The Aviators: Eddie Rickenbacker, Jimmy Doolittle, Charles Lindbergh, and the Epic Age of Flight

by Winston Groom

  Watching this irresolute show with mounting disgust, Lufbery jumped on a motorcycle parked in front of his barracks and sped to the hangars, where he found that his own plane was down for maintenance. However, another Nieuport, belonging to Lieutenant Phillip W. Davis, was lined up on the runway, armed and fit to go. With no further ado, Lufbery climbed into the machine and took off.

  When he caught up with the German he immediately closed and attacked, but then he quickly broke off, evidently because of a gun jam. When he had cleared the jam Lufbery renewed his assault, firing short bursts, but as he dived closer to the German he suddenly veered off sharply. Flames were shooting from his machine, which seemed almost to hover on its tail for a moment before spiraling straight down.

  Somewhere about 1,500 feet above the village of Maron, Lufbery rose up out of the cockpit toward the tail and leaped away from the flaming inferno that now engulfed most of his aircraft. When he landed he was violently impaled on a picket fence in the backyard rose garden of a peasant woman. One of her daughters heard a noise and went out to see and recognized Luf from newspaper photos. He had become a colossal hero to the French. Inconsolable, and having nothing else, she quickly strewed his crumpled body with rose petals and other blossoms to cover the sad heap.

  Lufbery’s plane landed less than a quarter mile away in a field across the Moselle River, a charred, smoldering wreckage.d Soon other villagers arrived and they carried his remains to a bier in the ancient town hall, where as was the custom they shrouded his broken, still-warm corpse in the flowers of the French countryside in May. Even as Rickenbacker was being told the first details of the incident at the field, the telephone in the hangar rang with news from a French officer as to the exact spot where Lufbery had fallen. Eddie, Huffer, Campbell, and other of Luf’s friends jumped into a car and arrived at the cottage less than thirty minutes after the mishap occurred, only to find, as Eddie remembered later, that “loving hands had removed his body.”

  The pilots asked the French authorities to send the body to the American hospital near their aerodrome and sadly made their way back home. There they were met by a Captain DeRode, a French Escadrille flier, who informed them that his leading ace had witnessed the Lufbery affair and immediately pursued the German plane but was shot dead through the heart, crashing only a mile from where Lufbery had gone down. Another French pilot, however, at last downed the miserable thing within French lines, and soldiers made prisoners of its crew. Nothing, though, could offset the black grief that hovered like a pall over the 94th Aero Squadron. Somebody once asked Lufbery what he planned to do after the war, and he laughed and replied, “There won’t be any after the war for a fighter pilot.” Luf had been their mentor, inspiration, guiding spirit, and friend.

  Lufbery’s funeral was conducted next afternoon. The fliers of the 94th Aero Squadron spent the morning in spit-and-polish, because they wanted to look their very best. Among the hundreds of mourners would be the generals Gerard, Liggett, Edwards, and of course Billy Mitchell—Lufbery had been one of his favorites. A grave had been prepared in a small corner of a cemetery near the base hospital. Known as the Aviators Cemetery, it already contained the remains of half a dozen fliers of the First Pursuit Group. Flowers surrounded the grave, as well as a large pyramid of floral wreaths sent by a number of military commands.

  The mourners gathered on the airfield, and as the procession carrying the casket made its way up a hill to the graveside Lieutenant Kenneth P. Culbert, a marine detached to the army as an aerial observer and mapmaker, described the scene in a letter to his former history professor at Harvard. “As we marched to the grave the sun was sinking behind the mountain that rises so abruptly in front of Toul. The sky was faultless blue and the air heavy with the scent of blossoms. An American and a French general led the procession, followed by a band which played the funeral march and ‘Nearer My God to Thee’ so beautifully that I for one could hardly keep my eyes dry. We passed before crowds of American nurses in their clean white uniforms and a throng of patients and French civilians. He was given a full military burial with the salutes of the firing squad and the repetition of taps, one echoing the other from the west. I have never heard ‘Taps’ blown as beautifully as on that afternoon. Even some of the officers joined the women at dabbing at their eyes with white handkerchiefs. My only prayer is that somehow, by some means, I may do as much as he for my country before I too go west [get killed]—if in that direction I am to travel.”e

