archiemiller

This is a US Army Air Service Curtiss Eagle III (Air Service serial no. A.S. 64243) configured as a flying ambulance. This aircraft would crash on May 28, 1921 (little more than two weeks after this photo was taken, on May 5, 1921), killing all seven aboard, including Medal of Honor recipient Lieut. Col. Archie Miller (US Army Air Service). See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtiss_Eagle

On 28 May 1921, in one of the first major crashes in aviation history, Army Air Service Curtiss Eagle Serial Number 64243, the air ambulance, of the 1st Provisional Air Brigade, crashed during a severe thunderstorm attempting to land at Morgantown, Maryland while returning to Bolling Field, District of Columbia, from Langley Field, Virginia. The pilot, 1st Lt. Stanley M. Ames, and six passengers were killed. Four of the six were Air Service officers and an enlisted man. Two United States congressmen had chosen not to make the flight because of airsickness on the flight from Washington to Langley. The Army's Inspector General conducted an investigation of the crash and theorized that the aircraft stalled when it encountered an updraft at low altitude while trying to clear trees near the unfamiliar field and fell vertically, nose first, into the ground.

See also: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archie_Miller_(Medal_of_Honor)

At left may be Colonel Archie Miller. arlingtoncemetery.net/amiller.htm In the center, it is likely the Lieutenant E. C. Kiel mentioned in the Red Bluff Daily News, Number 185, 8 October 1919 cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=RBDN19191008.2.13 Sergeant Frank McKee (at right) was with him as they landed at the Presidio in San Francisco. It seems likely that the photo was taken at some point during the "army air service reliability race" mentioned in www.newspaperabstracts.com/link.php?action=detail&id=... According to www.skytamer.com/4.1/1919.html the race ran from Oct 8 to Oct 31. Seven airmen died on the race.

This series of photos featuring Carl "Tooey" Spatz (Spaatz) (and his family), Emmett Tanner, Emil Kiel, Frank McKee and Archie Miller, was taken at Roosevelt Field, Long Island, as they (along with Kiel and McKee) were the first of the eastbound aviators to arrive there in the 1919 Transcontinental Aerial Derby. www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/33946673233/ Featured on Page 345 in the November 1919 (Vol. XXI, No. 11) issue of The Gas Engine (later "Oil Field Engineering") is a contemporaneous photo of Tanner, Miller, and Spatz (Spaatz) and family at Roosevelt Field. See: books.google.com/books?id=C5xVAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA345&l...

Thanks, we'll add more information to the record when we update.

Archie Miller was at that time head of air activities on Long Island. He died a few years later in an Army ambulance airplane crash in Maryland. An account of the crash, including a biographical section on Miller (1878-1921) was published in Aviation and Aircraft Journal. books.google.com/books?id=UY9MAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA742&l...

Carl A. "Tooey" Spaatz (changed his last name spelling from "Spatz" to "Spaatz" in 1937). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Andrew_Spaatz

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