LT Kenneth MacLeish, USN

Veterans Day November 11th 2025

Veteran’s Day, of course, started as Armistice Day, the end of World War I. I was going to write about three Naval Officers who had interesting lives, but I will leave two of them for later and just focus on one, though as you will see when I get around to the other two, there are loosely connected to each other.

Remember Lt. Kenneth MacLeish, smart, articulate and, as you read his letters, he becomes remarkably familiar. Below is a very brief telling of his time in the Navy, but it is the sense that he was, he is, someone we all might know, that struck me… 

MacLeish was a student at Yale and a member of the “First Yale Unit,” a flying club that would evolve into the first Navy Air Reserve unit. In March 1917, with the sense that the nation might soon be at war, the members of the unit were urged to join the Navy and begin flight training, and so he enlisted in the Navy as an electrician and was sent off for instruction. Flight training began in April. Of note, other members of the Yale Unit included Robert Lovett, Artemus Gates and David Ingalls.

Robert Lovett worked for Brown Brothers Harriman between the wars, was Assistant Secretary of War for Air during WWII, chaired the Lovett Commission which was instrumental in the drafting of the National Security Act of 1947 and the creation of the CIA and Air Force, was Secretary of Defense (1950 - 1953) and later served for President Eisenhower in what would become known as the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board.

Artemus “Di” Gates, who was shot down during WWI, captured by the Germans, and escaped, was Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Air from December 1941 to June 1945, and Under Secretary of the Navy for the last two months of the war. 

David Ingalls would get 6 kills during WWI, the Navy’s first ace and only ace during WWI. After the war he finished college, went to Harvard Law, then entered politics and became a Congressman from Ohio. During the Hoover administration he was made Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Air and was responsible for tripling the number of aircraft owned by the Navy, and for pushing the development of operational aircraft carrier task groups. During WWII he was recalled to active duty and made Chief of Staff of Forward Area Air Commands, out of Pearl Harbor. After the war he would end up a director of Pan Am, and the publisher of the Cincinnati Times.

So, an interesting group of guys...

As for Lt. MacLeish, whose older brother was poet Archibald MacLeish, before he left for France he fell in love with Priscilla Murdock, and over the course of 19 months wrote her more than 200 letters, all of which survive to this day (form the basis of an excellent book By Geoffrey Rossano: “The Price of Honor”). MacLeish learned to fly in trainers, switched to sea planes and ached to fly in “scouts,” - fighters. In October he received orders to England, he proposed to Priscilla before he left - she accepted, and  he crossed the Atlantic on SS New York. The ship pulled into Liverpool on Monday, November 5th, and by the 7th he was in London, reporting to US Navy HQ, who sent him off to France for further flight training.

He ended up at a US Navy base at Moutic-Lacnau, near Bordeaux, on the Bay of Biscay, established in August 1917. They slept in tents, cooked over a fire and bathed in the nearby lake. He was still flying “sea planes,” the FBA  (Franco British Aviation company) “A", a two seat, single engine biplane, with a maximum speed of 60 knots. But he wanted scouts or the chance to fly a larger, American built sea plane. He worried about the Germans winning, he worried about missing the fighting. The standing comment was that USNRF (US Navy Reserve Force) actually meant “U Shall Not Reach France” or "Us Sailors Never Risk Fighting.” And he complained about the FBA - “I never flew a rottener contraption.”

At the end of November he was sent to Dunkirk via Paris, but orders were changed and he waited in Paris until December 9th, when he received orders to England. He arrived in England a few days later and began training in “scouts,” beginning at Felixstowe and then moving to Gosport, starting in Avro trainers, but by the time they had a Christmas break he was flying Sopwith Camels. MacLeish loved the airplane, even after nearly killing himself in a spin from 5,000 feet to recovery at just several hundred feet. He fell in love with acrobatics and what he called “bush-bumping,” flying low enough that he had to pull up to get over trees and barns. In January they moved to Ayr and began tactics training, first basic - individual - tactics and then section and squadron tactics. Training ended in March and they were ordered to Dunkirk. They were also told that 7 out of 8 pilots were killed in combat… The rumors and hints and stories from the front made it worse… By now he just wanted it to start.

He and Dave Ingalls and another ensign, Shorty Smith, reached Dunkirk on March 21st, 1918, the day Gen. Ludendorff began the German spring offensive - Kaiserschlact (Kaiser Battle), an effort to end the war before the US, with fresh troops, could tilt the battle in favor of the allies. 

The Germans had some initial gains but the allies fought back. By April 5th, when Ludendorff stopped the attack, the allies had suffered about 240,000 casualties (killed and wounded and missing), the German slightly less. Four days later Ludendorff ordered a second offensive, which stalled out by April 29th - with another 100,000 casualties on both sides. A third attack followed (May 27th - June 6th, with roughly 125,000 casualties on both sides, and a 4th attack (June 9th and 10th), and a fifth attack (July 7th - 18th).  In all, each side suffered more than a half million casualties in less than 4 months of fighting. (Some sources put the casualty counts as high as 850,000 for the allies and 650,000 for the Germans.) 

For the Navy pilots at Dunkirk, the Germans closed to within 30 miles of the air base. The base was bombed, long range artillery shelled the field, a German Navy destroyer shelled the field, but the German army came no closer.

They began - weather permitting - patrols.

They lived in “an old French mansion,” the food was excellent, they had a piano and a phonograph, and multiple stoves in the house that kept them warm. The Navy pilots were offered to the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) who had airplanes (the US had very few airplanes) and needed help; so they began to fly out of the nearby Bergues airfield. MacLeish flew his first combat mission April 2nd, and then was flying quite regularly after that, dropping small bombs, strafing German positions, and spotting for artillery.

