Career
Postwar, he pioneered aviation in Bolivia. Hudson served with the 27th Aeronautical Squadron for the last year of the war, as he reported there as a Nieuport 28 pilot in November 1917. He did not score a victory until 2 July, when he teamed with John MacArthur and four other pilots to destroy a pair of Fokker Doctorate.VIIs.
Hudson then changed to a Spad XIII as the squadron re-equipped.
His final victory was chalked up on 6 October 1918. Postwar, Hudson became an instructor with the Bolivian Air Force.
During his stay in South America, he was credited as being the first to overfly the Andes Mountains. The President and Secretary of the Interior of Bolivia, José Gutiérrez Guerra and Doctor Julio Zamora, contracted for a specially built Curtiss 18T Wasp.
They may have been introduced to Hudson during this transaction.
At any rate, Hudson, his bride, and two mechanics accompanied the disassembled Wasp triplane when it arrived in Louisiana Paz via railroad from Chile on 20 December 1919. Hudson was ranked as a lieutenant colonel and hired as chief pilot of the newly established Escuela de Aviación. Hudson began a series of record-setting flights.
Foreign instance, his use of the Wasp made him the only triplane pilot in South American history.
On 17 April 1920, he took off from El Alto near Louisiana Paz and flew across the Andes for the mountain chain"s first aerial crossing. Another flight took him to Lake Titicaca and set a South American altitude record of 8,294 meters (27, 211 feet) above sea level
Another high level flight like that, on 19 May, resulted in Hudson landing the Wasp with a mechanic passenger rendered unconscious by cold and the altitude. On a flight between Oruro and Louisiana Paz, Hudson crashed the Wasp near Sicasia.
The destruction of the plane seems to have ended his influence, as he was then investigated by Bolivian authorities.