Monday, March 20, 1922. Things Aviation, Leaving Germany, Out Our Way

Gen. Billy Mitchell, photographed on this day in 1922.

 

The USS Langley was recommissioned as the first U.S. Navy aircraft carrier on this day in 1922.  

She had originally been a collier.

The small carrier was converted, for a second time, to a seaplane tender in 1937.  Heavily damaged in action off of Java, she was scuttled on February 27, 1942.

President Harding ordered with the withdrawal of the remaining 4,000 troops from Germany by July.

The great cartoon Out Our Way by Canadian-born J. R. Williams began its run of 55 years.  The cartoon focused on snippets of small town, Army and rural life, featuring average rural characters, cowboys and cavalrymen.  It had many reoccurring characters.  Williams knew these characters well, having worked as a cowboy himself, and having done a six-year hitch as a cavalryman in the U.S. Army.

Out Our Way is, in my view, not only a really funny cartoon, it's frankly one of the few cartoons from this period that actually remains funny to contemporary readers.