# Colonel Raynal Cawthorne Bolling, United States Army Signal Corps, Air Service



## Rivet (May 18, 2011)

Colonel Raynal C. Bolling holds the distinction of becoming the first high ranking U.S. officer to be killed in World War I. He also can be remembered for creation of what became, decades later, the United States Airforce. Trained as a lawyer, initially working for U.S. Steel Corporation. Bolling was also an officer in the New York National Guard when war came to the United States of America on April 6, 1917. Bolling received a position in the Signal Corps apon wartime activation; acting as Assistant Chief of the Air Service. His legal training saw him as drafter of a bill for Congress to authorize Air Service production, legislation that amounted to the single largest appropriation for a single purpose passed to that time. The $640 million Aviation Act (40Stat. 243) passed July 24, 1917.

By November 11, 1918 the Air Service, both overseas and domestically, had 195,024 personnel (20,568 officers; 174,456 enlisted men) and 7,900 aircraft, this force constituting five percent of the United States Army.

Colonel Raynal C. Bolling was killed in an ambush by German troops during the Second Somme Offensive, March 26, 1918.


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## vikingBerserker (May 18, 2011)

Very interesting.


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