Camp Taliaferro Camp Taliaferro was a World War I flight training center run under the direction of the Air Service , United States Army in the Fort Worth , Texas area . Camp Taliaferro had an administration center near what is now the Will Rogers Memorial Center complex in Fort Worth ' s cultural area near University Drive & W Lancaster Avenue . History . After the United States ' entry into World War I in April 1917 , General John J . " Blackjack " Pershing invited the British Royal Flying Corps ( RFC ) to establish training fields in Texas for the training of American and Canadians volunteers because of its mild weather . After looking at sites in Dallas , Fort Worth , Waco , Austin , Wichita Falls and Midland , three sites were established in 1917 in the Fort Worth vicinity ( known as the " Flying Triangle . " ) , those being Hicks Field ( # 1 ) , Barron Field ( # 2 ) , and Benbrook Field ( # 3 ) . The Canadians named the training complex Camp Taliaferro after 1st Lieutenant Walter R . Taliaferro , a U . S . Army aviator . Taliaferro was killed in an accident at Rockwell Field , California on 11 October 1915 . During winter 1917 - 18 , RFC instructors trained about six thousand men there . In six months , 1 , 960 pilots were trained , completing 67 , 000 flying hours on the Curtiss JN4 Canuck ( also known as the " Jenny " ) , a two - seater biplane weighing 2 , 100 lb ( 950 kg ) with a maximum speed of 75 mph ( 120 km / h ) . 69 ground officers and 4 , 150 others received training in ground trades and skills . Canadian cadets were at Benbrook and Everman Fields while the US cadets and the Canadian aerial gunnery school went to Hicks . The training was a major life experience , sufficiently so for veterans to keep memorabilia long afterwards . For example the wife of Harry Kuhlmann from San Jose , California , ( 22nd Aero Squadron 1917 - 9 ) died in 1974 , still holding Camp Taliaferro Post Exchange Tickets . In Cornell ' s Alumni News , L . H . Germer announced as his permanent address : " Squadron 139 , Field No . 1 , Camp Taliaferro , Hicks , Texas " . At Christmas , special postcards were available from the camp for residents . For those who survived the training , combat life expectancy was short . Only two US Air Service squadrons — the 17th and 148th Aero Squadrons — saw active service with the British , flying with them until November 1918 , after which they were absorbed into the US Air Service . The obituary of one veteran may be typical : Others survived the war , but to continue in aviation was almost as perilous : Thirty nine officers and cadets died in Texas . Eleven British , Canadians , and Americans remain there , re - interred in 1924 at a Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery plot in Greenwood Memorial Park , Fort Worth . The plot is in Section 5 of the cemetery , at 32 - 45 - 47 , 97 - 21 - 48 . Also interred there are one of their comrades who died in 1975 , and the daughter of a Canadian instructor who died as a baby in 1918 . A stone monument serves as a focal point on Memorial Day in May of odd - numbered years , when friends of the cemetery support a moving Remembrance Service , at which people from the three nations remember the sacrifice of those buried there .