He went on one bombing run in which he was the last aircraft in the formation as they made a low level run on the target and wrote home that he vowed to never again be “the last machine in a daylight, low level bombing stunt.” They flew several different types of aircraft, to include Camels and Hanriot HD-2s (a single seat float plane). On May 1st they returned to Dunkirk and seaplane patrols, looking for German submarines and searching for downed aircraft. They were flying a lot. In one letter to Priscilla he told her of 13 sorties - all patrols (usually about 2 hours long, sometimes longer) - in 4 days. In late May he was sent to the Army’s daylight bombardment school 200 miles south of Paris.

Over the next 4 months he learned to fly a two seat Airco DH-4 bomber (the US was just starting to build these airplanes under contract, the only US made airplanes to see combat in WWI). The aircraft had a top speed of 124 knots, could fly for almost 4 hours, and carried either 2 x 230 lb bombs or 4 x 112 lb bombs.

At the end of June (1918), bombing school finished and after a nasty flu (which turned out to be the Spanish Flu, that killed more than the war - he blamed the Army for his getting it), he returned to Dunkirk and began to fly DH-4s with the RNAS. Over the next 4 months he had duty in Dunkirk, flying combat missions, was detailed to Paris - Navy Air HQ - for a week, then went to Pauillac on the Bay of Biscay where the Navy was assembling the first DH-4s made in the US, and in August he was promoted to Lieutenant (he had been promoted to Lieutenant Junior grade (LTJG) in June). That same month he was made chief test pilot for the newly assembled aircraft. He then spent another week in Paris at HQ, then in September was sent to England to another US Navy’s faculty at Eastleigh, where DH-4 were being assembled and repaired, and then, at the start of October 1918 was given order back to France to a front-line squadron.

During the period he ran into his brother Archie several times, ran into Quentin Roosevelt (TR’s son, who would be shot down, KIA, on July 14th) and many of his old friends from Yale. He bought Priscilla a ring and gave it a friend who was returning to the US on orders - to carry back to the US.

In July, flying a DH-9, he participated in a bombing run on Zeebrugge, attacking the German submarines at the mole. His aircraft was hit and he made it home, he told Priscilla, on 5 cylinders (the engine had 6 cylinders), covering the last 30 miles in 55 minutes. On the 18th of July his brother Archie (Archibald) was sent home to be an instructor at one of the artillery schools. He played baseball against a team of visiting professionals who were touring US bases, with Grover Alexander pitching. They lost, 3-0, but he noted that his pitcher struck out more men than Alexander, and only allowed one more hit.

He complained about staff work, he commented about the boredom, he talked about the future with Priscilla. He went into Paris and had a grand time with some friends; by the end of August everyone was beginning to think the war might actually end.

In September, Bob Lovett, who had been promoted to command the Northern Bombing Group, tried to move MacLeish into command of a squadron but MacLeish told him he didn’t want it, telling him: “There’s no use of trying to make a commanding officer out of me if I can’t fly and fly when I want… Some people are born to paint, some to write, some to lead, and some just plain ‘go out and do it all yourself.’”

He got the flu again, but was released from the hospital and back at work on October 2nd, with orders to head to the front. On October 4th, after he had already reported to 213th squadron at Eastleigh, he heard that his friend ‘Di’ Gates had been shot down and was missing, possibly dead. On 13 October he flew to Dunkirk from Eastleigh.

At 0730 on the morning of the 13th he took a Camel up for a 15 minute check flight, and then at 0930 he and 18 other Camels took off to strike German forces near Ardoye, Belgium (about 45 miles west of Antwerp, perhaps 15 miles inland, about 35 miles east of Dunkirk). He dropped 4 x Cooper bombs on the Germans from 10,000 feet. (Cooper bombs were 20 lb bombs, strapped under the wings.) They ran into a number of Fokker’s (probably D-VIIs). In the melee that followed at least one Fokker was shot down and MacLeish later got credit for the kill.

The aircraft returned to base, refueled and rearmed, and sometime around noon 15 Camels launched for another sweep. 2 miles north of Dixmude, 11 x D-VIIs were sighted at 8,000 feet and 3 more at 12,000 feet. Another melee followed and 3 aircraft were missing - on both sides. The official log entry noted that “Lieutenant MacLeish was last seen attacking seven Fokker’s single-handed.”

There was confusion as to whether he had been killed or captured and this persisted until after the war.

On December 26th, 1918, Alfred Rouse, a farmer in Schoore, Belgium (just north of Dixmude) returned to his farm (destroyed by the war), and at 6PM found a fully dressed body, in bad state of decay, and 200 yards away, the wreck of an airplane. He wrote a letter to MacLeish’s mother, his family’s address from an envelope in his pocket. He buried the body and marked it with a cross. An official investigation was held to ensure it was, in fact, LT MacLeish. In January 1919 his family and Priscilla Murdock were officially notified. It was found that his aircraft had been shot down, he was thrown from the wreck, had crawled a short distance on the ground, and then died.

Lt. MacLeish’s body was moved to the American Cemetery Flanders Field in 1919. He was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross, and the Clemson class destroyer DD-220 was named USS MacLeish in his honor. Priscilla Murdock finally married in 1927, but she kept the more than 200 letters from Kenneth MacLeish for the rest of her life. Lt. Kenneth MacLeish, Rest In Peace.