Photo of James Henry Russell at Carlstrom Air Field circa 1918

James Henry Russell at Carlstrom Air Field - Arcadia, Florida circa 1918. The plane is a Curtiss JN-4D aka "JENNY" which were used as trainer planes in those early years.

My greatGrandfather spent the entire period of his enlistment at Carlstrom Air Field, writing frequently to Amy Lucretia Hinton, who lived near Mango, Florida at the time. She and her father, Homer Clayton Hinton, taught at the Mango Elementary School, living with Henry's sister, Stella Adaline Russell Raybon just 2 miles west of the school. They rode bicycles on the 9 foot wide brick paved road which is now Dr Martin Luther King Jr Blvd or State Road 574. During the winter of 1918, the schools were closed due to the outbreak of the Spanish Flu Epidimic. Henry wrote to Amy and proposed that they marry in May 1919 at Amy's parents' house in Avon Park, which they did.

Near Arcadia, Carlstrom Field was a principal aviation training station for the Army during World War I - The Great War. Flight training was done in Curtiss JN-4D (Jenny) airplanes as well as some rotary engine craft produced by the Glenn Martin company. Army airfields were named after military aviation heroes of the day, and Carlstrom Field was named after First Lieutenant Victor Carlstrom who had made many altitude and distance records and died in a training flight.

When the United States entered WWI in April 1917, military planners sought new weapons that would expend less men and material. The Army chose C.F. Kettering, inventor of the electric self-starter ignition for automobiles and the head of research for General Motors. The Project at Carlstrom Field was a small unmanned plane that would carry about 300 pounds of explosive and deliver it about 50 miles away to a designated target. The first tests of this new fangled contraption were ineffective, if not disastrous.

The "Kettering Bug" or "Flying Bomb" as it was often called was a work in progress until the end of the war and beyond. Lawrence Sperry consulted extensively on the project. His father, Elmer Sperry has invented the gyrocompass, which was an essential component, allowing for directional or vector control of the aircraft. Kettering himself devised a small air screw which was mounted on the plane's wing and controlled how far the plane would fly before the engines were cut off, sending the missile earthward.

On September 14, 1919 an official test was performed for the benefit of the military top brass. These tests were pretty much a fiasco. Lawrence Sperry eventually took over the project when it was transferred to the Navy and eventually devised a radio-controlled missile, which passed a series of tests on June 29, 1922 - when his "aerial torpedo" hit targets at ranges fo 30, 60, and 90 miles.

Carlstrom Field was the principal Army Air Corps Flying School until 1923 when training was moved to San Antonio, Texas.