  At a precisely synchronized moment during the service, Eddie Rickenbacker and four other pilots of 1-Flight throttled down their engines and glided quietly above the funeral cortege, which had gathered around with hats off as Luf was being lowered into his grave. Each pilot cast out sprays of flower petals that floated down like snow upon the mourners, then they flew back to the 94th Aero field, which was starkly empty. U.S. Army Major Gervais Raoul Lufbery had been the first American Ace of Aces, credited with shooting down eighteen German planes. Afterward, someone wrote of him, “Luf belonged to the balladiers and the boulevards—he was out of another age, and he would face death as he faced life.”14

  WITH THE DEATH OF LUFBERY, Rickenbacker’s war became personal. No longer did he see it, as others did, as some kind of game of medieval-style jousting, or a competition to see whose skills were greater in stunts and maneuvers. He captured it well, and darkly, by saying, “Fighting in the air is not sport, it is scientific murder.”

  The squadron had arrived at Toul aerodrome barely six weeks earlier, but by now the grind of war was taking its toll on Rickenbacker and the other pilots. Day after day they played cat and mouse with the crafty Germans who, except for their observation planes and their escorts, rarely crossed the front into Allied lines. Instead they were content to set traps behind German lines for the American pilots—who by now had become wary of them—and when confronted the Germans would usually retreat unless they were flying in large groups. Rickenbacker considered this “pure yellowness.”

  On May 28, Eddie and Doug Campbell sprang one of these traps near Pont-à-Mousson when the Germans used an Albatros as bait while they waited above with four Pfalz fighting machines. Rickenbacker and Campbell smelled the rat. They scared off the Pfalzs, then fell on the Albatros, which went into a spin and broke to pieces near the edge of the town of Flirey.

  A few days later the gloom that lingered over Lufbery’s death was lifted somewhat by receipt of a letter from behind German lines. Jimmy Hall was alive, taken as a prisoner of war in a Bavarian castle!

  During the melee Hall had gone into a steep screaming dive against one of the Pfalzs when poor wing fabric glue—the old bugaboo of the Nieuport—did him in. As the fabric began to tear away, suddenly his upper right wing broke off from the struts, which unbalanced him and threw him into a spin. He managed to pull out of the spin, and turn back more or less toward American lines, but was barely above stall speed when there came an unexpected lurch forward in the engine. Whatever it was caused the propeller to stop, and Hall began sinking tailfirst toward the ground. If this was not bad enough, the Pfalz he had been attacking now came down on him with a vengeance, spraying bullets at his cockpit.

  Hall jammed the rudder over, which finally set the plane on an even keel, but the ground was coming up fast and he was flat out of options. He crashed through a copse of trees that ripped off the wings and shot the fuselage out into a field where it came to an abrupt halt that broke Hall’s ankle, and his nose, as his face smashed into the windscreen.f

  German soldiers quickly captured him, and before his broken ankle was set Hall was invited to lunch at the German fliers’ dining hall, where he learned that the Pfalz Rickenbacker had engaged had crashed in flames and all aboard were dead. The Germans also determined that the “lurch” Hall had felt in the nose of his plane was an unexploded antiaircraft shell, which had lodged solidly in his engine. If it had gone off he would have been blown to smithereens.

  TWO DAYS AFTER THE FUNERAL SERVICE for Luf, Rickenbacker, Reed C
hambers, and a new pilot named Paul Kurtz encountered three Albatros fighters near St.-Mihiel and moved in to attack. Eddie blasted one and it began to spiral down, but before he could see if it crashed he caught a glimpse of two planes above him. Terrified, he fled for home, but the two aircraft followed right behind him and seemed to be catching up. Seeing no other choice, Rickenbacker skidded his plane into a vicious turn to face his pursuers, but something made him stop just short of pressing the trigger. A moment later he saw the big red, white, and blue circle—the American insignia—on Reed Chambers’s wings. He had been a finger twitch away from blowing his best friend out of the sky.

