Lt. Harold E. Goettler

Crew coordination and extreme risk

Their aircraft was shot down and both airmen died. Information from their attempts helped narrow the unit's location, and both received the Medal of Honor. Their shared mission is best understood as two-person crew work: the pilot managed the aircraft while the observer navigated, searched, and interpreted the ground.

History & service

Harold E. Goettler of Chicago, Ill., enlisted in the U.S. Army's Aviation Section in July 1917. After pilot training, he joined the 50th Aero Squadron in France, where he was assigned to fly U.S.-built De Havilland DH-4s on artillery spotting missions. The DH-4 carried a pilot and an observer.

Goettler's first mission was on Sept. 12, 1918, the first day of the Allied St. Mihiel Offensive. His observer was Lt. Erwin R. Bleckley. On Oct. 6, Goettler and Bleckley were ordered to search for the so-called "Lost Battalion" of American units surrounded by German forces in the Argonne Forest. Several aircraft could not find them because the ground troops' commander feared signaling the fliers would reveal his units' position to the enemy.

Goettler and Bleckley saw them, however, and dropped supplies despite heavy ground fire. On their second supply trip, as Goettler flew the airplane very low to drop supplies more accurately, he was killed by German rifle and machine gun fire. The plane crashed in Allied territory and observer Bleckley died shortly afterward.

For bravery while facing fierce enemy fire, Goettler and Bleckley were posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor in December 1922. Goettler's remains are buried at Graceland Cemetery in Chicago.

Details that tell the story

Pilot in the 50th Aero Squadron · Paired with observer Erwin Bleckley · Killed October 6, 1918 · Posthumously received the Medal of Honor

A new invention becomes a public world

Before airplanes became routine transport, public demonstrations helped establish what they could do. Exhibition flights, races, and crossings placed fragile machines before crowds, officials, and potential customers. The audience saw courage and spectacle. Behind the spectacle were less visible questions about reliable engines, controllable wings, suitable landing grounds, and how to recover when the weather changed.

Different configurations competed at the same time. Some designers placed the propeller behind the pilot; others put it at the front. Biplanes used bracing to make light structures sufficiently rigid. Monoplanes reduced some of that external framework but posed their own structural and handling problems. Balloons and dirigibles remained part of the same aviation world, offering capabilities that early airplanes could not simply replace.

The famous firsts matter, but so does the period immediately after them. Flight schools, licensed manufacture, military trials, mechanics, and spare parts carried an invention outward. An aircraft could influence aviation through the pilots trained on it or the designs adapted from it, even after its own performance became outdated. The machines in Washington and Dayton preserve different points along that process. Their differences show how quickly an experimental achievement became an international industry, and how many people had to turn a remarkable flight into a repeatable service.