Benjamin Delahauf Foulois (December 9, 1879[1] – April 25, 1967) was a United States Army general who learned to fly the first military planes purchased from the Wright brothers.

At age 18, he used his older brother's birth certificate to enlist in the Army to support the Spanish–American War, but arrived in Puerto Rico just weeks before the armistice was signed.

[3] On June 17, 1899, Foulois enlisted again, using his own name, as a private in the Regular Army and was assigned to the 19th Infantry, where he ultimately achieved the rank of first sergeant, with service in the Philippines on Luzon, Panay, and Cebu.

His final thesis was The Tactical and Strategical Value of Dirigible Balloons and Aerodynamical Flying Machines, within which he demonstrated prescience in such statements as this: In all future warfare, we can expect to see engagements in the air between hostile aerial fleets.

The struggle for supremacy in the air will undoubtedly take place while the opposing armies are maneuvering for position...[6]He forecast the replacement of the horse by the airplane in reconnaissance, and wireless air-to-ground communications that included the transmission of photographs.

Pilot Orville Wright and navigator Foulois broke previous speed, altitude, and cross-country duration records, flying at 42.5 mph, 400 feet, and for 10 miles (16 km).

[13] According to Foulois: "The second flight I made after crashing the first time I took it up I got almost thrown out; landed; the artillery officer came up there and I told him, Fred, I wanted to get a belt to keep me in that damn plane.

[citation needed] In early 1911, the United States gathered much of the Regular Army in South Texas as a show of force to Mexican revolutionaries, forming the "Maneuver Division".

On March 3, 1911, Foulois and Parmalee made the first official military reconnaissance flight (without crossing the border), looking for Army troops between Laredo and Eagle Pass, Texas, with a ground exercise in progress.

Paul W. Beck and Second Lt. George E. M. Kelly, to form a provisional "aero company" created April 5, 1911, by the Maneuver Division in anticipation of training 18 more pilots.

Beck was ordered there as the instructor on the Curtiss machine in June, but Foulois remained on duty with the Maneuver Division until July 11, when he was reassigned to the Militia Bureau in Washington, DC.

On April 29, 1912, his Signal Corps commission was discharged and he was nominally returned to the Infantry, but remained with the Militia Bureau, where he was able to continue flying periodically at the aviation school in College Park.

The Aeronautical Department experienced a spate of fatal accidents in 1912 and 1913, most involving the Wright Model C airplane, and convened a board of aviators to investigate safety concerns and make recommendations.

Foulois, along with Captain Townsend F. Dodd and Lieutenants Walter R. Taliaferro, Carleton G. Chapman, and Joseph E. Carberry, condemned not just the Wright C, but all "pusher" aircraft as unsafe on February 16, 1914, and those remaining in the Army inventory were ordered to be immediately grounded.

On 16 March, Foulois flew as the observer with Dodd on the first American military reconnaissance flight over foreign territory (overflying Mexico in search of Villa).

Both played an important role in the development of the independent Air Force, but Mitchell worked by swaying public opinion, while Foulois preferred to make direct testimony to Congress, with often controversial verbal attacks against the military establishment.

[citation needed] From March to September 1917, General Foulois was charged with the responsibility for the production, maintenance, organization, and operations of all American aeronautical material and personnel in the United States.

In March, he worked with Major General George Squier, who was the CSO, and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics to detail plans for appropriations of $54 million to support 16 aero squadrons, 16 balloon companies, and nine aviation schools.

[21] In November 1917, he became Chief of Air Service, American Expeditionary Force, and assumed additional duties as a member of the Joint Army and Navy Aircraft Committee in France; representative of the commander in chief, American Expeditionary Forces on the Inter-Allied Expert Committee on Aviation of the Supreme War Council, and commandant of the Army Aeronautical Schools.

In his memoirs, Mitchell wrote: "Just when things had begun to work smoothly, a shipment of aviation officers arrived under Brigadier General Benjamin Foulois, over one hundred in number, almost none of whom had ever seen an airplane.

"[24] Creation and deployment of tactical squadrons lagged badly behind the schedule Foulois had promised Pershing, and the supply situation for the Air Service was not improving.

Friction between Foulois' nonflying staff and the aviators in command of the instruction schools and the combat squadrons grew to the point of extreme inefficiency.

By sharing food and Allied whisky, Foulois was able to obtain a large amount of aviation intelligence from German pilots who included Ernst Udet and Hermann Göring.

[31] During his time in Berlin, he met Elisabeth Shepperd Grant, a Philadelphian working as a translator in the American Embassy, and married her two weeks before his return to the United States in 1924.

[citation needed] Foulois gathered the equivalent of a railroad boxcar full of valuable documents, drawings, technical bulletins, magazines, books, blueprints and reports.

In May 1931 he commanded the Air Corps exercises, leading an armada of 672 airplanes, coast-to-coast defense flights, combat competition and large scale attacks.

A compromise reached between the Chief of Naval Operations and General Douglas MacArthur in January 1931 gave the land-based Air Service the mission, while the Navy was to defend the fleet.

Under pressure from President Roosevelt, Foulois committed the service to delivering the mail without consulting Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur, while knowing that the Air Corps was ill-equipped and untrained to fly in winter conditions.

The 1,500,000 miles (2,400,000 km) flown by the Air Corps pilots, with insufficient training, equipment, funding, and experience, resulted in numerous fatal crashes.

Although he carried his fight to the public through the media with the backing of Secretary of War George Dern, Foulois decided to retire "for the good of the service," asserting that he did so that the focus could return to the vital task of building the Air Force in the face of a resurgence in German airpower.