Prints and photo album pages copied from Roderick Tower's personal scrapbook featuring aircrafts and personnel of the United States Army Air Service during World War I.
Scope and Contents:
This collection contains 18 images capturing prints and pages of a personal scrapbook. Documentation found within the National Air and Space Museum Technical Reference Files: Biographies noted the scrapbook belonging to and loaned by "Colonel" [Captain] Roderick Tower.
Photography within the scrapbook mostly consists of informal shots of United States Army Air Service officers, early aircrafts flown during World War I, and aerial views of Chanute Field in Illinois and Hazelhurst Field (later named Roosevelt Field) in New York. One page of the scrapbook contains four photographs of a Christofferson 1912 Seaplane on a beach near San Francisco, California in 1915. Another page includes two news clippings highlighting the plane flights of Miss Helen Tower, Roderick's younger sister.
Aircrafts featured: Curtiss JN-4D (Jenny), Curtiss JN-4HG (Hisso Jenny), LWF V-3, Standard (NJ) JR-1B, De Havilland DH-4, SPAD S.XIII, and a Farman pusher.
Captions include the following people: Gordon Tevis, Westmore Wilcox, [James] Sibley Watson, Lt. Harlan Heward, Lt. George Ziesner, Lt. George L. Bradford, Major General Thomas Hanley, Commanding Officer Junius Alexander R. Richards, Lt. John Hopkinson Baker, Quentin Roosevelt, Lt. Henry Potter Trainer, Lt. Thomas J. D. Fuller Jr., Lt. William "Jack" Foote, Sgt. W. R. Carruthers, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, Capt. Georges Guynemer, Lt. Randolph Paige, Lt. Harrison W. Flickinger, Capt. Harry Smith, Lt. Kilgore, Lt. Percival Dodge, Lt. Rudolph William "Shorty" Schroeder, and Lt. G. Hughes.
Biographical / Historical:
Roderick Tower (1892-1961) was a wealthy businessman, World War I aviator, and the third son of United States diplomat Charlemagne Tower Jr. He graduated from Harvard University in 1915 and attended Harvard Law School the following year. In April 1917, Tower enlisted as a Sergeant in the United States Signal Officers' Reserve Corps studying aviation and training at Hazelhurst Field, Mineola, Long Island, New York. He became a Reserve Military Aviator three months later and advanced to a First Lieutenant in the Aviation Section. Transferring to Call Field in Texas, he serviced as a flying instructor from January to July 1918 in addition to his role as the Officer in Charge of Flying and Stage Commander. Promoted to Captain in August, he commanded the 46th Aero Squadron, Group A, de Haviland Day Bombing Squadron, 1st Provisional Wing under the United States Army Air Service. When discharged in January 1919, he had transferred to Department of Military Aeronautics in Washington, D.C. and been appointed Pilot for Supervisor of Eastern District. After the war, Tower became an oil broker and a member of the New York Stock Exchange.
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