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Custer's Last Jump

Steven Utley and Howard Waldrop

Smithsonian Annals of Flight, VOL. 39: The Air War in the West

CHAPTER 27: The Krupp Monoplane

INTRODUCTION

Its wings still hold the tears from many bullets. The ailerons are still

scorched black, and the exploded Henry machine rifle is bent awkwardly

in its blast port.

The right landing skid is missing, and the frame has been

restraightened. It stands in the left wing of the Air Museum today, next to

the French Devre jet and the X-FU-5 Flying Flapjack, the world's fastest

fighter aircraft.

On its rudder is the swastika, an ugly reminder of days of glory fifty

years ago. A simple plaque describes the aircraft. It reads:

CRAZY HORSE'S KRUPP MONOPLANE (Captured at the raid on Fort

Carson, January 5, 1882)

GENERAL

1. To study the history of this plane is to delve into one of the most

glorious eras of aviation history. To begin: the aircraft was manufactured

by the Krupp plant at Haavesborg, Netherlands. The airframe was

completed August 3, 1862, as part of the third shipment of Krupp aircraft

to the Confederate States of America under terms of the Agreement of

Atlanta of 1861. It was originally equipped with power plant #311 Zed of

87 ¼ horsepower, manufactured by the Jumo plant at Nordmung, Duchy

of Austria, on May 3 of the year 1862. Wingspan of the craft is

twenty-three feet, its length is seventeen feet three inches. The aircraft

arrived in the port of Charlotte on September 21, 1862, aboard the

transport Mendenhall, which had suffered heavy bombardment from GAR

picket ships. The aircraft was possibly sent by rail to Confederate Army

Air Corps Center at Fort Andrew Mott, Alabama. Unfortunately, records of

rail movements during this time were lost in the burning of the

Confederate archives at Ittebeha in March 1867, two weeks after the Truce

of Haldeman was signed.

2. The aircraft was damaged during a training flight in December 1862.

Student pilot was Flight Subaltern (Cadet) Neldoo J. Smith, CSAAC; flight

instructor during the ill-fated flight was Air Captain Winslow Homer

Winslow, on interservice instructor-duty loan from the Confederate States

Navy.

Accident forms and maintenance officer's reports indicate that the

original motor was replaced with one of the new 93 ½ horsepower Jumo

engines which had just arrived from Holland by way of Mexico.

3. The aircraft served routinely through the remainder of Flight

Subaltern Smith's training. We have records 141 , which indicate that the

aircraft was one of the first to be equipped with the Henry repeating

machine rifle of the chain-driven type. Until December 1862, all CSAAC

aircraft were equipped with the Sharps repeating rifles of the

motor-driven, low-voltage type on wing or turret mounts.

As was the custom, the aircraft was flown by Flight Subaltern Smith to

his first duty station at Thimblerig Aerodrome in Augusta, Georgia. Flight

Subaltern Smith was assigned to Flight Platoon 2, 1st Aeroscout

Squadron.

4. The aircraft, with Flight Subaltern Smith at the wheel, participated

in three of the aerial expeditions against the Union Army in the Second

Battle of the Manassas. Smith distinguished himself in the first and third

mission. (He was assigned aerial picket duty south of the actual battle

during his second mission.) On the first, he is credited with one kill and

one probable (both bi-wing Airsharks). During the third mission, he

destroyed one aircraft and forced another down behind Confederate lines.

He then escorted the craft of his immediate commander, Air Captain

Dalton Trump, to a safe landing on a field controlled by the Confederates.

According to Trump's sworn testimony, Smith successfully fought off two

Union craft and ranged ahead of Trump's crippled plane to strafe a group

of Union soldiers who were in their flight path, discouraging them from

firing on Trump's smoking aircraft.

For heroism on these two missions, Smith was awarded the Silver Star

and Bar with Air Cluster. Presentation was made on March 3, 1863, by the

late General J. E. B. Stuart, Chief of Staff of the CSAAC.

5. Flight Subaltern Smith was promoted to flight captain on April 12,

1863, after distinguishing himself with two kills and two probables during

the first day of the Battle of the Three Roads, North Carolina. One of his

kills was an airship of the Moby class, with crew of fourteen. Smith shared

with only one other aviator the feat of bringing down one of these

dirigibles during the War of the Secession.

This was the first action the 1st Aeroscout Squadron had seen since

Second Manassas, and Captain Smith seems to have been chafing under

inaction. Perhaps this led him to volunteer for duty with Major John S.

Moseby, then forming what would later become Moseby's Raiders. This

was actually sound military strategy: the CSAAC was to send a unit to

southwestern Kansas to carry out harassment raids against the poorly

defended forts of the far West. These raids would force the Union to send

men and materiel sorely needed at the southern front far to the west,

where they would be ineffectual in the outcome of the war. That this

action was taken is pointed to by some 142 as a sign that the Confederate

States envisioned defeat and were resorting to desperate measures four

years before the Treaty of Haldeman.

