?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
LOUIS FANCHER OVER THERE / IN THE AIR SERVICE. Circa 1918. 40x30 inches. Ketterlinus, Philadelphia. Condition B+: restored losses, replaced paper and repaired tears in margins; creases in image; vertical and horizontal folds. A mechanic is waving a plane into the sky against a background of a hangar filled with more planes. The roots of America's present day Air Force extend back to August 1, 1907, when the U. S. Army Signal Corps established a small aeronautical division. When World War I began, in 1914, the extent of the American Air Force was "12 officers, 54 enlisted men and six aircraft" (http://www.af.mil/history/overview.shtml). On May 24, 1918, President Wilson removed responsibility for American military aviation from the Signal Corps and placed it within two agencies under the supervision of the U.S. Army: the Bureau of Aircraft Production and the Division of Military Aeronautics. These two branches were officially recognized as the U.S. Army Air Service. When America declared war against Germany, a beleaguered France made the following outrageous request of their new Ally: "4500 airplanes--personnel and materiel included -- to be sent to the French Front during the campaign of 1918. The total number of pilots . . . 5,000 and 50,000 mechanics" (Rawls p. 171). On July 21 the U.S. Congress voted to allocate 640 million dollars towards aviation and the massive production program began. Rawls p. 175.