  The delay had put Kurtz ahead of Rickenbacker and Chambers, and they found him circling the aerodrome, waiting to land. Kurtz was making his final turn when, to Rickenbacker’s astonishment and horror, Kurtz’s Nieuport dropped into a spin and crashed straight to the ground and burst into flame with Kurtz inside amidst a tangle of barbwire and trenchworks. Next day, once more, Rickenbacker and the rest of the 94th found themselves at the Aviators Cemetery for a sad and unsettling funeral. They discovered that Kurtz had confided to one of his fellow pilots that he sometimes suffered dizzy or fainting spells in the air. Evidently his death had been caused by such a spell; there seemed no other explanation. Eddie somehow found himself furious at Kurtz for not telling him this. Eddie would have grounded him, and they would not be standing here today by his grave.

  When Eddie returned to the base that afternoon, official word arrived from the front that an infantry officer had witnessed the crash of the German Albatros that Eddie had engaged. Another kill raised Eddie’s standing even higher in the 94th, which also put him within a victory of becoming an ace.

  THERE WERE MORE WING-FABRIC FAILURES with the Nieuport, including a hair-raising incident in which Eddie was diving on an Albatros when to his horror the fabric began peeling back from his upper wing, throwing him into a spin and nearly doing him in. He managed to recover and land safely but it was both maddening and disheartening at the same time. No one yet understood it was faulty glue, but everyone knew that real danger lay in diving a Nieuport too fast.

  Just as the 94th Aero Squadron was on the verge of despair that they were flying a death trap, General Benjamin Foulois, then chief of the U.S. Air Service, who had heard other complaints, announced that the Nieuports would be replaced by the new Spad XIII in the fighting squadrons. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, but then collectively drew in their breaths again after learning that until the Spads could be delivered they would have to continue flying Nieuports.

  IN EARLY JUNE EDDIE took his first short leave and went to Paris, where he was stunned by the throngs of miserable refugees. Germany’s last, desperate attack in March had been checked, but hundreds of thousands of people from the French countryside had been dislocated by the German gains. They had come to Paris in search of food and shelter, when there was little of either.

  Eddie returned to learn that his fifth victory had been confirmed by high command and he was now the second American Ace of the war, behind his friend Doug Campbell. He also learned that the squadron was about to be moved to a busier section of the front, namely the Marne, where Pershing was preparing to make his “big push” with the American army. Everyone in 94th Aero seemed delighted by this news because the hunting was said to be far better around the Marne; anyone who wasn’t so pleased kept it to himself.

  On June 27, 1918, the four American fighting squadrons, including the 94th, were ordered to the Château-Thierry sector and based at an aerodrome near the “miserable” village of Touquin.

  They arrived, however, without their highly regarded commander Major John W.F.M. Huffer, who had fallen victim to a power struggle between General Foulois and Billy Mitchell. Major Davenport Johnson, who commanded the 95th Squadron and was allied with Foulois, had pressed charges against Huffer (assumed to be allied with Mitchell) for “conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman,” and Foulois relieved Huffer from command.g

  Everybody knew that Huffer was too good a leader to waste, and within a week he was made commander of the new 93rd Pursuit Squadron. Also transferred to that outfit was Oscar Gude. His arrant and open cowardice had been more or less tolerated, and even treated as a joke, until his craven performance against the enemy plane that killed Lufbery. After that, he became persona non grata within the Hat in the Ring squadron.

  The 94th’s operational area was another isosceles triangle beginning at Touquin—a thirty-mile leg to Reims, another thirty-mile leg to Soissons, and back to Touquin. The airfield itself was in fine condition, smooth and with adequate hangars, but there were no provisions for the pilots. In a stroke of luck they appropriated an abandoned but intact château a few miles south of the aerodrome. It was furnished splendidly and surrounded by sumptuous grounds.

  But their luxurious accommodations would do them little good when they got into the air, for the German opposition they faced included Richthofen’s infamous Flying Circus, filled with enemy aces and now led by none other than Ober Lieutenant Hermann Göring. The three German Jagdstaffels in this sector contained no less than eighty planes—most of them the menacing Fokker triwings, which patrolled in tight five- to seven-plane formations, making them extremely difficult to get at.

