Wings of Valor - Eddie Rickenbacker, America's Ace of Aces

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Captain Eddie Rickenbacker
America's Ace of Aces

Eddie Rickenbacker watched as four Spads taxied across the field, engines revving, as they slowly lifted into the afternoon skies to fly out over the battle lines.   Easing his lean frame into the open cockpit of his own airplane, he increased fuel to the powerful engine and listened to it hum. Moments later the commander of the 94th Aero Squadron was himself airborne and following his other four planes at a leisurely pace. It was Rickenbacker's third flight of the day on this 30th day of October. Before noon he had flown two uneventful patrols.

Now he tagged along behind a flight led by Lieutenant Kaye, who was filling in as flight leader for the hospitalized Reed Chambers. Two of the young American pilots in Kaye's flight were rookies, and Rickenbacker had elected to tag along to watch how Kaye fared as a new flight leader.

On this mission Lieutenant Kaye's flight was assigned to patrol the lines between Grand Pre and Brieulles at the unusually low level of just 2,000 feet. Rickenbacker kept well to the rear and about a thousand feet higher. This gave him an unobstructed view to gauge Kaye's tactics, and an advantageous point from which to spot any enemy air craft that might try to slip in behind the four Spads below.

After two uneventful passes between the two towns, Lieutenant Kaye maneuvered his flight for a third pass when Rickenbacker noticed two enemy Fokkers flying low from inside Germany, as if to slip in on the unsuspecting American patrol. From his higher elevation, Rickenbacker had so far gone unnoticed. Kaye's patrol was flying west across their sector, with the two Fokkers creeping up on their tail. The combat-wise squadron commander turned his own Spad eastward, winging well into Germany to angle back in behind the hunters.

The attack came more quickly that Rickenbacker had anticipated, the two Fokkers slipping in behind the formation of Spads to open fire. Rickenbacker was now well inside German air space, too far from the attack at this point to intervene. Fortunately, as the enemy pilots pulled the triggers of their machineguns, Kaye spotted the threat and turned his flight south towards the aerodrome and home.

Enemy tracers flew past the rear airplane piloted by Lieutenant Evitt, one of the two rookies. Rickenbacker could only trust the flight commander to quickly evade and bring his patrol safely home. There was also some comfort in the fact that the other experienced pilot in the group was Lieutenant Harvey Cook, one of the few remaining aces in the 94th Aero Squadron.

The German pilots were good, Rickenbacker had to admit to himself from his distant vantage point.   In a daring display of aerial prowess and courage, the two enemy pilots flew directly into the flight that out-numbered them two to one. Lieutenant Kaye remained focused, refusing to break up his formation and continuing to lead a beeline deeper into France and the landing field. After that first attack, the German pilots broke off and turned towards Grand Pre. Rickenbacker smiled. His pilots were safe and the German pilots were flying in a path that might well lead them directly into his own gun sights.

But for the two distant Fokkers, Captain Rickenbacker had the skies to himself as afternoon turned into evening. Well inside Germany, he continued his own lone-wolf patrol, a habit that had served him well. Early on he had learned from a great leader of the 94th Aero Squadron, the legendary Ace Raoul Lufbery, that solo flights relieved a commander of the distractions of responsibility for his other pilots.   Lufbery put it this way:

"There's a hell of a lot of difference in going out alone, no matter what the odds are against you, and in going out as a member or a leader of a group of pilots who may or may not be as good as you are. It's a great responsibility to shepherd these pilots out and get back home safe. I prefer to fight alone, on my own."

Flying solo missions had enabled Major Lufbery achieve an incredible record of victories and made him one of the most famous pilots of World War I, as it also had for Lieutenant Frank Luke of the 27th Aero Squadron. Both of those great pilots were gone now, and it seemed their mantle had fallen on the shoulders of Eddie Rickenbacker.

Rickenbacker had known both men, loved one and grudgingly admired the other despite his personal flaws. The differences between two of the greatest American pilots of the war were both obvious and blatant. Lufbery had come to the 1st Pursuit Group as one of the few experienced combat veterans, having flown with the Lafayette Escadrille. Already an Ace, he was worshipped by his men and treated with great respect. Luke had come to the Group a rookie, loud and irreverent, and quickly made himself the most hated man in his squadron. About the only thing the two legendary fliers had in common was the tendency to fly highly successful, lone-wolf missions over enemy territory. Strangely, another difference between them was that Lufbery had been admired for his courage in these missions; Luke had been criticized for not being a "team player".

There were however, a few other similarities between the two men:

Both men had achieved far beyond any other American pilot, Lufbery netting 17 victories and Luke 18. (The closest any pilot other than Rickenbacker would come to their impressive tally was Lieutenant George Vaughn with 13.)

Both men had ventured repeatedly beyond the lines to engage the enemy so often, Luke had earned only one victory over friendly lines and Lufbery claimed none. All other destroyed aircraft had landed behind the lines, and one could only estimate how many similar victories had gone unverified because they had not been witnessed by other pilots or allied forces on the ground.

