Griggs was an American who joined the Australian Flying Corps and flew with No.2 Squadron. Unfortunately he lost his life during the Battle of Cambrai.
Griggs is fourth from left in the back row.
The Australian Imperial Force [AIF] in the First World War was monoracial, but outside that policy, the AIF was multi-ethnic. Consequently there men of many different nations that served in the AIF; Russians, Danes, English, Singaporeans, Canadians, New Zealanders, etc - and Americans. When the gold rushes in California had petered out, many Americans flooded the Victorian goldfields, and then migrating on to the Western Australian goldfields before ended up in the South African goldrushes. It should be remembered that the groups which resisted the British most at Eureka when it came to arms were Americans.
Albert Griggs was from Meridian, Mississippi and was living in Hobart when he signed up to the AIF. He went through the Fifth (flying) Training Course at Point Cook, which was rare too, as the common path for joining the
Australian Flying Corps [AFC] was to be recruited from the Australian Light Horse. After completing his training in Britain he was posted to No.2 Squadron AFC.
No.2 Squadron flew the Airco DH5 which was unusual for having 'back-staggered' wings. This caused some problems in a fighter aircraft design as the pilots couldn't see what was behind them, or what was on their tail. To add to the concern of the wing design the DH5 was not a fast aircraft by any means which meant it was easy for German aircraft to catch them up if they wanted to.
The advantage was that the pilot had an excellent view in-front as no upper wing obstructed their vision. Partly as a consequence of this realisation, and the fact that during the Battle of Cambrai all available aircraft were needed to support the offensive on the ground, the DH5s were pressed into a ground attack role. It was very dangerous work and the casualty rate in No.2 Squadron was high during this period.
Griggs, unfortunately, was one of those who were lost during the support of the offensive. On November 23rd the allied offensive stalled at Moevres where three Irish Battalions where trying to take the town. An Irish company was pinned down by a German defensive position and they watched a back-staggered DH5 return to attack the position again and again; until it crashed into ground; killing Albert Griggs.
Two weeks later, the Irish Fusiliers put a notice in The Times: "To an unknown airmen, shot down on November 23rd, 1917, whilst attacking a German strongpoint south west of Bourlon Wood, in an effort to help out a company of Royal Irish Fusiliers when other help had failed."
Phoenix Eats Out is the restaurant review site for
Phoenix,
Scottsdale and
Old Town Scottsdale which lists the modernist and contemporary restaurants, taverns and bars in the greater Phoenix area.
This is the list of the most popular restaurants pages from phoenixeatsout.com that have been viewed the most;
My personal favourite restaurants in Phoenix are
AZ88,
Postinos,
Bomberos with
Grazie,
Humble Pie,
Orange Table,
The Vig,
Fez and others coming close behind. View the complete list with the photo-journalistic style images on
phoenixeatsout.com
Arizona is an outdoor state and has lots of hiking in the city and around the state. Phoenix is unusual for most cities in having several large mountains in the center of the city with great hiking. Anyone who comes to Phoenix has to do the
Echo Canyon trail on Camelback and the
Summit Hike on Squaw Peak or Piesta Peak. The views of the city, suburbs and surrounding mountains are wonderful from Camelback and Piesta Peak.
For more experienced hikers there is the McDowell Mountains in North Scottsdale that has several difficult and strenuous hikes in
Tom's Thumb and
Bell Pass. Alternatively, you can hike the highest mountain in Arizona. At 12,600 feet
Humphrey's Peak is a long and difficult hike.
Between 2004 and 2009 this site,
southsearepublic.org, was a constitutional blog based on scoop which focused on Australian and global constitutional issues.
One of the strongest aspects of it was the development of constitutions by those involved in the blog. These constitutions are the outcome:
The constitutions were built using principles from Montesquieu's separation of powers, the enlightnment's universal political rights and the ancient Athenian technology of sortition and choice by lot.
South Sea Republic started in 2004 as an Australian constitutional blog in 2004 based on scoop software. It was an immigrative outgrowth of Kuro5hin. The archives for each year since then;
The articles are ordered by views.
I am an Australian living in the United States as a permanent resident.
I am a software developer by trade and mostly work in Java and jump between middleware and front end.
I originally worked in the New York area of the United States in telecommunications before moving to Washington DC and
working in a mix of telecommunications, energy and ITS. I started my own software company before heading out to
Arizona and working with Shutterfly. Since then I have joined a startup in the Phoenix area and am thoroughly enjoying myself.
I do a lot of photography which I post on this website, but also on flickr. I have a photo-journalistic website which lists
the modernist and contemporary restaurants in phoenix. I have a site on the
Australian Flying Corps [AFC] which has been around since the 1990s and which I unfortunately
lost the .org URL to during a life event; however, it is under the
www.australianflyingcorps.com URL now.
The AFC website has gone through several iterations since the 90s and the two most recent are
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2004-2002) and
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2002-1999) which are good places to start.
