Arcadia Rotary Club will hold its annual Memorial Day ceremony honoring British Royal Air Force cadets who died while training at Carlstrom aviation training camp in Arcadia, FL, during World War II.
The 23 cadets were buried at Oak Ridge Cemetery in Arcadia.
Each year, the Rotary Club, DeSoto Historical Society, and others gather to honor those fallen cadets at the British Plot in Oak Ridge Cemetery, 601 N. Johnson Ave at 10 a.m.
During WWII, before the U.S.’s entry into World War II, the British Royal Air Force sent cadets for training at Carlstrom and other fields in southwest Florida.
Twenty-three of them who died were buried in Arcadia’s Oak Ridge Cemetery.
THE HISTORY
During World War I, the U.S. Army built two aviation training camps to the southeast and east of Arcadia, on today’s State Roads 31 and 70, respectively. They were named Carlstrom and Dorr fields in honor of two aviators who had died in 1917.
First Lieutenant Victor Carlstrom was a flight instructor who was killed while teaching cadets in Newport News, Virginia. Private Stephen H. Dorr joined the Officer’s Reserve Corps in Fort Myers and crashed while training with the Royal Flying Corps near Toronto, Canada.
Charles Kettring tested his unmanned “aerial torpedo”–a forerunner of the “smart bomb”–in 1919 at Carlstrom Field. A model of the “Kettring Bug” is on display at the Arcadia Municipal Airport.
Both fields were re-activated by the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical Corporation as primary training schools prior to the U.S.’s entry into World War II. The British Royal Air Force sent cadets for training at Carlstrom and other fields in southwest Florida.
Twenty-three of them who died were buried in Arcadia’s Oak Ridge Cemetery. The cadets are honored every Memorial Day in a service conducted by the Arcadia Rotary Club.
*Source: DeSoto County Historical Society
For more local history, go to History of DeSoto County – Desoto County Historical Society (historicdesoto.org).