Both Lufbery and Luke had held, for a time, the title Ace of Aces, and

Each had bequeathed that title to another when they died in action.

Rickenbacker shifted in the seat of his Spad, now well inside the German lines, and tried to make himself comfortable as the cool evening wind whipped through his open cockpit. Captain Eddie Vernon Rickenbacker was now America's Ace of Aces, a title that had historically brought with it two things: worldwide fame, and death. The title was one the young man from Columbus, Ohio had accepted after the loss of Frank Luke exactly one month earlier, with some reservation: "I wanted it and yet I feared to learn that it was mine."

The history of all previous men who held that title had certainly been deadly. Of the seven pilots who had earned the distinction, only Rickenbacker and Lieutenant Edgar Tobin (who held the title for two days after the death of Lieutenant David Putnam and before Rickenbacker pulled ahead of him), were gone, three of them in deadly aerial combat and Frank Luke as a result of his death on the ground after being shot down.

World War I
American Ace of Aces

From:
(1918) To:
(1918) Name
Hometown Victories

May 19   Maj. Raoul Lufbery
Wallingford, CT 17   KIA

May 19   May 22   1Lt. Paul Baer
Fort Wayne, IN 9   WIA/POW

May 22   Jun 17   Lt. Frank Bayliss
New Bedford, MA 13   KIA

Jun 17   Sep 12   1Lt. David Putnam
Jamaica Plains, MA 12   KIA

Sep 12   Sep 15   1Lt. Edgar Tobin
San Antonio, TX 6

Sep 15
Sep 18
1Lt. Eddie Rickenbacker
Columbus, OH 7

Sep 18   Sep 29   1Lt. Frank Luke
Phoenix, AZ 18   KIA

Sep 29   Cpt. Eddie Rickenbacker
Columbus, OH 26

On this next-to-the-last-day of October, Eddie Rickenbacker's claim to the title Ace of Aces was beyond dispute, based on an incredible record of 24 victories in the air. As squadron commander, he could have further protected that role by staying at the aerodrome and fighting the war from a desk. It was a practice he refused to adopt. Captain Eddie, as he preferred to be called, wouldn't ask any of his pilots to do anything he wouldn't do.   "Never did I permit any pilot in my squadron," he later wrote, "to exceed the number of hours flying over the lines that was credited to me in the flight sheets." None did!

Nor was the intrepid squadron commander content to sit on his record of victories, despite the fact that no other American pilot was even close. He was keeping a cautious eye on the two Fokkers that had earlier attacked Lieutenant Kaye's flight, and plotting yet another aerial dogfight.

This one almost looked too easy. Skimming along over their own friendly lines at barely 1,000 feet, the Fokkers were heading directly towards Rickenbacker, who watched them from a slightly higher elevation. They passed him less than half a mile to the east, never noticing the American Spad with the now famous "Hat in the Ring" emblem painted on the side, lying in wait.

Rickenbacker watched the two enemy airplanes pass leisurely beyond him in the distance, then dipped over, swung around, and opened his engine wide as he zoomed in from their rear. The pilot in the trailing Fokker didn't even know he was under attack until a stream of twenty rounds slammed broadside full into the center of the fuselage. After that single burst, Rickenbacker released the trigger. It had been enough, and he watched as the German airplane began spiraling slowly to the ground 1,000 feet below. As he watched Victory #25 plummet from the sky he noticed for the first time the brilliant, bright-red nose-piece on the enemy Fokker. There was increased satisfaction in the realization he had just outwitted a pilot from the famed von Richthofen Flying Circus.

Before the American Ace could turn his guns on the remaining enemy plane it had dived for the protection of the enemy held terrain below. To follow him to the ground so deep in Germany would be suicide, and Eddie Rickenbacker, though seemingly fearless, had a zest for life. Content with one more victory, he nosed upward to escape the hail of Archie (anti-aircraft fire) he was sure would follow, and headed his Spad for home.

It was already getting dark as Rickenbacker neared the small village of St. George. Two more miles and he would cross the lines and be inside friendly territory, for what would certainly be a quick and relatively safe flight to the aerodrome. Passing high over the town he looked down and was surprised to see a Drachen, one of the dreaded enemy observation balloons that had been the death of all too many American pilots, including Frank Luke. This balloon was still in its nest, which meant Allied observers probably were not even aware of its presence at St. George. With dawn the enemy would allow the balloon to rise into the sky to spy across the lines, and direct deadly artillery fire on advancing American infantrymen.

In what he later described as a sudden impulse, Rickenbacker kicked over his rudder and aimed his nose-mounted machineguns into the side of the Drachen by flying directly at it. As he flew within 100 feet of the large gas-filled bag, he stitched it from nose to tail with his guns, pulling away to climb for another pass only at the last moment. The second pass wasn't necessary. As he nosed upward for altitude a sudden flash of heat chased him upward, illuminated in the darkening skies by brilliant flashes of yellow and orange. It was victory #26 for America's Ace of Aces. It would be his last, not because another man would replace him after a deadly crash, but because twelve days later World War I came to an end.

