Biography | Robert A. Lovett — Ninety Flights in One Day With Five Machines

In July 2017 the commune of Lacanau hung twelve portraits on the railings of its annexe town hall, the Villa Plaisance, facing the street at Lacanau-Océan. Each was an American who had spent time at the naval air station at Le Moutchic, four and a half kilometres inland on the lake. The panel clipped to the ironwork here is Robert Abercrombie Lovett, in uniform, the winged device of a naval aviator on his cap.

It calls him Aviator No. 66. The Navy's own list of designations agrees.

What he did at Moutchic is in his fitness report, which Ralph Paine printed from Navy Department records in 1925. Lieutenant Commander G. C. Dichman, commanding the station, wrote of the period from 1 October to 15 November 1917 that Lovett "was Chief Pilot, construction officer for seaplanes and organized the school and method of keeping the school supplied with machines," and that "it was during his term of office as Chief Pilot that 90 flights were made in one day with five machines." Dichman thought his handling of men exceptionally good "considering the small amount of experience in that line that he had had." Lovett was twenty-two.

Ninety words of panel then compress the rest of a life, and a compression drops the qualifiers first. It makes him commander of the Northern Bombing Group. Captain David Hanrahan commanded it; Hanrahan wrote that Lovett was "in a large degree, responsible for the organization and fitting out of this group" and, that summer, "a most efficient squadron commander." The panel makes him Secretary of State in 1951-53. He was Secretary of Defense.

The portraits were tied to the railings with plastic clips, for a centenary. The last photograph of this one was taken on 5 September 2017.

📸 Cover: the Lovett panel on the railings of the Villa Plaisance, photograph by Ulli 2mecs, 5 September 2017, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons. Second image: the Villa Plaisance, the commune's annexe town hall, photograph by PA, 4 April 2015, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.