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Kaiser Cows
Bovine
Saboteurs of WWI
by Mike Cox | |
They
appeared to walk around aimlessly, blending into the landscape so as to look totally
innocent until the right opportunity presented itself.
Then, moving as
quickly as they could, they struck the unguarded flying machine. Soon, its two
linen wings ripped to shreds, an airplane that cost Uncle Sam $5,465 in 1918 dollars
had been rendered useless until it could be repaired.
At least twice these
destroyers of government property succeeded in their designs, grounding two of
the Army’s training planes at Love Field in Dallas. And that’s just the loss reported
at one installation. During World War I, the Army also had airfields at Fort Worth
(Hicks Field), Houston (Ellington Field), San Antonio (Kelly Field), Waco (Rich
Field), and Wichita Falls (Call Field). How many biplanes had their wings damaged
at these other aviation facilities has not been determined, though the answer
surely lies buried somewhere in the military’s voluminous records.
Who
instigated these long-forgotten home front attacks on American aircraft? Trench-coated
German saboteurs? Disloyal Texans bent on hampering America’s war effort? Draft
dodgers – known then as “slackers” – venting their anger at the government for
waging a war they wanted no part of?
Nope, cows. Not seditious cows, not
even mad cows. Just hungry cows.
“Discovery
that Texas cattle will eat the wings of an airplane if the machine is left unguarded
is one of the reasons why a general order to ‘stick to the machine, no matter
what happens’ is impressed upon every cadet aviator training in Texas,” the Associated
Press reported from Dallas on June 1, 1918.
The planes Texas cows found
so tasty were the Curtiss JN-4Ds, better known as Jennys. Powered by a 90 horsepower
engine, the two-winged planes had a maximum speed of 75 mile an hour with a ceiling
of about 7,000 feet. But that was nothing compared to European fighter aircraft,
which were far superior in speed, ceiling and maneuverability.
All the
Jennys were good for was primary flight training and observation. And, for a time,
providing tasty snacks for brazen bovines. Before the Armistice, some 6,000 Jennys
had been delivered to the Army’s Signal Corps and 9,000 men had been trained to
fly them.
The Jennys, first flown in 1914, did have one thing in common
with the superior aircraft manufactured by Britain, France and Germany: Their
two wings were made by stretching linen over a wire-supported spruce frame. To
make the wings airtight, the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company covered them
with cellulose.
Army aviators called it “dope.” For cattle, it was dinner
if they could get it. The cellulous, as the AP said, “softens under their tongues
and the cattle in their eagerness to obtain it will chew the expensive linen planes
to pieces to extract the… ‘dope’ flavor.”
Cows unintentionally doing the
Kaiser’s work were not the only problem facing the Signal Corps soldiers at Love
Field and the other aviation training camps in Texas.
Airplanes
also made attractive targets in a monetary sense. Not that someone was likely
to swipe a plane – not many people outside the military knew how to fly – but
items inside or attached to a plane held a particular attraction to thieves.
“An airplane is a valuable piece of property,” the AP reported, “with many detachable
parts offering an attractive invitation to looters if one were left unprotected
in a lonely field or on a road.”
Even worse than thieves were souvenir
hunters.
“Aviators who have made forced landing[s] while on cross country
flights say it requires their utmost vigilance to keep curious spectators from
breaking up their ‘ships’ and carrying them away piecemeal, so eager are the country
people for souvenirs,” the AP story continued.
Indeed, a Love Field aviator
who had to make an emergency landing in a wheat field not far from Dallas in the
spring of 1918 found himself facing a second crisis.
“The curiosity…in
him was so great that in less than an hour the field was so crowded that the owner
of the ground had to call the Dallas Police to clear the field to prevent his
growing crops from being stamped into a total loss,” the AP said.
That’s
a good thing. A trampled field would have left the farmer’s cows looking for something
to eat.
© Mike Cox
"Texas
Tales" -
January 25, 2005 column | |
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