As a pilot Captain Rickenbacker embodied all of the best to be found in men like Raoul Lufbery and Frank Luke, then blended it into his own unique character. During World War I he possessed all of the fierce independence and unorthodox military bearing that marked fighter pilots as a different breed. In the years after the war he came to illustrate the maturity and stability those young fighters could grow into as our Nation's young Army Air Service matured to become the U.S. Air Force.

If ever there lived the epitome of the term "All-American Hero", it surely would have been .....

Edward Vernon Rickenbacker.

"It is not old-fashioned to wave and love the flag of our country or to worship God in heaven. Let us acknowledge and be grateful for the blessings of freedom that God has given us. Let us dedicate our lives to the perpetuation of the American principles of freedom with confidence. Let us stop and analyze ourselves to find out what life means to us.

"Let us therefore pray every night for the strength and guidance to inspire in others the gratitude, the love, the dedication that we owe our beloved country for the sake of our posterity.

"Then, and only then, can we say when the candle of life burns low
"--Thank God, I have given my best to the land that has given so much to me."

Little Eddie

When Eddie Rickenbacker wrote at the close of his 1967 autobiography how much his country had given him he was a hero, a successful entrepreneur, and a wealthy man. It was not these things to which he referred, however. Rickenbacker was a self-made man, working hard to achieve everything he came to do or possess. The United States of America had afforded him very little beyond the one thing that made all the difference. Eddie Rickenbacker had been given OPPORTUNITY.

Born Edward Rickenbacher on October 8, 1890 in Columbus, Ohio, he was the third of eight children (one child died in its youth) of William and Elizabeth Rickenbacher who had immigrated to the United States from Switzerland. William built his own construction company, working hard to support his growing family, but there was never a surplus of anything in the Rickenbacher household. William constructed the family home himself on the outskirts of Columbus, but there was no electricity, indoor plumbing, or heat. Young Eddie grew up in poverty, helping his mother and siblings to tend the garden that surrounded the house to provide the basic necessities of life.

There was little in young Eddie's early days to indicate he would some day become one of our Nation's all-time great Americans. He later admitted that he smoked at the age of 5, and started his own neighborhood gang shortly thereafter...called The Horsehead Gang. Of course a neighborhood gang in 1890s Columbus, Ohio was not the same kind of organization one finds today. While the mischievous group of youngsters did engage in some nefarious activities such as breaking all the globes of the gas-burning street lamps along Miller Avenue, the organization was more of a loose-knit fraternity of young boys seeking to find their own brand of adventure.

Eddie later often recounted how, at the age of 8, he and his Horsehead Gang had improvised their own "roller coaster" by riding a steel cart down the 100-foot incline of a local gravel pit. Quickly Eddie learned that adventure comes with danger and often pain. The cart flipped, then rolled over the young boy, bruising him from head to toe. One wheel cut his leg to the bone. It was Eddie's first scar, and his first brush with death.

Eddie's entrepreneurial prowess also emerged at an early age. He entered the world of business even before he started school, primarily he later admitted, to earn money to buy Bull Durham tobacco so he could smoke like his older brother William. His first job consisted of selling bones (they were ground up for fertilizer) and other junk to a neighborhood collector. Eddie approached his first job with the same critical eye and capitalistic nature that years later enabled him to build an airline. As his business grew he enlisted other neighborhood kids, paying them a percentage to bring him the collectibles and then selling them to his own middle-man.

As the collection grew, Eddie pondered ways to more easily move his stock from place to place. At the age of 9 he saw his first automobile, which set in motion the search for his own vehicle. He found the solution one day while watching a lady push her infant around in a stroller. Shortly thereafter Eddie developed his own push-cart, a wide board that moved easily over a frame containing four rubber-tired baby-carriage wheels. With this he could easily cover large areas to find and collect bones for the business. Years later when a more mature Rickenbacker shared the story of this early vehicle with businessmen from the Chevrolet Company, the idea was revived and America's Soap Box Derby was born.

"What a wonderful childhood we had! Of far greater value than mere riches was the opportunity to work together, play together, learn together and produce together, all under the loving yet strict Old World guidance of our parents.
"How many children in America today, I wonder, are blessed with the opportunity to see the food they eat develop from tiny seeds placed in the moist spring earth? We little Rickenbachers enjoyed that privilege to the fullest extent."

"My father died when I was twelve years old.
"I didn't have to be told what we were up against. The day after my father's funeral I didn't go to school--I went to work.

"The night he passed I changed from a boy to a man."

Becoming a Man

The last words Eddie had heard from his father were, "Eddie, you're a lucky boy to be born when you were. There are a lot of new things in the making, and you ought to be ready to have a hand in them." On the following day William Rickenbacher suffered the accident that put him in a coma and caused his death a few days later.   He was buried in an unmarked grave at a local church cemetery.

