Jacob Earl Fickel

Fickel was born in Des Moines, Iowa, on January 31, 1883. He enlisted in the Regular Army when he was 21 years old. He served as a private, corporal, sergeant, and first sergeant of Company K, 27th Infantry of the United States Army. He was stationed at Fort Hayes, Fort Sheridan, and Fort Leavenworth. In 1907, Fickel was commissioned as a second lieutenant of Infantry. He then joined the 29th Infantry at Fort Douglas. In August of that year, the regiment went to the Philippine Islands, where Fickel served at Fort William McKinley with Second Lieutenant Henry H. Arnold. In 1909, he returned to the United States and was stationed at Fort Jay on Governors Island in New York Harbor. He was there through 1911. He then went to Fort Niagara until November 1913. Fickel returned to the Philippine Islands for a second tour with the 13th Infantry. He served at Fort William McKinley again, and at Camp McGrath, until March 1917. He was then assigned to duty as an instructor at the Officers Training Camp at Fort Benjamin Harrison, where he remained until November of that year. Fickel was then ordered to Washington, D.C., for duty with the headquarters of the Aviation Section of the Signal Corps. He served there until May 1918. ==Aerial gunnery pioneer==

experimentally shooting from an airplane in 1910 Fickel became the first aerial gunner in America. These experiments led to low-recoil machine guns. Soon thereafter, machine guns were added to planes for air-to-ground attack and air-to-air fighting. The first airplane machine guns were patented by Samuel Neal McClean|de. McClean sold his rights to the Automatic Arms Company in late 1910. Isaac Newton Lewis, working for the company, later improved the technology on this airplane machine gun system. The first use of an airplane machine gun in combat was in August 1914, with the first recorded airplane shot down in air-to-air fighting in October of that year. By 1915, air combat was an integral part of fighting in World War I. ==References==