Pancho Villa Research Paper

The Hunt for Pancho Villa and the Birth of Motorized Vehicles in the Armed Forces

By Nathan Kozlowski

On the night of March 8th, 1916 over 400 Pancho Villa and his Villistas crossed into the United States. Once across the border they split into two groups and attacked Columbus which was a town in New Mexico and Camp Furlong a military base near the town. They burned down a grocery store and a hotel. The attack resulted with 8 civilians 10 soldier with others wounded on the American side . While during the assault and the following day after being pursued Pancho Villa’s forces lost 130 men in total, 100 were killed with 30 being captured.

March 9th, 1916 the United States was left in a vulnerable position.

The train was naturally the greatest modes of transportation at that time and without it, it put General Pershing at a huge disadvantage. The average speed of a horse or mule wagon without risk of losing the animal was about 20 miles a day. Luckily for General Pershing a new technology was very slowly being integrated into the armed forces, motorized vehicles. But with this new technology it brought up a lot problems that were not yet fully appreciated until they were being used on in the

military in hunt for Pancho Villa was the use of planes. The United States for the first time in its history sent a squad of 8 planes to help Pershing in his search for the villain Pancho Villa. They sent 8 Curtiss JN-2 Wright planes, with the nicknames the Jennies. They were a complete failure within a month’s use all 8 planes became completely inoperable. The planes were not used in any fighting nor were the planes even modified to fight. They were to be used to for renaissance and for delivering messages between companies. They found that the planes could only fly in clear weather with no wind and that they were completely useless in the mountains because the planes could not obtain enough altitude to pass over the mountains. The one good thing that came out of bringing along the Jennies was the mechanics that were deployed to maintain the planes. They quickly went from maintaining airplanes to maintaining the trucks that fed the supply lines of the whole