Martin F. Scanlon Scrapbooks

Brigadier General Martin F. Scanlon (1889-1980) an United States Army Air Force officer of Scranton, Pennsylvania, began his military career in 1912 with four years of infantry service. In 1916 he obtained a transfer to the Air Service branch of the the Signal Corps where he graduated as a junior military aviator at San Diego, California, in October 1916. He next served in the Philippine Islands as a pilot and commanding officer of the 2nd Aero Squadron. He returned to the United States in 1917 for additional aviation studies and then went overseas for duty with the American Expeditionary Forces in 1918. Scanlon took an advanced flying course with the British Royal Flying Corps and then was on duty as a pilot with the 91st Aero Squadron in Toul Sector. Scanlon then became commanding officer of the Colombey-Les-Belles Aerodrome followed by a promotion to the air service commander of V Army Corps until March 1919. Scanlon returned to the United States where he served as commanding officer of Bolling Field near Washington, DC from 1919 to 1922 and again in the 1930s. He began diplomatic assignments in Italy in 1924 and was later transferred to England (1929-1933, 1936-1941). After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Scanlon became Commanding General of Allied Air Force in New Guinea and in 1942 he became the commanding officer of the 38th Flying Training Wing, Roswell, New Mexico and subsequently he became the commander of the 36th Flying Training Wing in Santa Ana California. In August 1944 he became president of the Army Air Forces Evaluation Board in Hawaii, and in 1945 Scanlon was reassigned as Chairman of the AAF Evaluation Board of the Pacific Ocean Areas. Scanlon retired in 1948.