At any rate, Captain Smith and his aircraft joined a triple flight of six

aircraft each, which, after stopping at El Dorado, Arkansas, to refuel, flew

away on a westerly course. This is the last time they ever operated in

Confederate states. The date was June 5, 1863.

6. The Union forts stretched from a medium-well-defended line in

Illinois, to poorly garrisoned stations as far west as Wyoming Territory

and south to the Kansas-Indian Territory border. Southwestern Kansas

was both sparsely settled and garrisoned. It was from this area that

Moseby's Raiders, with the official designation 1st Western Interdiction

Wing, CSAAC, operated.

A supply wagon train had been sent ahead a month before from Fort

Worth, carrying petrol, ammunition, and material for shelters. A crude

landing field, hangars, and barracks awaited the eighteen craft.

After two months of reconnaissance (done by mounted scouts due to the

need to maintain the element of surprise, and, more importantly, by the

limited amount of fuel available) the 1st WIW took to the air. The citizens

of Riley, Kansas, long remembered the day: their first inkling that

Confederates were closer than Texas came when motors were heard

overhead and the Union garrison was literally blown off the face of the

map.

7. Following the first raid, word went to the War Department

headquarters in New York, with pleas for aid and reinforcements for all

Kansas garrisons. Thus the CSAAC achieved its goal in the very first raid.

The effects snowballed; as soon as the populace learned of the raid, it

demanded protection from nearby garrisons. Farmers' organizations

threatened to stop shipments of needed produce to eastern depots. The

garrison commanders, unable to promise adequate protection, appealed

to higher military authorities.

Meanwhile, the 1st WIW made a second raid on Abilene, heavily

damaging the railways and stockyards with twenty-five-pound

fragmentation bombs. They then circled the city, strafed the Army

Quartermaster depot, and disappeared into the west.

8. This second raid, and the ensuing clamor from both the public and

the commanders of western forces, convinced the War Department to

divert new recruits and supplies, with seasoned members of the 18th

Aeropursuit Squadron, to the Kansas-Missouri border, near Lawrence.

9. Inclement weather in the fall kept both the 18th AS and the 1st WIW

grounded for seventy-two of the ninety days of the season. Aircraft from

each of these units met several times; the 1st is credited with one kill,

while pilots of the 18th downed two Confederate aircraft on the afternoon

of December 12, 1863.

Both aircraft units were heavily resupplied during this time. The Battle

of the Canadian River was fought on December 18, when mounted

reconnaissance units of the Union and Confederacy met in Indian

territory. Losses were small on both sides, but the skirmish was the first of

what would become known as the Far Western Campaign.

10. Civilians spotted the massed formation of the 1st WIW as early as 10

A.M. Thursday, December 16, 1863. They headed northeast, making a leg

due north when eighteen miles south of Lawrence. Two planes sped ahead

to destroy the telegraph station at Felton, nine miles south of Lawrence.

Nevertheless, a message of some sort reached Lawrence; a Union

messenger on horseback was on his way to the aerodrome when the first

flight of Confederate aircraft passed overhead.

In the ensuing raid, seven of the nineteen Union aircraft were destroyed

on the ground and two were destroyed in the air, while the remaining

aircraft were severely damaged and the barracks and hangars demolished.

The 1st WIW suffered one loss: during the raid a Union clerk attached

for duty with the 18th AS manned an Agar machine rifle position and

destroyed one Confederate aircraft. He was killed by machine rifle fire

from the second wave of planes. Private Alden Evans Gunn was awarded

the Congressional Medal of Honor posthumously for his gallantry during

the attack.

For the next two months, the 1st WIW ruled the skies as far north as

Illinois, as far east as Trenton, Missouri.

THE FAR WESTERN CAMPAIGN

1. At this juncture, the two most prominent figures of the next nineteen

years of frontier history enter the picture: the Oglala Sioux Crazy Horse

and Lieutenant Colonel (Brevet Major General) George Armstrong Custer.

The clerical error giving Custer the rank of Brigadier General is well

known. It is not common knowledge that Custer was considered by the

General Staff as a candidate for Far Western Commander as early as the

spring of 1864, a duty he would not take up until May 1869, when the Far

Western Command was the only theater of war operations within the

Americas.

The General Staff, it is believed, considered Major General Custer for

the job for two reasons: they thought Custer possessed those qualities of

spirit suited to the warfare necessary in the Western Command, and that

the far West was the ideal place for the twenty-three-year-old Boy General.

Crazy Horse, the Oglala Sioux warrior, was with a hunting party far

from Oglala territory, checking the size of the few remaining buffalo herds

Steven Utley & Howard Waldrop - Custer's Last Jump.pdf

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