Young Eddie was determined to have a hand in things, beginning with the support of his large family. The problem, he realized, would be getting his mother to consent to his leaving school to take a job. The solution was one that would serve him well throughout his life: "The only answer to that was to get a job first, THEN to ask for permission."

In 1904 child labor laws forbade the employment of children unless they were 14 years old and had finished the eighth grade. Eddie lied about his his age and school experience, and went to work. It was six, twelve-hour night shifts at the Federal Glass Factory, but after one week Eddie came home with his pay...three dollars, and handed it intact to his mother. He later said it was the proudest moment of his life.

The frugality that marked Rickenbacher's later life was evident in his early days. Every evening he walked two miles to work at 4:30 p.m., then walked home after his 12-hour shift. To have ridden the street car would have cost a nickel, and the Rickenbacher household needed every penny. During his lunch breaks, young Eddie learned the art of intricate glass-blowing from other employees, and used his time to create glass flowers to take home for his mother.

After a few weeks of night work, Eddie left the glass factory for a day job at the Buckeye Steel Casting Company. His workday lessened by one hour, and his pay increased to six dollars a week, every penny of which went home. Quickly young Eddie matured, losing interest in the Horsehead Gang, and spending his free hours fixing up the family home. And though the family income came almost exclusively from the weekly paychecks he earned, Eddie never thought of it as his own money. He was thrilled every Sunday during the summer when his mother gave him a quarter of his own, hard-earned money to enjoy a street car fare to Olentangy Park where the remaining 20 cents would buy him three amusement rides and a box of Cracker Jacks.

Eddie worked for three months at the casting company, then moved on to a job capping bottles at the local brewery, and then a job putting heels on shoes. The latter position not only provided the family income, but gave the 14-year old boy a new trade that enabled him to improve the repairs he had been making for years on the shoes of his brothers and sisters.

When winter weather halted Eddie's Sunday trips to the park, be began using his free Sunday afternoons and twenty-five cent allowance for a more personal purpose. Eddie had always been interested in art but the small allowance wasn't sufficient to any real art training. So Eddie turned towards sculpture, working for a local cemetery monument maker. At first all he did was polish the stones with water and sandstone, but along the way he learned some of the techniques the process of engraving demanded. Of all the accomplishments in his long life, the one that he said gave him the most pride, came during this period. Eddie carved out a large, white marble stone with the image of a Bible on it, the word "FATHER" at the top, and an inscription below. Today in a small church cemetery in Columbus, Ohio, visitors to the grave of William Rickenbacher can still see the greatest accomplishment of our Nation's greatest aviator of all time.

In his first two years of manhood Eddie Rickenbacher matured rapidly through hard work, frugal living, and a deep sense of personal responsibility. Along the way he developed an inner character that would enable him to become the All-American hero. His philosophy was simple:

If it needs to be done, do it FIRST, then ask for permission.

Success comes through hard work.

When you don't enjoy your work, find something else to do. "If I didn't like what I was doing or if another pursuit offered greater challenge or advantages, I acted immediately, without fear of the future. I have never been afraid to quit."

No one owes you anything. Eddie, despite the family's poverty, the tragic loss of his father, or the difficulties of his day, never felt his family, his community or his country, owed him anything.

"I have worked hard and lived under pressure since I was a boy; I always have, and I always will.
"Procedures do not make the man. Only the man himself can make himself what he is, by taking full advantage of the excellent raw material supplied to him by God."

Fast Eddie

Eddie Rickenbacker is often remembered as a man with a fascination for fast cars and airplanes. The view is rather short-sighted. Eddie's interest wasn't in the vehicle so much as it was with the power that propelled it.   Perhaps this should serve those who remember Eddie as an example to remember the man, not so much for what he did, but for the character that drove him to become all that he became, and to achieve all that he accomplished.

By the time Eddie was fifteen years old the internal combustion engine had become the focus of his attention. A serious accident laid Eddie up for several weeks, a period without work and without pay that might have caused a lesser man to pity his misfortune and fall into despair. For Rickenbacher, by his own admission, it was the most fortunate accident of his life. During those long weeks of introspection, Eddie Rickenbacker began putting direction to his future. When he had recovered enough to return to work, it was with a pay cut. For seventy-five cents a day he became an employee of Evans Garage, one of the city's first automotive repair businesses.

That same year Eddie enrolled in the International Correspondence School in Scranton, Pennsylvania, rising at 4 a.m. to complete his studies before going off to work. He wrangled a job at the nearby Frayer-Miller auto factory that was turning out one car a month, and soon a chain of events was set in motion that would make Eddie Rickenbacher a household name.

In 1906 Eddie rode with Lee Frayer in the Vanderbilt Cup Race on Long Island. By the time he was nineteen years old he was a full-fledged racing driver, facing off against some of the most famous drivers of his day. In 1910 Rickenbacher placed first in eight races in Omaha. The same year he experienced his first racing accident at Red Oak, Iowa. In the years to follow, he would survive many more.   In 1911 Eddie was a relief driver for Lee Frayer at a 500-mile race being held at Indianapolis, a track to which he would return again and again; a track he would one day own.