  There was one thing in the 94th’s favor, though. After a Fourth of July leave in Paris—celebrated in biblical proportion—Rickenbacker took a taxi to the big American aerodrome at Orly to find out something about the Hat in the Ring’s Spad XIIIs. Turning on the charm, he introduced himself to the major who ran the supply depot and soon learned that not only were the Spads already in transit, but the first three of them were sitting on the runway at that very moment.

  Delighted, Eddie rushed to the field where the Spads were lined up. The nearest one had the numeral “I” painted on its side, and Eddie asked the head mechanic if that plane had been tested.

  “Yes, sir! All ready to go to the front!” the man replied.

  Eddie explained that he was from the 94th Aero Squadron and asked if there was any reason the plane could not be taken there today. “None that I know of,” answered the mechanic.

  Within ten minutes Eddie was strapped and ready to take off in “the finest little Spad that ever flew French skies.” Whatever violation of regulations this may have constituted, all was forgiven when Eddie landed at the airfield at Touquin and taxied up to the Hat in the Ring headquarters.15

  Everyone rushed out and gathered around the neat little replacement for the temperamental Nieuport. Its 220-horsepower Hispano-Suiza eight-cylinder engine gave it a top speed of 135 miles per hour—10 miles per hour faster than the Fokker. It was stubby but strong, durable though not always a joy to fly until you were used to it.

  DURING ITS TWO MONTHS in the Château-Thierry sector the First Pursuit Group had lost thirty-six pilots killed or captured. (Among the dead was twenty-year-old Quentin Roosevelt, youngest son of TR and onetime classmate of Charles Lindbergh at the Sidwell Friends School, who had dropped out of Harvard to join the flying service.)h During the same period the group inflicted thirty-eight aerial victories over the Germans, a slim margin of success.

  The Battle of Château-Thierry was over and the Americans had won. But the Battle of the Meuse-Argonne was about to begin. The Hat in the Ring group, along with the rest of the First Pursuit Squadron, was transferred back to the St.-Mihiel sector, where the German army was pushed out in a huge salient, or bulge. Pershing, with 650,000 men and 3,300 guns, was preparing to drive them back into Germany.

  German observation and photographic planes had catalogued the American buildup and the German high command had moved to St.-Mihiel several squadrons of the same aerial aces the Americans had faced during the Château-Thierry campaign.

  During the next thirty-five days, until the war ended, Eddie Rickenbacker passed into legend. His attack on the Germans was so ferocious and unrelenting that he personally shot down the equivalent of nearly an entire German squadron.

 
; On September 14, 1918, Rickenbacker was promoted to captain and made deputy commander of the squadron. That same day he went out alone (as deputy commander he no longer had to ask for permission) and was flying at about 10,000 feet over Villey Waiville when below he spied a formation of four Fokkers with the red and white markings of Richthofen’s Flying Circus. He piquedi hawklike upon the last plane and let off several bursts. The triplane turned over into an uncontrollable spin that ended in a fiery crash, then Rickenbacker turned tail and ran for his life before the other three pilots could collect themselves.

  Next day he pulled off the same stunt, downing another enemy plane—another Fokker—his seventh, which made him the new American Ace of Aces. The longevity of Aces of Aces, however, was depressingly short. Twenty-two-year-old Frank Bayliss, of New Bedford, Massachusetts, was shot down and killed on June 17 after downing twelve enemy planes—most of them while serving with the French. The honor of Ace of Aces then passed to Lufbery. Lufbery’s successor lasted only two days before being shot down, wounded, and made a prisoner, whereupon the mantle went to the late Lieutenant David Putnam.

  Somehow by now Rickenbacker had learned to manage fear. It was one of the main reasons for his success. All of the pilots had their methods of doing this—some more successful than others—but Eddie had acclimated himself to that great numbing terror of flying into a fray where it was nearly certain someone would be killed.

  Through a kind of strange cerebral transference, Rickenbacker was able to postpone fear until after he landed; even he couldn’t quite understand how he did it, though he had done it in auto racing too. In a spasm of self-analysis he pointedly asked himself, “Was I in that strange class of men who have plumbed the possibilities of danger in the air—who have mastered to the limits the powers of airplanes and airplane guns, who know that they are personally superior to their antagonists for this very reason—who are therefore superior in truth because of the self-confidence that this knowledge brings them?”