More World War I Postcards

Another set of postcards from World War I has arrived in the mail from my Mother, via my Sister.  These are presumably from after the war, and are marked as being from  "Bureau War Photographs" and "U.S. Signal Corps".  We have two of the air and five of the water, so let's start with the air.

The first is a picture of some guys leaning on an airplane.

The caption, at the top, says "The only surviving members of the old 94th Aero Squadron.  Left to right -- 1st Lt. Reed Chambers, Capt. James Meissner, 1st Lt. E.V. Rickenbacker (Former Amer.Ace) 1st Lt. T.C. Taylor and J.H. Eastman."  At the bottom, left, it says: "U.S. Signal Corps Photo reproduced by Photo Repro Co N.Y. by permission Bureau War Photographs."

There are a couple of copies of this photo on the Internet, including one in the Wikipedia article on the "94th Aero Squadron", which identifies the photo as having been taken in November 1918 at Foucaucourt Aerodrome.

While Rickenbacker is identified as a (former) American Air Ace, both Reed Chambers and James Meissner are also identified as such in Wikipedia.

The other Internet copy of the post card shows a back that is obviously a post card, with the words "Post Card" and "Correspondence" and "Address Only" printed on it.  Our post card has almost nothing, just a few lines for the address and the hint of a rectangle for the stamp.

All of these World War I post cards have this same back.

The next, shows the planes in the air.

My first thought was these were near the Eiffel Tower, but closer inspection shows the "tower" to be a mast of a ship, and the background is over the open water.  The caption at top says "Group of Aeroplanes in battle formation, taken from one of the planes."  So maybe the tower is not a ship mast, but the tail of a plane.  Then it is not clear if the background is open water, or just dark and unfocused earth.

Again a lower caption says "U.S. Signal Corps Photo reproduced by Photo Repro Co N.Y. by permission Bureau War Photographs."


I found a reference to one on the Internet as being "Biplane in air", saying it is "Circa 1917" with a description "A group of American fighter planes (biplanes) is shown in mid-air. Pretty rare for photography at the time. That means that the pilot had to carry a camera and then turn around to take the photo."

From a bunch of planes in the air, we go to a bunch of ships in the sea.  Actually a bunch of submarines.

 The caption says "Type of under sea craft that helped earn the world's respect for the American fighter.  Picture taken off the Irish Coast".   These "under sea craft" are now called submarines.  A page on the Internet says this is Circa 1918, and taken at Bantry Bay, Cork County, Ireland, which would be the South West corner of Ireland.

Notice the the second sub from the right is labeled "AL9" on its conning tower, and the 5th from the right is labeled "AL11".  We can get a better view of this since it has it's own photo on another post card.

The caption says "Type of United States submarine that helped subdue the German U-boats during the World War."  (So I guess they were called submarines even then, but note it is just "The World War".)

Now it wasn't just the submarines that fought the U-boats.

The caption says "A death bomb dropped by an American torpedo boat destroyer to crush the German submarine.  Germany lost many U-boats thru these deadly bombs."  (Not sure if these were called "death bomb" or if this is a typo, and should be "depth bomb".)  On this postcard, the lower caption about "U.S. Signal Corps Photo reproduced by Photo Repro Co N.Y. by permission Bureau War Photographs." runs off the bottom of the card, and so is incomplete.

I'm not sure if a "torpedo boat destroyer" is a boat (a destroyer?) or an airplane.  But the next post card makes it clear that a destroyer is a type of boat.

The caption says "Destroyer making smoke screen that helped to successfully keep our convoys out of the German U-boat range."  I'm not sure how a smoke screen would help here -- the German U-boats used torpedoes that would go under the smoke screen, but maybe it makes it difficult to target the ships, if the U-boat is on one side and the convoy on the other.  It would seem that the smoke screen would actually attract U-boats, since it's more visible than just the boat, and says "Something to see here".

But maybe the smoke screen is actually for something else.

The caption on this post card says "View of smoke screen used to protect the mine-laying fleet in the back ground."  Here the caption is at the bottom of the card, not that the sky it would be obscuring at the top is more interesting than the sea it obscures at the bottom.  And why is "mine-laying" hyphenated?  The first part "mine-" could easily have been moved from the first line to the second line, and take up less space.

Looking for this photo on the Internet leads to a Naval History page about "The Northern Barrage and Other Mining Activities" from the Government Printing Office, 1920.

A similar photo, but not the same one, is on page 112 as U.S.N.234.

This photo from the Navy report would seem to have been taken just before (or just after) our post card photo -- it seems to be the same scene, with a small change in parallax due to the relative movement of the ships.