 In 1908 he was working on the Panama Canal 

He enrolled in the Curtiss flying school in Hammondsport, New York in 1912.During the Mexican Revolution, according to a Lamb newspaper interview, he was hired as a mercenary pilot to fly for General Benjamín G. Hill's forces.Phil Rader, a mercenary pilot for opposing General Victoriano Huerta, had supposedly several times bombed the town of Naco, Sonora, Mexico, held by Hill's forces.