Herbert Arthur "Bert" Dargue (November 17, 1886 – December 12, 1941) was a career officer in the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land warfare, land military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight Uniformed services of the United States, U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army o ...

, reaching the rank of

major general Major general (abbreviated MG, maj. gen. and similar) is a military rank used in many countries. It is derived from the older rank of sergeant major general. The disappearance of the "sergeant" in the title explains the apparent confusion of ...

in the Army Air Forces. He was a pioneer military aviator and one of the first ten recipients of the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Biography

Dargue was born in

Brooklyn, New York Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

in 1886 and entered the

United States Military Academy The United States Military Academy (USMA), also known metonymically as West Point or simply as Army, is a United States service academy in West Point, New York. It was originally established as a fort, since it sits on strategic high groun ...

on June 15, 1907. He graduated on June 13, 1911, and was commissioned a 2nd lieutenant in the Coast Artillery Corps. In March 1913, while stationed in the Philippines, he was trained to fly by 1st Lt. Frank Purdy Lahm, and was detailed to the

Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps The Aviation Section, Signal Corps, was the aerial warfare service of the United States from 1914 to 1918, and a direct statutory ancestor of the United States Air Force. It absorbed and replaced the Aeronautical Division, Signal Corps, and con ...

on July 23, 1914, as the sole rated pilot in the Philippines. On December 16, 1914, he flew a Burgess Model I seaplane with 1st Lt. Joseph O. Mauborgne of the Signal Corps as his radio operator, making the first two-way communication by radio telegraphy between a ground station and an airplane in flight. The next month he crashed his airplane into San Jose Bay off Corregidor, temporarily ending aviation in the Philippines, and was sent back to the Signal Corps Aviation School at North Field,

San Diego, California San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United Stat ...

. From March to July 1916, he was a member of the 1st Aero Squadron when it supported the

Pancho Villa Expedition The Pancho Villa Expedition—now known officially in the United States as the Mexican Expedition, but originally referred to as the "Punitive Expedition, U.S. Army"—was a military operation conducted by the United States Army against the p ...

in Mexico. In 1926 he aided in drafting the legislation that became the Air Corps Act, which led to the establishment of the

United States Army Air Corps The United States Army Air Corps (USAAC) was the aerial warfare service component of the United States Army between 1926 and 1941. After World War I, as early aviation became an increasingly important part of modern warfare, a philosophical r ...

.Golden Legacy, Boundless Future: Essays on the United States Air Force and the Rise of Aerospace Power
edited by Rebecca H. Cameron and Barbara Wittig, at the Defense Technical Information Center; published 2000 via the Air Force History and Museums Program (p. 36) From December 21, 1926, to May 2, 1927, Dargue led the U.S. Army Pan American Flight, a public relations goodwill mission to promote U.S. aviation in South America.Herbert A. Dargue
by Henry H. Arnold, at the

West Point The United States Military Academy (USMA), also known Metonymy, metonymically as West Point or simply as Army, is a United States service academies, United States service academy in West Point, New York. It was originally established as a f ...

Association of Graduates; written no later than January 15, 1950; archived online no later than March 4, 2016; retrieved April 2, 2017 Flying five Loening OA-1A seaplanes, each named for an American city, Dargue, Capt. Ira Clarence Eaker, and eight other Army aviators traveled 22,000 miles (35,200 km) in 59 flight days, stopping at 72 cities along the route.The Greatest Gift
by John L. Frisbee, in ''

Air Force Magazine The Air & Space Forces Association (AFA) is an independent, 501(c)(3) organization, 501(c)(3) non-profit, professional military association for the United States Air Force and United States Space Force. Headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, it ...

''; published September 1985 The ten airmen, two of whom died in an accident on February 26, 1927, during the mission, were awarded certificates for first awards of the newly created Distinguished Flying Cross. In 1934, he became the assistant commander of the

Air Corps Tactical School The Air Corps Tactical School, also known as ACTS and "the Tactical School", was a military professional development school for officers of the United States Army Air Service and United States Army Air Corps, the first such school in the world. C ...

