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LT. Charles B. Austin A field in france Shows a beauty of france and tropics under Sdasm Arichives They had interesting war images Palm trees are my favorite tree

books.google.com/books?id=_9spAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA215&l... has a picture that shows Taylor and Simons at the Mineola aviation station.

Judging from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Field_%28Airfield%29 the photo must have been taken between May 3, 1917 when Ralph L. Taylor of Stamford, CT was commissioned as Captain and August 2, 1917, when he was killed in an accident. A military airfield in Alabama was named Taylor Field after him.

books.google.com/books?id=eIkoAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA247&l... shows a Henry H. Simons as a captain in November 1918.

Aerial Age Weekly, April 12, 1915 books.google.com/books?id=UWNVAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA85&lp... mentions Lieutenant H.G. Smith as involved in the organization of a Canadian branch of the Royal Flying Corps. So the lefthand man may be a Canadian aviator.

Flying, Volume 7, p 341, May 1918, books.google.com/books?id=q5FMAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA341&l... has a picture that includes H.G. Smith. The captain describes him as an instructor, but as in the Bain caption, he is not given a military rank, perhaps because he was not a citizen and was employed in the U.S. as a civilian. The man in the middle of the photo in Flying is compatible with the lefthand man here.

There are very similar photos of USS Mississippi (BB-41) transiting the Panama Canal, and dated July 26, 1919. The biplane is also in those photos, and the sailors on deck appear in a similar 'bunch' www.navsource.org