EPISODE TITLE:

Ep 01: The Balloon Buster – Roland H. Neel (WWI Combat Aviator, 1918)

EPISODE DESCRIPTION:

In this inaugural episode, we travel back more than a century to 1918 to hear the firsthand voice and experiences of Roland H. Neel Sr., an American combat pilot during World War I.

Roland served in the U.S. Army Air Service, flying open-cockpit biplanes over France during the height of the Western Front. In this intimate, unvarnished interview, he recounts the harrowing realities of aerial combat, hunting German observation balloons, facing anti-aircraft fire, and a terrifying in-flight mechanical emergency over enemy territory.

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• Speaker: Roland H. Neel Sr.

• Conflict / Era: World War I (1914–1918)

• Unit / Role: U.S. Army Air Service Combat Aviator

• Source / Archive: Library of Congress, American Folklife Center (Veterans History Project, Collection AFC/2001/001/01875)

• Audio Restoration: Digitized from archival recordings, cleaned, and preserved for modern listeners.

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TAGS & KEYWORDS:

World War I, Oral History, Roland Neel, 1918, Aviation History, Fighter Pilot, Veterans History Project, Living History, Firsthand Accounts, WWI Aviator, Military History, Western Front, Vintage Audio, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, Spoken Word Archive