. From 1938 to 1940, he commanded the

19th Composite Wing Nineteen or 19 may refer to: * 19 (number), the natural number following 18 and preceding 20 * one of the years 19 BC, AD 19, 1919, 2019 Films * ''19'' (film), a 2001 Japanese film * ''Nineteen'' (film), a 1987 science fiction film Music ...

in the Panama Canal Zone. He returned to the United States in 1940 to become Assistant Chief of the Army Air Corps. The following year, he took command of the First Air Force. In the aftermath of the

attack on Pearl Harbor The attack on Pearl HarborAlso known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii ...

Henry Stimson Henry Lewis Stimson (September 21, 1867 – October 20, 1950) was an American statesman, lawyer, and Republican Party politician. Over his long career, he emerged as a leading figure in U.S. foreign policy by serving in both Republican and D ...

chose Dargue to lead the investigation of why the United States had been unprepared for the attack, and placed him in command of the

US Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...

units there.Air Warfare: An International Encyclopedia, Volume 1
by Walter J. Boyne, published 2002 by ABC-CLIO; via

Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical ...

However, while flying from

Mitchel Field Mitchell may refer to: People *Mitchell (surname) *Mitchell (given name) Places Australia * Mitchell, Australian Capital Territory, a light-industrial estate * Mitchell, New South Wales, a suburb of Bathurst * Mitchell, Northern Territor ...

General Herbert Dargue, Air Expert, Missing Six Days In Hawaiian Flight
in ''

the Cornell Daily Sun ''The Cornell Daily Sun'' is an independent daily newspaper published in Ithaca, New York by students at Cornell University and hired employees. ''The Sun'' features coverage of the university and its environs as well as stories from the Associa ...

''; Volume 62, Number 74, 19 December 1941; archived at

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

to Hawaii to take his new post, Dargue's B-18 crashed in the Sierra Nevada mountains, outside

Bishop, California Bishop (formerly Bishop Creek) is a city in California, United States. It is the largest populated place and only incorporated city in Inyo County. Bishop is located near the northern end of the Owens Valley, at an elevation of . The city was ...

, and he was killed. The wreckage of the plane was not found for five months. Dargue was the first Army General to die on duty during World War II. He was posthumously decorated with the Distinguished Service Medal in 1942.

Family

Dargue's son Donald Dargue was likewise a military aviator, piloting a

B-17 bomber The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress is a four-engined heavy bomber developed in the 1930s for the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC). Relatively fast and high-flying for a bomber of its era, the B-17 was used primarily in the European Theater ...

over Germany and eventually becoming part of Strategic Air Command; similarly, his grandson Herb Dargue flew

helicopter A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forward, backward and laterally. These attributes ...

s for the United States Army during the

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam a ...

and the

Iraq War {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Iraq War {{Nobold, {{lang, ar, حرب العراق (Arabic) {{Nobold, {{lang, ku, شەڕی عێراق ( Kurdish) , partof = the Iraq conflict and the War on terror , image ...

.Army aviator ends 43-year career
by Eric Durr, in the ''Mountaineer Online'' (official newspaper of

Fort Drum Fort Drum is a U.S. Army military reservation and a census-designated place (CDP) in Jefferson County, on the northern border of New York, United States. The population of the CDP portion of the base was 12,955 at the 2010 census. It is home ...

); published April 8, 2010; retrieved April 2, 2017

References

External links

Herbert Dargue at

Arlington National Cemetery Arlington National Cemetery is one of two national cemeteries run by the United States Army. Nearly 400,000 people are buried in its 639 acres (259 ha) in Arlington, Virginia. There are about 30 funerals conducted on weekdays and 7 held on Sa ...

Herbert Dargue at

National Aviation Hall of Fame The National Aviation Hall of Fame (NAHF) is a museum, annual awards ceremony and learning and research center that was founded in 1962 as an Ohio non-profit corporation in Dayton, Ohio, United States, known as the "Birthplace of Aviation" with it ...

Generals of World War II
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dargue, Herbert 1886 births 1941 deaths Military personnel from New York City United States Army Coast Artillery Corps personnel Recipients of the Distinguished Service Medal (US Army) Recipients of the Distinguished Flying Cross (United States) Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in the United States United States Army Air Forces generals United States Army Air Service pilots of World War I Burials at Arlington National Cemetery Members of the Early Birds of Aviation United States Army Air Forces personnel killed in World War II Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in 1941 United States Army Air Forces generals of World War II United States Military Academy alumni People from Brooklyn