US Army Aviator Pioneer. Camp Bragg Flying Field, North Carolina, was established only 15 years following the Wrights' flight at Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1903. US Army Aviator 1st Lieutenant Harley Pope was the first commanding officer assigned there. On January 1, 1919, 1st Lieutenant Pope and Sergeant Walter Fleming left Camp Jackson in Columbia, South Carolina, to return to the landing field at Camp Bragg after mapping airmail routes. In the absence of modern instruments, they used the tracks of the Atlantic Coastline Railway along with the rivers to navigate their route. Mechanical problems required them to stop at Newport News, Virginia, before resuming their flight a week later. Their plane never made it to Camp Bragg, instead crashing into Clarendon Bridge on the Cape Fear River, just north of Fayetteville, North Carolina. The two were found in the river some months later and 1st Lieutenant Pope was memorialized with the renaming of the field in his honor on April 5, 1919.
US Army Aviator Pioneer. Camp Bragg Flying Field, North Carolina, was established only 15 years following the Wrights' flight at Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1903. US Army Aviator 1st Lieutenant Harley Pope was the first commanding officer assigned there. On January 1, 1919, 1st Lieutenant Pope and Sergeant Walter Fleming left Camp Jackson in Columbia, South Carolina, to return to the landing field at Camp Bragg after mapping airmail routes. In the absence of modern instruments, they used the tracks of the Atlantic Coastline Railway along with the rivers to navigate their route. Mechanical problems required them to stop at Newport News, Virginia, before resuming their flight a week later. Their plane never made it to Camp Bragg, instead crashing into Clarendon Bridge on the Cape Fear River, just north of Fayetteville, North Carolina. The two were found in the river some months later and 1st Lieutenant Pope was memorialized with the renaming of the field in his honor on April 5, 1919.
Bio by: John "J-Cat" Griffith
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