Marine DH-9A

In the late 1920s, the Marine Corps assigned Capolino the task of creating a series of paintings that illustrated Marine Corps aviation. This painting depicts a Marine DH-9A light bomber locked in a swirling dog fight with a German fighter over a coast line, likely near German submarine bases located in Belgium. The exposed Marine gunner/observer returns fire with his flexible-mount machine guns while the pilot dives the DH-9A to evade the attacking enemy. When the 1st Marine Aviation Force arrived in France, they did not have aircraft of their own, so they traded American-built Liberty aircraft engines for English-built DH-9A airframes. By the end of World War I, the four squadrons of the 1st Marine Aviation Force flew a mixture of 20 English DH-9As and 16 American-built DH-4s.