Background
Ralph Royce was born in Marquette, Michigan, the son of George Arthur Royce, a bookkeeper, and Katherine Ely.
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Ralph Royce was born in Marquette, Michigan, the son of George Arthur Royce, a bookkeeper, and Katherine Ely.
He graduated from Hancock (Mich. ) High School in 1908. Then he went to a preparatory school in Findlay, Ohio, for a year in order to qualify for entrance to West Point. In November 1909 he entered the U. S. Military Academy. Later he entered the Signal Corps Aviation School at San Diego, Calif. , from which he graduated in May 1916. He trained at the Air Corps Tactical School at Langley Field, Va. , and graduated from the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kans. , in 1928. Royce attended the Army War College at Washington, D. C in 1933-1934.
While studying, Royce was a part-time reporter on the local newspaper and then worked briefly as a laborer. After his graduation from Academy he was commissioned a second lieutenant, and was assigned to the Twenty-sixth Infantry on June 12, 1914, having placed eighty-ninth in a class of 107 that included such luminaries as Carl Spaatz.
Royce served with the Twenty-sixth Infantry in Texas and was also attached to the Eleventh Infantry in Naco, Arizona, until February 1915. After his graduation from the Avation School he was immediately assigned to the First Aero Squadron at Columbus, N. Mex. , where he flew the first airplanes used in an American military action as part of the Pershing expedition pursuing Pancho Villa.
With American entry into World War I, Royce assumed command of the First Aero Squadron. In August 1917 he took the squadron to France, where he flew for the First and Third Army Corps at Cheteau-Thierry and during the St. -Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne offensives. A short, compact man given to colorful language and characterized as "totally fearless, " Royce served as an example to his pilots by initiating the first reconnaissance flights directly into the teeth of enemy resistance, taking his squadrons well beyond the enemy lines. His dash and intrepidity won him the promotion to lieutenant colonel by September 1918.
After returning from France in 1919, Royce went to Fort Sam Houston, Tex. , as assistant air officer. The following year he was given command of Carlstrom Field, Fla. , and two years later he took charge of Brooks Field, Tex.
As an aggressive and ambitious airman, Royce found the sedentary life of a training officer unappealing, and plunged into the peripatetic pursuit of military reward, leaving little time for family life. In 1930, Royce took command of the First Pursuit Group at Selfridge Field, Mich. , where he personally led a flight of eighteen planes on a test flight to Spokane, Wash. , and back in temperatures as low as forty-five degrees below zero.
He went on to serve the War Department general staff in Washington, D. C. Royce was operations officer for a flight to Alaska in the summer of 1934. He then returned to Selfridge as base commander, and in 1937 was sent as air officer to the Philippines, where he spent some time as adviser to the Chinese air force. In 1939 he took command of the Seventh Bombardment Group at Hamilton Field, Calif. With the coming of World War II, Royce's life changed greatly. In 1941 he became military attache for air in London, and was promoted to brigadier general. In the following year he was transferred to Australia.
In June 1942 he commanded the Northeast Sector of the Allied Air Forces, during which time he planned for the operation that evacuated General Douglas MacArthur from the Philippines. Royce was next dispatched to Maxwell Field, Ala. , as commander, and in the spring of 1943 was given command of the First Air Force at Mitchell Field, N. Y. That September he became commander of the U. S. Air Forces in the Middle East, with headquarters in Cairo. In 1944 he was at Ascot, England, as deputy commander of the Ninth Air Force, which was preparing for the invasion of France. Royce was air officer aboard the cruiser Augusta. Upon landing in France a day later, he was made deputy commander of the Allied Air Force and, immediately afterward, commander of the First Provisional Tactical Air Force at Vittel, France, where he served until February 1945.
Royce's final years in the service were spent as commanding general of the Army Air Corps Personnel Distribution Command in Atlantic City, N. J. (later moved to Louisville, Ky. ). He retired on a disability pension with the rank of major general on June 30, 1946. Following his retirement, the Royces lived in Coral Gables, Fla. Royce remained in retirement except from February 1, 1948, to August 1, 1949, when he was director of the Department of Economic Development for the state of Michigan. He died at Homestead Air Force Base, Florida.
Ralph Royce was known as one of the creators of a modern air force. For his "Arctic flight" he was awarded the William MacKay Trophy. During World War II he was distinguished as a brigadier general for his military campigns. In 1942 Royce led a mission of thirteen bombers from Australia to the Philippines that resulted in the sinking of four transports and the smashing of airstrips and harbors. For this action he received the Distinguished Service Cross. For his service in France he was awarded the Croix de Guerre, the Distinguished Service Cross, the Distinguished Service Medal, the Distinguished Flying Cross, his Second Legion of Merit, and the Legion of Honor commendation.
Royce married Lillian S. Scott on September 18, 1916. They had one son. His wife had died in 1944, and Royce married on February 9, 1945, Agnes Berges, a former executive of the Savoy-Plaza Hotel in New York, whom he had met when she was a Red Cross volunteer in Cairo, Egypt.