When Eddie wasn't racing he was tinkering with engines and selling cars. By 1914 a speed of 20 miles an hour was considered fast and dangerous on our Nation's new highways. That same year Eddie Rickenbacher was driving a Blitzen Benz over the sands of Daytona Beach to set a world record 134 miles per hour.

From 1906 until he ended his career as a race driver in 1916, Rickenbacker was the frontrunner against names like Ralph De Palma and Barney Oldfield. He attributed that success to his knowledge of engines, an understanding that helped him coax the very best out of each. Eddie could simply listen to an engine and diagnose its problems or gauge its potential. It was an ability that served him well not only as a driver, but later, as a pilot.

The flashy young race driver found two new elements in his sport. The first was a middle name. Eddie had always thought the name "Edward Rickenbacher" was a little plain. He liked the look of the letter "V" and inserted it as a middle initial, then coined the name "Vernon" to go with it.

The other thing racing gave Eddie was a great sense of sportsmanship. Despite his enviable record, he quickly realized he couldn't win EVERY time. Rather than lose his temper when things went wrong, he came to grips with the reality that you win some times, you lose some times. But whatever the outcome, you continued to smile.

"Try like hell to win, but don't cry if you lose."
"Who does not prefer to meet a person who is smiling?"

"Always conduct yourself as a gentleman. If you do not, you not only reflect discredit upon yourself, but also upon automobile racing, the means by which you earn a livelihood."

"Here in America failure is not the end of the world. If you have the determination, you can come back from failure and succeed."

"I have often been asked how I managed to maintain my sanity, much less resist a feeling of bitterness and vengefulness during the ridiculous and frustrating experience that befell me in the winter of 1916-1917. All I can say is that the good Lord gave me a sense of humor, and somehow I held onto it."

Rickenbacher, German Spy

The summer racing season of 1916 ended with the advent of winter, and the poor son of Swiss immigrants had enjoyed his best year yet, earning an incredible salary of $35,000 a year. The name "Rickenbacher" was recognized in virtually every home in America. As the 26-year old racing celebrity boarded the St. Louis for an Atlantic crossing to England, he had no idea just how many problems his famous name could create abroad.

On the uneventful voyage he met two friendly men who went to great lengths to engage Eddie in conversation, a pleasant diversion from the long crossing.   The unsuspecting race car driver was totally unprepared for the conversation that would engage him upon debarking at Liverpool.

"Rickenbacher," groused an English sergeant at customs. "What's your name?" Eddie was caught totally off guard, especially since the sergeant had just called him by name, but he patiently repeated it for the man. "What is your purpose in England?" the interrogation continued.

Rickenbacher started to explain his trip was for the purpose of purchasing British racing cars, but was interrupted. After a fiery battery of questions, the American tourist was taken to a nearby cabin where he found the two gentlemen who had engaged him in so much conversation during the voyage. The British agents had a dossier on the American race car hero with the Germanic sounding name, that traced his ancestry all the way back to Germany. Rickenbacher was forced to remove all his clothing, which was then searched thoroughly. When at last the agents were convinced he carried nothing dangerous, he was allowed to dress and then was returned to the ship. He was being denied entry into England, which was by now very much at war with Germany.

Rickenbacher was allowed to leave the ship on Christmas Day, but only under the watchful eyes of two British agents. It was the beginning of a "cat and mouse" game that marked his entire visit to England, and then followed him home.

Before Rickenbacher came home when the United States entered the war early in 1917, he spent most of his time watching the airplanes of the Royal Air Force flying past his hotel window from their field near the Brooklands Speedway. During these days of inactivity, Rickenbacher became increasingly fascinated with the concept of aerial combat, and wished he could himself mount an airplane to fight among this new breed of warrior.

On February 3, 1917 Germany declared unrestricted submarine warfare on the high seas, and all American citizens abroad were given five days to leave. Rickenbacher, who had already been repeatedly interrogated, strip-searched, fingerprinted and registered by British Intelligence, submitted himself to another 2-hour interrogation before he was finally allowed to sail for home.

Upon boarding the ship he encountered an old friend who asked him, "Eddie, have you heard the news? We've got a big German spy on board. That's why the boat is delayed."

"Yes," Rickenbacker said with a laugh that was not entirely sincere, "That big German spy--that's ME!"

Despite his shoddy treatment by the British, Rickenbacher firmly believed that the United States had ample reason and responsibility to commit itself to the war in Europe. On the return voyage home he developed the political position he would espouse upon arrival: "The Three M's--Men, Money, Munitions," for the liberation of Europe.

He also thought often of the airmen of the RAF he'd seen in London, and developed his own philosophy on the importance of air power. Race car drivers knew engines better than anyone, and were well acquainted with risk. Rickenbacher's idea was to suggest an American squadron of combat aviators, composed of volunteer race car drivers. He was sure his circle of friends would quickly fill every available slot.

