1st Pursuit Group—a position he was to hold until the end of the war. Believing strongly that combat squadrons should be commanded by active flying officers, he practiced what he preached while leading the 27th. (The U.S. Army Air Forces in World War II followed his example.) Even after he became a group commander, Hartney continued an active combat role, displaying “that dearest commodity in a leader of fighting men, a thorough knowledge of his profession gained by experience.”² Hartney was respected by all his fighter pilots, and he handled with equal effectiveness the steady, orthodox fliers and the wild, undisciplined Frank Lukes. Following his example, all his squadron commanders—Rickenbacker, Meissner, Alfred Grant, David Peterson, Jerry Vasconcelles, among others—continued in fighting roles.³

After the war Hartney served briefly in the Office of the Chief of Air Service in Washington. During the 1919-1921 period he distinguished himself in numerous displays of Air Service equipment. Perhaps the most newsworthy of these was the great New York-to-San Francisco transcontinental reliability test in 1919. Many of the air war heroes participated in this effort, and for days the airplane held the public eye.⁴ By 1921 Hartney came to the conclusion that he could best serve aviation outside the military service. In his words, “I resigned from the regular army and gave my whole enthusiasm to the building of air consciousness on the part of the public.” (p. 299) After his release from the Air Service, he was instrumental in organizing the National Aeronautical Association, and for several years he served as its general manager and secretary. In addition, he helped found the Civil Affairs Division (one of the ancestors of the Civil Aeronautics Administration) and served as technical consultant and counsel for scores of aeronautical firms and agencies. Not the least of his contributions to aviation awareness were his books and articles. His Up and At ’Em (first published in 1940) has recently been reprinted in Doubleday’s Air Combat Classics Series.

Up and At ’Em is more than the thrilling combat memoirs of Harold Hartney. It is also the story of the 1st Pursuit Group, the first American fighter group to engage the enemy. Led by such pilots as Lufbery, Luke, and Rickenbacker, the 1st Pursuit Group boasted of more aces, saw more action, and gained more victories than any other American group in the war. Despite an occasional awkward sentence and frequent editorial remarks, the author manages to capture the tension and excitement of one of the most stirring episodes in American military history. In his words, “It was a great wild game, the sport of sports.” (p. 145)

The first seven chapters of the book deal with Harold Hartney’s own career in the Canadian Army and with the Royal Flying Corps. The next seven chapters tell the story of the 27th Aero Squadron and the 1st Pursuit Group. From the relatively “quiet” Toul sector, the group moved to Château-Thierry and was thrown against some of the best Jagdstaflen in the German Air Force. The experience was bloody, but the Americans learned their lessons well. It was around the survivors of the Marne inferno that the Air Service built for the autumn campaigns coming up. At Saint-Mihiel, American units fighting alongside their French and British allies began to look like an effective force. In the mud and rain of the Meuse-Argonne offensive, American pursuit squadrons proved worthy of their opponents in every way. One chapter is devoted to the saga of Frank Luke and Joe Wehner, and another narrates the fantastic record of Rickenbacker. A final chapter, entitled “American Aviation in the Coming War,” deals with the efforts of air war proponents in the period between the two World Wars and makes judgments as to the future role of air power.

Although Up and At ’Em is certainly one of the finest books on America’s air effort in the First World War, the author, perhaps relying on memory alone, does allow some errors to creep into his story. For example, Hartney writes that Major John F. M. Huffer, the French-born American, succeeded Major Raoul Lufbery as commanding officer of the 94th Aero Squadron. (p. 139) Actually, Huffer was the first commander of this unit. At no time did Lufbery, the 17-victory transferee from the Lafayette Escadrille, command the 94th. Instead, he was the officer in charge of instruction for the 1st Pursuit Group until his death on 19 May 1918. No doubt the young pilots of the group looked upon the heroic Lufbery as the real combat leader.

Also, the author mistakenly states that the 94th and 95th Aero Squadrons were the only American units in the Zone of Advance during April 1918. (p. 198) The 1st Aero, a corps observation squadron, flew several reconnaissance patrols over the Seicheprey-Fliray area on 11 April,⁵ some three days before Alan Winslow and Douglas Campbell scored their spectacular victories over the Toul-Gengault airdrome. Perhaps Hartney meant to say “pursuit units.”

In another section of the book the author states that 1st Pursuit Group pilots Frank Luke and Eddie Rickenbacker were the only American airmen to win the Medal of Honor for combat flights. Surely he must have known that Lieutenants Harold E. Goettler and Edwin R. Bleckley of the 50th Corps Observation Squadron won the nation’s highest award, posthumously, for their efforts to find the “lost battalion” (the 308th Infantry Regiment) during the Meuse-Argonne campaign.

