These highlights on how Dayton was touched by the war are by Wright State University history professor Paul Lockhart, from the upcoming catalog for the exhibit, “Over There: Dayton in the Great War.”
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After decades of international rivalry, war broke out in Europe in the summer of 1914. Two competing alliances – the “Allies” (France, Britain, Russia, Belgium, Italy, and others) and the “Central Powers” (Imperial Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and others) – went to war with the largest armies ever seen. Everyone expected the war to be short and glorious. Instead, “the Great War” quickly proved to be the biggest, bloodiest and costliest in Europe’s history.
Here are five things to know courtesy of Lockhart and Carillon Historical Park’s history experts:
1. WE WERE MAKING WAR MATERIAL EVEN BEFORE THE U.S. GOT INVOLVED
Even before the U.S. declared war, Dayton factories were making military goods for European armies. Companies like Brownell Boiler Works, Platt Iron Works and the Davis Sewing Machine Co. signed large contracts with the Allied powers. In 1915-16, Platt Iron Works alone turned out one million artillery shells for Czarist Russia. When the U.S. mobilized for war in 1917, American industries would rally to support the most massive military buildup in the nation's history.
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2. DAYTON WAS A HUGE HUB OF WAR MANUFACTURING
More than two dozen of Dayton's largest manufacturers devoted most or all of their capacity to government military contracts. They produced a dizzying variety of munitions and equipment. Dayton Wire Wheel made mortar shells; Delco made generators; Davis Sewing Machine produced military bicycles, truck and airplane motor parts, artillery fuses and special sewing machines for making balloons. Ohmer Fare Register Co., which made fare devices for streetcars and trolleys, converted instead to the production of precision gunsights and heavy gun-mounts for large naval cannon. The Green & Green Cracker Co. – the firm that would later introduce a staple of American snacking, the Cheez-It, in 1921 – baked "army bread" for the war … 6.5 million pounds of it.
3. WE BECAME AN AVIATION CENTER BECAUSE OF THE WAR
Dayton may have been the birthplace of aviation and the home of the Wright brothers, but when America went to war the city was not a major center of aircraft production. That would soon change. Charles Kettering and Edward A. Deeds, the co-founders of Dayton Engineering Laboratories (Delco), formed the Dayton-Wright Co. shortly after the declaration of war. The surviving Wright brother, Orville, served as a consultant.
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Under government contract, Dayton-Wright manufactured the Airco DH-4 light bomber, a two-seater biplane. A copy of the British-designed and –built de Havilland DH.4, it was used primarily as a day bomber and reconnaissance aircraft on the Western Front in the summer and fall of 1918. Dayton-Wright would become the leading manufacture of warplanes in the United States during World War I. Its factories in Miamisburg, Moraine, and on West 3rd Street in Dayton, completed and shipped 4,587 DH-4s by the war's end.
4. WE MADE TANKS — LOTS AND LOTS OF TANKS
Among the many high-tech weapons that had their debut during World War I was the tank, an adaptation of modern farm tractors to military purposes. The War Department chose three American firms to manufacture the M1917 tank — a two-man machine with a cannon or machine gun that hit a top speed of 4.8 mph; two of those firms were in Dayton. Workers at Maxwell Motor Car Co.'s Plant Number 2 on Leo Street, and at Platt Iron Works along the Mad River, assembled the tanks, and many of the smaller components were also made by Dayton Firms. The finished tanks were then put through their paces on a special testing track in Deeds Park. Very few of the 325 tanks finished in Dayton made it to France before the war's end, but in the meantime Dayton had established itself as the center of the American tank industry.
5. AND DON’T FORGET WRIGHT-PATTERSON AFB
Today's Wright-Patterson Air Force Base traces its origins back to the First World War. In the summer of 1917, the Army established three aviation facilities in the Dayton area: McCook Field, along the Great Miami River in Dayton, leased from the Dayton-Wright Co.; Wilbur Wright Field, in Riverside, on land leased from the Miami Valley Conservancy; and the Fairfield Aviation General Supply Depot, immediately adjoining Wilbur Wright Field. McCook and Wright Fields served as training and testing facilities for pilots in the Aviation Section, U.S. Army Signal Corps, an ancestor of the U.S. Air Force. By early 1918, both McCook and Wright Fields had become home to hundreds of aviation personnel. Wright Field in particular had a post newspaper and a thriving social life: it hosted movies, baseball games, and boxing matches for the entertainment of the troops and the surrounding communities.
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