In the weeks before the United States declared war on Germany and the Central Powers on April 6, 1917 Eddie Rickenbacher was quick to urge his country to action in speeches where ever he went. Ironically, everywhere he traveled, he was followed by a shadow. The British government was still concerned about their German spy. The cat and mouse game became increasingly annoying, and Eddie was rapidly loosing his sense of humor with the situation. He traveled to Cleveland. So did his shadow. Returning home to Columbus Eddie would walk down the street, only to see the reflection of the not-too-distant Intelligence agent in the store windows. On to Dayton, Chicago, and then out to the West Coast the man and his tail traveled. While in Los Angeles Rickenbacher had finally had enough.

While walking down the street one afternoon, Rickenbacher deliberately baited his tail into close proximity, then ducked into an alley. The agent followed, too close on Eddie's heels to duck with the German spy stopped suddenly and turned on him. "When is your government going to learn that I'm not the Crown Prince of Germany?" Rickenbacher demanded.

"I was just going to tell you," the agent responded, "my government is now satisfied that you are all right. Thank you for the ocean voyage and the wonderful trip across your continent." And with that, the agent bowed and faded in the distance.

If the British government was frustrating to Eddie Rickenbacher, so too could be the military establishment of his own country. Eddie was excited about the prospects of an American aero squadron composed of former race car drivers. Already he had found a list of eager volunteers that included a Who's Who of the race track, men as well known and widely respected as the famous Ralph DePalma. Rickenbacher took his idea to the top, Brigadier General George D. Squier who commanded the Army's Signal Corps, the branch responsible for aviation. Rickenbacher laid out his case for the squadron, then was stunned by the response.

"We don't believe," stated one officer, "that it would be wise for a pilot to have any knowledge of engines and mechanics. Airplane engines are always breaking down, and a man who knew a great deal about engines would know if his engine wasn't functioning correctly and be hesitant about going into combat." It was typical of the strange and twisted logic traditional Army officers would employ for the next two decades as military aviation fought for its place in the affairs of the world.

For his own part, Rickenbacher was determined to become an American fighter pilot, despite the fact that he had also learned in his meetings with the Signal Corps that the Army only recruited college graduates 25 years old or younger. (Rickenbacker had only attended school through the 7th grade, and was now nearly 27 years old.) Such obstacles never in his distinguished lifetime, could hold back Edward Vernon Rickenbacker. Somehow, we would find a way.

"Opportunities? They are stored in abundance wherever we look. They are waiting to be tapped by anyone with imagination, imagination backed by faith in our freedom of enterprise and fortified by the courage to try."

Rickenbacher, the Pilot

Eddie Rickenbacher was ready for opportunity when in May he got the call informing him of the secret sailing of the first American soldiers for the shores of France. With only 24 hours to make his decision he turned his back on a $35,000 a year racing career to be among the first American force that would comprise the Three M's he'd spent weeks promoting. He sailed from New York as a Sergeant, assigned to duties as a driver, not the flier he longed to become. But he also knew that opportunities often started with a small door, that opened to greater entrances. With the same brash determination that motivated him to seek a promotion to Sergeant First Class on his first day, he would find a way to get into Army aviation.

John J. Pershing's Expeditionary Force arrived in France on June 26th, and Eddie Rickenbacher dutifully performed his role as a glorified chauffer. Contrary to the colorful media reports of the day, he never drove for General Pershing himself. He did meet and drive for another American officer that Eddie came to love and respect, and who's influence certainly helped Eddie achieve his goals. The first time Rickenbacher met Colonel William Billy Mitchell who commanded the Army's Air Service, the officer's car had broken down. Quickly the engine-wise Rickenbacher had the Colonel back on the road, and thereafter Mitchell frequently requested Rickenbacher as a driver. When the time was ripe, Rickenbacher approached the Colonel with the subject of his desire to be a pilot.

"Eddie," Mitchell asked him, "do you really want to fly?"

"Yes, sir," Rickenbacher responded. "Anybody can drive this car. I'd appreciate the opportunity to learn to fly."

"I'll see what I can do," the great pioneer of American aviation promised. A few days later Rickenbacher received orders to report for the physical exam required for pilot training. The doctor who examined Eddie was an old friend who not only pronounced him physically fit to fly, but wrote down Rickenbacher's birthdate as October 8, 1892. On paper at least, the would-be pilot was now under the Army's age limit of twenty-five. It was a magic number for Eddie. Seventeen days of training and twenty-five hours in the air netted him pilot's wings and a commission as a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army's Signal Corps.

With shiny wings on his chest and a silver bar on his collar, Lietuenant Rickenbacher now had to keep his part of a bargain that had helped him get into pilot training. In September he reported for duty as the engineering officer at Issoudun under the command of his old friend, Jim Miller.

