In 1911, after completing flight training at the Wright Flying School in Dayton Ohio, Lieutenant Henry “Hap” Arnold and his fellow Army officer Lieutenant Tommy “Dashing” Milling reported to College Park, Maryland, the home of the Army’s first Signal Corps flight school. As the only two active-duty qualified Army pilots, they became the first flight instructors at their new unit. In the early days of aviation, by necessity, “every pilot was also a mechanic of sorts.”1 Thus, Arnold and Milling not only reassembled the aircraft sent by rail from Wright Field but performed the maintenance and troubleshooting to keep them operational and in the air. Arnold’s military career would span these humble military aviation beginnings to fielding the world’s most advanced Air Force by the end of World War II comprised of 80,000 aircraft, and over 2 million personnel.2 Arnold’s enthusiasm, vision and organizational skills helped guide and realize this transformation of airpower from a supporting function for infantry to an essential component of modern warfare. His leadership guided aircraft modernization and US mastery of strategic bombing and led to the era of US dominance in air superiority. The flight of 10 Martin B-10 bombers that he led to Alaska in 1934 represented an inflection point in US military aviation. It bolstered Arnold’s “effervescent enthusiasm” and “burning faith in the future of airpower”3 with important consequences for US airpower in the Arctic and for the wider role and mission of airpower and the Arctic in US military strategy.
