This week Sabine’s battlefield guide Saturday is going back in the air
A subject I seem to like since I started guiding in the area of Arras about 7 years ago, British pilots who died have their memorial at the Faubourg d’Amiens British cemetery , you also find the Arras memorial there and one name on the memorial is Walter Tull the first black man to become an officer he made me look who would have been the first black pilot and then I had to find out if there were others, so you see research as a guide never seems to end.
Ahmet Ali Çelikten (born İzmirli Alioğlu Ahmed 1883–1969)
Also known as Arap Ahmet Ali or İzmirli Ahmet Ali, he was an Ottoman aviator who may have been the first Black pilot in aviation history and was one of the few black pilots in World War I. His grandmother came from Bornu (now in Nigeria) to the Ottoman Empire as a slave. Çelikten commenced his air cadet training in 1914 at Deniz Tayyare Mektebi (Naval Flight School) at Yeilköy near Istanbul and graduated November 11, 1916, several months before Frenchman Pierre Réjon from Martinique was flying for France and the American Eugene Jacques Bullard also flying for France. (two more black pilots will be next week’s blog) .
December 1917, in the midst of hostilities, Çelikten was sent to Berlin, Germany, for advanced training. It was also during the war years that he was promoted to captain , he married Hatice Hanim (1897–1991), a Greek woman who had immigrated from Preveza, with whom he had five children. he inspired members of his immediate and extended family to become pilots. Not only did his wife, sister, his two sons who served in the air force, two daughters, and a niece and a nephew become pilots but also other relatives to the extent that aviation was said to be the “family’s business.”
To quote David Nicolle’s book, The Ottoman Army 1914–1918, “Most Ottoman aircrew were recruited from the Turkish heartland … others came from the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire as far south as Yemen, or even from neutral Iran. Captain Ahmet Ali was a mix of Arab-African and Turkish origin.