Questions from the Cockpit: A pointed question

Bruce, a private pilot from Texas, writes: I saw a poster at the FBO of early Army Air Service Regulations that included the rule, “Aviators will not wear spurs when flying.” Is that for real? Was that an actual rule, and if so, why on earth would early pilots be wearing spurs?

That’s a very good question, and — as it turns out — not such an easy one to answer.

First, to the poster…or I should say posters, as there’s no end of the damn things. They’re all slightly different, and all, as far as I can make out, modern creations. The posters usually show up as 1919, and sometimes 1920, United States Army Air Service Flying Regulations. Some versions include the tag line “Regulations of Operating of Aircraft, Commencing January, 1920.”

Depending on the poster, either 20, 25, or 27 rules are laid out. The probation on spurs is always included at some point, variously listed as Rule 14, 17, or 21.

There’s also a version of the same regs attributed to Qantas, also stating “Commencing January, 1920,” which is ridiculous, as the airline wasn’t founded until mid-November of that year. These same regs, or various versions of them, are also posted willy-nilly around the internet in various forms at various forums.

You can see why I suspected a hoax at first.

Well, hoax is too strong a word, but you know what I mean. And yet, while I’ve been unable to locate any historic documents from the time period to verify the regs, there are some hints that they did actually exist. I found a copy of the alleged regs published in a 1999 copy of Intercom, the newsletter for the FAA’s William J. Hughes Technical Center, and again in Australia’s Aviation Safety Digest in 1982 — which is important as it’s pre-internet, and therefore less likely to be regurgitated digital daydreams re-printed as fact.

Most interesting of all, however: There’s a copy of the regs in an article by Lt. General Edward “Fly” Flanagan in the March 1984 issue of Army Magazine. In addition to being a 3-star general, West Point grad, and commander of the Sixth Army, he was a noted author and military historian, so it’s not unrealistic to think he had access to genuine source material. So, based on all of that, I’m inclined to believe that some version of these rules is the real deal. 

And the spurs? It turns out that the strangest part of the story, as is often the case, is completely true. Well, at least as far as the fact that early Army aviators wore spurs.

In a January 1920 copy of the Air Service News Letter, I found an article about the difficulty of organizing a polo team at Kelly Field, which included this little gem: “Many of the flying officers have never ridden a horse, although they are wearing spurs just the same.” 

Hmmmm… 

And in a later issue from March, the same newsletter good-naturedly teases a Lieut. D. F. Duke, who apparently had the misfortune to be assigned to attend the San Antonio Auto Show in a public relations role, and was said to be, “still suffering from the effects of the nervous strain, for it was his duty to explain why aviators wore spurs, and why the wheels of the plane were not connected up with the engine.”

So it’s clear that many early aviators were wearing spurs. Which left me wondering, could it be that ex-Cavalry officers, after earning their spurs, were reluctant to give them up? That seemed unlikely, given the fact that the newsletter said that most of the pilots had never ridden a horse, and besides, most Army aviators didn’t come from other branches of the service. 

They came from college.

That’s because at the outbreak of World War I, a few years earlier, the Army had a grand total of 35 qualified pilots. In the entire Army. But by war’s end we had a whopping 10,000 pilots, all college boys recruited from Cornell, Georgia Tech, MIT, Ohio State, Princeton, and the Universities of California, Illinois, and Texas. 

Granted, the Texas college boys might have worn spurs, but I doubt it. 

The man who did the recruiting, or at least the man who developed the system, was Yale Professor and Connecticut National Guard Captain Hiram Bingham. And it’s the good Capt. B (later a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Army Air Service), through his book An Explorer in the Air Service, who reveals the truth behind the spurs — and it does involve Army regulations. But not like you’d suspect. 

Apparently, the aviator uniform included cavalry boots, and Army regs required that officers wearing cavalry boots must wear spurs. Which, wrote Bingham, “requires a field officer, who in the course of his duties suddenly is called upon to mount his winged steed, to divest himself of his spurs and put them in his pocket for safety.”

A full year into the war, this regulation was temporarily suspended, according to Bingham, but as soon as the war wound down, the spurs were back on the boots, and “the unfortunate aviator once more compelled to wear spurs when wearing boots.” 

So post-war, at the time of our alleged spur prohibition from the poster, Army aviators were required to wear spurs with their boots. At least on the ground.

Was there also a reg requiring them to divest themselves of the spurs when mounting an airplane to protect the wood and fabric steeds? It’s possible. That kind of thinking isn’t exactly uncommon in the military, and it wouldn’t be the last time the military would require pilots to wear spurs.

Fast forward less than four decades, and once again, Regulations of Operating of Aircraft required that some pilots wear “spurs.” Which pilots were those? The ones that flew the F-104 Starfighter.

The jet’s ejection seat system had cables that attached to a pilot’s boots via a “spur” to pull his feet against the base of the seat when he was ejected out the floor of the narrow cockpit.

These ejection spurs didn’t have spikes on them, like cavalry spurs of old, but apparently, they clinked as you walked, in the same satisfying macho way as traditional spurs. Other fliers called the Starfighter pilots “cowboys.”

Starfighter pilot George J. Marrett, writing in the November 2002 issue of Smithsonian Air & Space magazine, recalled that, “Most pilots put their spurs on just before they boarded and took them off immediately after deplaning; others wore them around to show off. When I was a second lieutenant attending flying school, I saw an Air Force colonel wearing an orange flying suit and a dress military hat with ‘scrambled eggs’ on the visor. His spurs were clinking and clanking as he walked. Then and there I knew I wanted to fly the Starfighter.”

Thanks for writing, Bruce, and I apologize for taking so long to, you know, get to the point.