Eugene Hoy Barksdale
First Lieutenant, U.S. Army Air Corps

Eugene Hoy Barksdale was born on 5 November 1896 in Goshen Springs, MS. Barksdale had one brother and five sisters. He attended Mississippi State College for three years before leaving to enter officer's training camp at Fort Logan H. Roots in Little Rock, AR. He volunteered for the Aviation Section of the U.S. Army Signal Corps as a Private First Class.

He received flight training with the Royal Flying Corps and was assigned to the 41st Squadron, Royal Flying Corps, in 1918, where he served as a combat pilot. In 1919, Barksdale was assigned to Mitchel Field, NY, where he married Lura Lee Dunn in 1921.

On 8 March 1924 Lieutenant Barksdale and his navigator, Lieutenant Bradley Q. Jones, flew a DH-4B, powered by a 400 horsepower Liberty engine from McCook Field, OH, to Mitchel Field using instruments only.

After the war, he earned some acclaim in air racing competition and as a military test pilot. On 11 August 1926, he was testing a Douglas O-2 observation airplane for spin characteristics over McCook Field (now Wright-Patterson AFB) in Dayton, OH. He was unable to recover from a flat spin and while parachuting out of the plane, his parachute got caught in the wing's brace wires, causing him to fall to his death.

Honors

On 2 February 1933, Barksdale Air Force Base in Bossier City/Shreveport, LA, was named in his honor.

Death and Burial

First Lieutenant Eugene Hoy Barksdale died on 11 August 1926 in Dayton, OH. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, VA.