The German spy suspicions never completely faded away. Indeed, shortly after arriving in France, Rickenbacher returned to his billets one day to find his room mate rifling through his belongings in search of anything that would expose the American soldier's loyalty to the Kaiser. At Issoudun Rickenbacher recruited a transportation officer with the surname Spiegel. Ray Miller's adjutant was a man named Wiedenbach, and Wiedenbach's assistant was named Tittle. The Germanization of the field was compete when a new commander was assigned to the field to replace Miller, a Major named Carl Tooey Spaatz.

Rickenbacher took great joy in the fact that the field at Issoudun was run by five American officers named: Spaatz, Wiedenbach, Tittel, Rickenbacher and Spiegel. A few months later Eddie wrote a letter to a friend back home wherein, in a joking manner, he replaced the "h" in his name with a "k". When word of that letter reached the American media, headlines proclaimed that the now famous American Ace had changed the Germanic spelling of his name to snub the Kaiser. As a result, the name Rickenbacher was forever changed to Rickenbacker...not only for himself but for all the other members of the Rickenbacher clan.

The shiny pilot's wings and duty as the Issoudun Field's engineering officer were not fulfillment of Eddie's dream, but a stepping stone to his ultimate goal of becoming a fighter pilot. Throughout the fall of 1917 he watched the new pilots arrive at the field for training, and longed to be one of them. These pilots themselves had little use for the engineering officer, and Eddie Rickenbacker endured to some degree the snobbish deference later experienced by Frank Luke. Behind his back these young Ivy Leaguers joked about their Swiss-German engineering officer who spoke with a thick accent and who had only a grammar school education. The five top officers at the field were often referred to as "the five German spies", though certainly not to their faces.

Unlike Frank Luke who withdrew when he underwent such acrimony, Lieutenant Rickenbacker took it in stride and maintained considerable respect for these young men who would soon be going into battle. His respect for them, however, couldn't prevent a little revenge now and then. The muddy airfield was strewn with rocks that often flew up to break the wooden propellers of airplanes as they taxied across the field. One day Lieutenant Rickenbacker requisitioned a hundred buckets and soon thereafter the field was filled with bright young college graduates bent over in the mud to pick up rocks. The chore did little to further endear Rickenbacker to his young charges, but their complaints were, in his own words, "music to my ears".

The Hat In The Ring
Squadron

In January 1918 the first group of American pilots at Issoudun completed their training and headed for gunnery school. Their departure was a sad moment for Lieutenant Rickenbacker, not because he realized that this was the last step before they would be thrust into combat, but because he was not going to be going with them.

His pleas to Major Spaatz were fruitless. The commander of the field at Issoudun felt Rickenbacker was too important to the work being done to train these new pilots. Once again the impetuous Eddie Rickenbacker found his own means of creating opportunity. Battling a cold and fatigued from his recent work, he was able to convince the schools surgeon that he was ill. After two weeks of recuperation at the hospital Rickenbacker returned to point out to Major Spaatz that the field had run perfectly well without him.

"I'm onto your little game, Rickenbacher," Spaatz said bluntly. Then he paused, smiled and continued, "If your heart's set on going to Cazeau (the location of aerial gunnery school), you're no damn good to be around here. So good luck."

Two months later Rickenbacker reported for duty at the new 94th Aero Squadron under the command of Major John Huffner. The 94th and 95th were the first all-American fighter squadrons to reach the front lines, and would certainly be the first to see combat action. Joining Rickenbacker as a charter member of the group were pilots Douglas Campbell, James Meissner, Edgar Tobin, Edwin Green, Hobart Baker, and Joseph Eastman. The excitement of the group was heightened by the presence of one more officer, the legendary Major Raoul Lufbery.

On the morning of March 6 Major Lufbery announced the first flight, and selected two eager pilots to join him: Lieutenants Rickenbacker and Campbell. It was the first mission by American pilots of an all-American fighter squadron over enemy lines. Fortunately, the mission was flown without incident or combat...fortunate because the French Nieuport airplanes that took off from the aerodrome at Villeneauve fifteen miles from enemy lines were unarmed. The American fighter squadrons had airplanes, but their guns hadn't yet arrived.

When the mission was complete and Rickenbacker and Campbell shared their experience with the other excited pilots, they talked of all the German Archie they had seen, but not a single airplane had shared the skies with them that morning.

"You sure there weren't any other airplanes up there today, Rick?" Lufbery asked with a chuckle.

"Not a one!" Eddie replied.

"Listen," Lufbery said, not in contradiction but more like a father preparing his son for the future, "one formation of five Spads crossed under us before we passed the lines. Another flight of five Spads went by about fifteen minutes later, five hundred yards away. Damn good thing they weren't Boches. And there were four German Albatroses ahead of us when we turned back and another enemy two-seater closer to us than that. You must learn to look around." Then Lufbery walked over to Rickenbacker's plane and poked his finger through a hole in the canvas of a wing, then another in the tail, and yet another that had been punched through both wings only a foot from the cockpit. The lesson was not wasted on Rickenbacker, or any of the other young pilots. They were fortunate to learn from a veteran like Lufbery, and over the following weeks they continued to hang on his every word.