The long Combat Report detailing the 27th Aero’s flaming air battle on 1 August 1918 is erroneously ascribed to Lieutenant Robert W. Donaldson. (pp. 177-78) According to records in the Gorrell collection in the National Archives, this document was actually the Combat Report of Lieutenant Donald Hudson, who later became a six-victory ace with the 27th Aero.⁶

In discussing the death of Lieutenant William Taylor on 18 September 1918, Hartney writes that after this tragedy “the 95th did not lose a man, up to the end of the war.” Casualty lists in the National Archives reveal the 95th had five other losses after that date.⁷

Hartney states that General Billy Mitchell visited the 27th Squadron on 13 July 1918 during the height of the Château-Thierry campaign. (p. 165) Mitchell was only a colonel at that time, but of course this kind of slip is easy to make when writing 22 years after the fact.

The author’s aerial victory lists contain numerous minor variations from the official list published by the Air Service. For instance, Hartney credits Frank Luke, the “balloon buster,” with 21 kills whereas the Air Service records give him only 18. Rickenbacker is credited with the destruction of 26 “Huns,” although he was not given official credit for that number until January 1960—some forty years after the fact.⁸ These criticisms are nitpicking to say the least. Even writers in the last decade have not been able to agree on victory credits. In many cases several pilots shared in a kill, yet all received full credit for a victory. Had the fractional credit system been used, Air Service victory lists would have been greatly modified. Recent research by this reviewer would seem to indicate only one-half of the approximately eighty aces in the U.S. Air Service really qualified for the title “ace.” Only eleven of the twenty-six aces listed in the 1st Pursuit Group would have earned acedom had the fractional system used in World War II been applied.⁹

Hartney was certainly a man of strong views. His comment, “The Germans have always been, are now and will always be the great disturbers of the world” (p. 288), is understandable, since at the time Up and At ’Em was written the Second World War was already under way. Nonetheless, his tendency to stereotype nations detracts from his book. He glories in American “individualism” and British “unbridled daring” and “singleness of loyalty, sportsmanship, courage, independence, and doggedness.” Many would disagree with his statement that “the French, like the Italians, are more brilliant in spots but after ten centuries of almost constant warfare and economic struggle their blood has stabilized and it is only the exceptional individual who, through the hotness of his Latin blood and the keen scientific brain to which he is heir, can rise above a mass mind perplexed by politics, labor disputes, political confusion and the inevitable social and mental hodgepodge which has been the aftermath of the French revolution.” (pp. 123-24)

Stanley M. Ulanoff, editor of the 1971 edition of Up and At ’Em, has provided an Appendix filled with enough data, specifications, and details to warm the heart of all air war buffs. Perhaps the most useful is “The U.S. Air Service in the Great War,” a 27-page item, reprinted from the USAF ATC Pamphlet 190-1, History of the United States Air Force (1961). There are also lists of leading Allied and enemy aces, illustrations of World War I squadron insignias, a detailed list of American contracts and deliveries from 1917 to 1919, and some 40 black-and-white photographs. Certainly, students of America’s first air war, whether professional scholars or aviation buffs, will be grateful to Stanley Ulanoff and Doubleday for reprinting the Hartney classic.

* Harold E. Hartney, Up and At ’Em, edited by Stanley M. Ulanoff (“Air Combat Classics”; Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1971, $6.95), xviii and 360 pages.

University of Arkansas

Notes

1. “History of the 1st Pursuit Group,” Gorrell Histories, Air Service, American Expeditionary Forces, Series C, IX, 6.

2. Kenn Rust, “Aces and Hawks,” Air Power Historian, October 1962, pp. 217-18.

3. James J. Hudson, Hostile Skies: A Combat History of the American Air Service in World War I (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1968), p. 123.

4. Bruce Robertson, ed., Air Aces of the 1914-1918 War (Letchfield, England: Harleyford Publications, Ltd., 1959), p. 105.

5. “Tactical History of Corps Observation,” Gorrell Histories, AS AEF, D, I, 6.

6. See Lieutenant Donald Hudson’s Combat Report for 1 August 1918 in “History of the 27th Aero Squadron,” Gorrell Histories, AS AEF, E, VI.

7. See casualty list for the 95th Aero Squadron in “Victories and Casualties,” Gorrell Histories, AS AEF, M, XXXVIII.

8. Maurer Maurer, “Another Victory for Rickenbacker,” Air Power Historian, April 1960, pp. 117-24.

9. “Victories and Casualties,” Gorrell Histories. AS AEF, M, XXXVIII.

Contributor

Dr. James J. Hudson (Ph.D., University of California) is Professor of History and Assistant Dean of the Graduate School, University of Arkansas. During World War II he served as a fighter pilot, 350th Fighter Group, Mediterranean Theater. He is a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserve. He is author of Hostile Skies: A Combat History of the American Air Service in World War I (1968) and of numerous articles and book reviews in professional journals.

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

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