From Out Of The Past... The History In Pictures Thread

[C. Lee]

Kiffin Rockwell, a Lafayette Escadrille pilot (Americans who volunteered to fight for the French in WWI before America entered the war) and the first American to shoot down an enemy aircraft examines Le Prieur rockets, which were designed to shoot down observation balloons. Because of their inaccuracy, Le Prieur rockets had to be fired at about 100-150 meters from their target, an incredibly dangerous range at the speed of a WW1 era aircraft.

 

[C. Lee]

Shirley Slade, WWII WASP pilot of B-26 and B-39.

In 1942, the United States was faced with a severe shortage of pilots, so an experimental program to replace males with female pilots was created. The group of female pilots was called the Women Airforce Service Pilots — WASP for short. Shirley Slade was one of about 1,100 chosen. She was trained to fly the B-26 and B-39, and that got her put on the cover of Life magazine in 1943 at about 23 years old.

 

[C. Lee]

Sgt. Henry ‘Black Death’ Johnson of the 369th 'Harlem Hellfighters’ poses wearing the Croix de Guerre, awarded for bravery in an outnumbered battle against German forces. He also received the Medal of Honor posthumously in 2015 - 12th of February, 1919.

 

[C. Lee]

Aviator Katherine Stinson Otero on airmail route, Calgary, Canada

Photographer: W. V. Ring
Date: July 9, 1918

 

[C. Lee]

Bessie Coleman (January 26, 1892 – April 30, 1926) was an American civil aviator. She was the first woman of African American and Native American descent to hold a pilot license. She is also the first person of African American and Native American descent to hold an international pilot license.

 

[C. Lee]

Katherine Sui Fun Cheung, the first Chinese-American woman to be a licensed pilot, 1932.

 

[C. Lee]

Shortly after the Doolittle Raid, Lt Herb Macia, Lt Jack Sims, Sgt Jacob Eierman, and Maj John Hilger are photographed alongside Chinese villagers who risked their lives to help them. c. April, 1942.

 

[C. Lee]

Lillian Boyer was one of the best known stunt people of the 1920s. A former waitress, Lillian began her career as an aerial performer on a lark but quickly made it her profession. For $100 a day, Lillian walked on the wings of planes, transferred herself from a moving car to a moving airplane, took parachute jumps, and hung off a plane by her teeth. Stricter regulations ended her career in 1929 and Lillian fell into obscurity until historians became interested in her career towards the end of her life.

 

[C. Lee]

LIFE photographer Margaret Bourke-White clad in fleece flight suit while holding aerial camera, standing in front of Flying Fortress bomber in which she made combat mission photographs of the US attack on Tunis. Algeria, Feb. 1943, from the LIFE Archives.

 

[C. Lee]

Violette Morris was a French boxer, cyclist, and auto racer who had her breasts removed, smoked three packs a day, swore like a sailor, and worked for the Gestapo as an agent. She was killed by the French Resistance in 1944 at age 52.

 

[C. Lee]

Three officers of No.3 Squadron Australian Flying Corps examine the Spandau machine guns from the Red Baron’s plane. The German air ace was shot down 21 April 1918 over a sector controlled by the Australian Imperial Force .

 

[C. Lee]

In 1917 Hardit Singh Malik became not only the first Sikh but also the first Indian to fly with the Royal Flying Corps. Born in Punjab in 1894 to Indian nobility he was sent to England at the age of 14 for school attending prep school before enrolling at Oxford. He was a keen sportsman during his time at university proving to be an accomplished golfer and cricket player.

In 1915, following his graduation from Oxford he applied to join the Royal Flying Corps but was denied, no doubt on racial grounds. Instead he volunteered for the French Red Cross before being offered a commission in the French Aéronautique Militaire. While on leave in England he told one of his former Oxford tutors about being turned down by the Royal Flying Corps and his tutor appealed to General David Henderson, commander of the Royal Flying Corps, on his behalf.

Malik remained with the Royal Flying Corps/Royal Air Force until April 1919 when he returned home to India. He went on to become an accomplished civil servant later becoming a trade commissioner and was later first India’s High Commissioner to Canada and Ambassador to France. He died in 1985 at the age of 91. Malik holds the distinction of being the first Sikh and the first Indian to become a commissioned pilot with the Royal Flying Corps and sadly he was the only Indian fighter pilot to survive the war.

 

[C. Lee]

Corporal Lydia Alford (centre) was the one of three women known as the Flying Nightingales to land in a battle zone after D-Day. Alford was a WAAF Air Ambulance Medical Orderly with No. 233 Squadron RAF and flew on the first RAF transport aircraft to evacuate the wounded from the Normandy battlefields. On 13 June 1944, three of the squadron’s Dakotas Mk. III, with a Spitfire escort, had the honour of executing the first Allied transport flight to land in France since the invasion

 

[C. Lee]

Policemen in Seattle wore masks in the belief that these would protect them from influenza. The masks provided no real protection. c. 1918.

 

[C. Lee]

“Known as the Motorcycle Queen of Miami, Bessie Stringfield started riding when she was 16. She was the first African-American woman to travel cross-country solo, and she did it at age 19 in 1929, riding a 1928 Indian Scout. Bessie traveled through all of the lower 48 states during the ’30s and ’40s at a time when the country was rife with prejudice and hatred. She later rode in Europe, Brazil, and Haiti and during World War II she served as one of the few motorcycle despatch riders for the United States military.”

 

[C. Lee]

 

[C. Lee]

Arnold Schwarzenegger becoming a US citizen, Sept. 16, 1983.

 

[C. Lee]

Emmett Till’s mother at his funeral in 1955. She had insisted that the coffin be open, to show the world what his killers had done.

 

[C. Lee]

Photo of Union soldier Francis Quinn while he was serving with the 40th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment during the Civil War paired with another one of him taken 45 years later in 1906.

 

[C. Lee]

3-year old Solveig Gunbjørg Jacobsen, first child born and raised in Antarctica, standing with her father on the flensing plan at Grytviken, South Georgia, 1916.

 

[C. Lee]

A Tatar shaman in Minusinsk, Siberia ca. 1910

 

[C. Lee]

“Cumberland Landing, Virginia. Group of contrabands (escaped slaves) at Foller’s house, 1862”

 

[C. Lee]

September 6, 1916 The First Self Service Grocery Store Piggly Wiggly Opened in Memphis Tennessee. Only a Historic Marker Remains Near The Site of The First Piggly Wiggly.

 

[C. Lee]

US Navy cook Pendleton Thompson posed with children recently freed from a Japanese internment camp in the Philippine Islands aboard USS Warren (APA-53) en route for the United States, Apr 1945

 

[C. Lee]

The Horse belonging to Major General Frederick Dent Grant (1850-1912), son of President Ulysses S. Grant, at his funneral. 1912.

The elaborate ‘costume’ the horse is wearing is a knotted string ‘flysheet’, designed to wick off sweat and keep the flies off the horse. Also note that the boots are inserted backward in the stirrups, which in most cases indicates the death of the rider.