Background
He was born in Buffalo, New York to polo player Ellicott Evans and Katherine Hamlin, both from wealthy New York families. His mother later married San Diego banker Wilmot Griffiss and Townsend took his surname.
He was born in Buffalo, New York to polo player Ellicott Evans and Katherine Hamlin, both from wealthy New York families. His mother later married San Diego banker Wilmot Griffiss and Townsend took his surname.
Townsend Griffiss graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1922, and joined the United States Army Air Corps.
Known to his family as "Tim", he was raised in the affluent coastal suburb of Coronado, California. He trained as a fighter pilot, and between 1925 and 1928 served in Hawaii. His family"s wealth allowed him to rent a house on Waikiki Beach, and there he wrote a guidebook When you go to Hawaii you will need this guide to the Islands, which was published in 1930.
He shared his birth-father"s passion for polo, and joined the military team based in Hawaii, led by Major George South. Patton.
After operational postings in California and Texas, Griffiss was assigned to Bolling Field in Washington District of Columbia in 1933. This helped him gain connections to allow him to be posted to Europe in 1935 as an air attache, working in Paris and then Berlin.
He was then assigned to Spain during the Spanish Civil War, as an observer. Returning to Paris, he was awarded the Légion d"honneur.
Returning to the United States in 1938, he became a student at the Air Corps Tactical School.
In 1941, with Europe already at war but before the United States had entered World World War II, Griffiss was seconded to London. There he was part of the staff of General James East. Chaney, the team was coordinating United States military cooperation with the United Kingdom in the North Atlantic theater, and organizing the United States occupation of Iceland. Ordered to the Soviet Union to discuss planning for United States air cargo flights between Alaska and the Russian Far East, he spent two months in Moscow, before moving to Kuibyshev when advancing Nazi Germany forces threatened to overrun Moscow.
Griffiss died in 1942, aged 41, when, on the last leg of his return journey from the Soviet Union, via Cairo, the Consolidated B-24 Liberator in which he was a passenger was mistakenly shot down over the English Channel by Polish fliers in the Royal Air Force (Royal Air Force), thus becoming the first American aviator killed in the European Theatre of World World War World War II His body was not recovered.
There are memorials to him in Forest Lawn Cemetery, Buffalo and in the Cambridge American Cemetery and Memorial, England. Rome Air Depot, an Air Corps base in Rome, New York which opened the month Griffiss died, was renamed Griffiss Air Force Base in 1948.
United States Air Force aircraft operated from there until 1995. lieutenant is now Griffiss International Airport and Griffiss Business Park.
His great-nephew and namesake is Rear Admiral Townsend Griffiss Alexander of the United States Navy.
