Page 6 - Demo

James
Roland
Kyle, Jr.
BY DOUGLAS K. HARVEY
Kyle aboard ship in his dress Navy uniform with flight wings pinned on his left breast.
The success of the Wright brothers in 1903 at Kitty Hawk created a worldwide
fascination with flying—
a fascination so forceful, it could not be subdued by the fact that death or grave injury were commonplace among those who took to the air. In Lynchburg, Virginia, several kids who caught the “flying bug” went on to become pioneer avia- tors, including Jesse Menefee, Chauncey Spencer, Vincent “Squeek” Burnett, Woody Edmondson, Lucille Kent, and Preston Glenn. One Lynchburg pilot who accomplished record-setting feats before perishing at the age of thirty-three is not as well known, but his story has multiple connections to the world of aviation and the history of Central Virginia: James Roland Kyle, Jr.
Roland, as he was called, was ten years old when Orville and Wilbur Wright achieved powered flight on December 17, 1903. The oldest of three sons, Roland and his family lived
in Lynchburg where his father, James, Sr., operated Virginia Laundry Company and Crutchfield Dry Cleaning and Dye Works. His mother was Alice Aunspaugh Kyle.
Roland attended Lynchburg public schools until age sixteen when he transferred to Fishburne Military Academy in Waynesboro, Virginia. Before completing this program,
he was named an alternate to the U.S. Naval Academy and moved to a prep school in Annapolis that prepared students for the grueling entrance exams. His second year as an alter- nate paid off and he entered the academy in 1911, graduating in 1915.
Assigned to several vessels between 1915 and 1917, Ensign Kyle’s travels took him from New York to the Philippines. Upon hearing that the United States had declared war on Germany in 1917, he requested a transfer to the Atlantic fleet. Kyle served on a destroyer, the USS Dent, which escorted con- voys across the Atlantic from New York harbor to Buncrana, Ireland, until the Armistice was signed in 1918.
Roland Kyle may have caught the aviation bug in 1919 when the Dent and six other
destroyers were placed along the
course of Navy seaplanes trying
to make the first trans-Atlantic flight. Kyle kept a diary during this mission and wrote daily entries. On May 5, 1919, off Newfoundland, he wrote: “Seas choppy—cold rain falling. I put on heavy underclothes, two pair wool socks, high boots, sweater, jersey, muffler, wristlets, woolen gloves, fur lined overcoat, rain- coat, and at 4 o’clock relieved the officer of the deck. In a fog with icebergs in the vicinity and ships in formation, there is no such thing as shelter for the of- ficer of the deck. The wind and rain cut my face like so many
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