First Yale Unit

1), was originally a student airplane flying club started by Yale University sophomore F. Trubee Davison in June 1916.

After meeting with Admiral Robert Peary to gain military authorization for the unit, Trubee Davison acquired a Curtiss Model F flying boat and members of the First Yale Unit were trained as pilots during the summer of 1916.

In March 1917, 13 days before the United States entered World War I, the First Yale Unit volunteers enlisted en masse in the Naval Reserve Flying Corps and began war training at West Palm Beach.

Lt. David Ingalls later flew a Sopwith Camel airplane with the RAF, the first US naval aviator to become a flying ace, and the only to achieve this feat during WWI.

Two other First Yale Unit members, Robert Lovett and Artemus Gates, became commandants of the army and navy air corps, respectively.

Robert Abercrombie Lovett (1895-1986), David Hugh McCulloch (1890-1955), Albert Dillon Sturtevant (1894-1918), John Martin Vorys (1896-1968), Rear Admiral Earl Clinton Barker Gould (1895-1968), Frederick Trubee Davison (1896-1974), Artemus Lamb Gates (1895–1976), John Villiers Farwell III (1895-1992), and Allan Wallace Ames (1893-1966) in July 1916 at Port Washington, New York.