DUANE
Duane's take
The official marker's got the story, and here's how I tell it. Settle in, because this one earns its place in the record books — and earns it the hard way. We're standing near the old Fort Brown Cavalry Drill Field, right here in Cameron County, and what happened here on April 20, 1915, was something the United States Army had never done before — and never quite expected to do quite like this.
Two Signal Corps officers, Lieutenant Byron Q. Jones and Lieutenant Thos. Milling, climbed into a Martin T.O.
Curtiss 75 and lifted off into the South Texas sky. Their mission was to fly the border, watching for movements of Mexican revolutionist Pancho Villa. Straightforward enough on paper.
Now, they climbed to two thousand six hundred feet. They stayed up twenty minutes. And here's the thing — they did not cross the Rio Grande.
They stayed on the American side the whole time. Didn't matter one bit. The plane was hit.
Machine gun fire. Small arms fire. Coming up at them from below.
That Martin T.O. Curtiss 75 became the first U.S. Army warplane to be fired upon in armed hostilities.
Not over some distant foreign battlefield. Right here. Along this river.
Those two officers and their patrols kept at it for six weeks. And then, in 1916, planes were used more effectively in the fighting against Villa. The sky over the border would never be quite the same kind of quiet again.
What the marker says
From Old Fort Brown Cavalry Drill Field, near this spot, was made the first flight of a U.S. Army plane to be fired upon in armed hostilities, April 20, 1915. Two Signal Corps officers, Lts. Byron Q. Jones and Thos. Milling, flew a Martin T.O. Curtiss 75 on the border to spot movements of Mexican revolutionist Pancho Villa. They reached 2,600 feet; were up 20 minutes. Though they did not cross the Rio Grande, the plane was hit by machine gun and small arms fire. Their patrols lasted 6 weeks. Planes were used more effectively in fighting against Villa in 1916.