Two days later Rickenbacker's old friend Captain James Miller, commander now of the 95th Aero Squadron, led the first full squadron patrol over enemy lines...again albeit, without armament. Miller was forced by engine problems to land at Coincy and hitch a ride back to the aerodrome. Returning on March 10 to Coincy, he picked up his repaired Nieuport and flew to Coligny to replace it with one of the newer Spads. Flying his new airplane over the Rheims sector, he was attacked by two German planes and shot down behind the lines, the first American casualty.

The following day Lieutenant Paul Baer of the 103rd, who would hold the title Ace of Aces after Major Lufbery before being shot down himself, shot down an enemy aircraft in the same vicinity, giving the new American 1st Pursuit Group its first victory.

During this period while the men of the squadron were awaiting arrival of machine guns for their Nieuports, the pilots often flew with their French counterparts just to gain experience. They chaffed at the bit for the armament that would allow them to engage enemy planes, and hid their lack of weapons from the French who would have been horrified to learn the American aviators who accompanied them couldn't fire a shot in combat. It was also during this period that the men of the squadrons sought ways to distinguish themselves from each other.

As the men of the 94th Aero Squadron kicked about ideas for a Squadron logo or insignia, Major Huffner suggested using the quickly recognizable red, white, and blue stovepipe hat of Uncle Sam. Flight Surgeon Lieutenant Walters reminded the men of the custom of throwing ones hat into a ring as a call to battle. Thus was born the famous "Hat in the Ring" emblem, and former architect Lieutenant Johnny Wentworth was tasked with drawing it. Over the following days the new logo began appearing on each of the airplanes of the 94th Aero Squadron. In late March and the early days of April the Hat In The Ring challenge gained some teeth with the arrival, at last, of machine guns. Armed and ready for war, on April 7 the squadron was moved to Toul, eighteen miles from the scene of the ground war.

For years American pilots had flown with the French, even become Aces. Since the formation of the 1st Pursuit Group there had been all-American patrols, even victories and losses. But the first official COMBAT patrol ever flown by the precursor to the United States Air Force occurred on April 14 when the newly armed Nieuports of the 94th Aero Squadron took off from the aerodrome at Toul.

At 6 a.m. that morning Captain Peterson and Lieutenants Eddie Rickenbacker and Reed Chambers took off for a 2-hour patrol. Standing by at the field were Lieutenants Douglas Campbell and Alan Winslow. Rickenbacker prowled the fog-shrouded skies looking for trouble, the bright red, white and blue emblem shining from the fuselage of his own Neuport. To his disappointment, no German pilot accepted the challenge and he returned empty-handed. He was writing his after-action report when the field phone rang...two enemy airplanes were approaching Toul. Before he could don his own flight suit and climb into the cockpit, Campbell and Winslow were airborne. Minutes later a single-seater Pfalz crashed in flames near the aerodrome, victim to Lieutenant Campbell's guns. Lieutenant Winslow drove the other enemy craft, an albatross, out of control and down to the ground. They were the first two victories scored by an ALL-American Squadron and set the pace for the historic events of the following months of the war.

The success of that day was further highlighted the following morning when Brigadier General Liggett, Commander of the A.E.F.'s First Army, personally visited the men of the 94th Aero Squadron. Joining him was the Chief of Army Air Service, Colonel William Billy Mitchell.

The excitement of that first combat patrol, coupled with the double victory of Lieutenants Campbell and Winslow was quickly tempered by two weeks of frustration for Eddie Rickenbacker and the other would-be aces of the 94th Aero Squadron. In the weeks before that first Hat In The Ring victory, impatient weeks of waiting for machine guns for the squadron's Nieuports, Lieutenant Paul Baer of the 103rd Aero Squadron claimed four victories. On May 21 the famed Red Baron was shot down and killed, and two days later Lieutenant Baer got his fifth victory to become the first ace of the American Army Air Service. (This distinction is often erroneously credited to Eddie Rickenbacker.)

In the matter of intra-squadron rivalry, the 103rd now had 14 victories compared to the 94th Aero Squadron's two victories from April 14th, and besides Lieutenant Baer's role as the first American Ace, Major William Thaw of the 103rd had three victories and Captain James Hall had two.

On the same day Baer became an ace Major Lufbery did his best to raise the score for his squadron when he attacked an enemy bi-plane, only to return empty handed after firing just five rounds. The 94th Aero Squadron's Nieuports had received their guns, but all too often the pilots still found themselves flying unarmed. Time after time the guns jammed at the most inopportune moment. This mechanical failure was second in severity only to the tendency of the canvas covering the Nieuport's wings to shred when the plane was put into a steep dive. Both equipment handicaps were frustrating; either could be fatal.

April 29
First Blood

The pilots of the Hat In The Ring Squadron poked their heads out the door of their quarters at 6:00 a.m. to check the weather. Since Major Lufbery's aborted mission six days earlier it had rained almost incessantly. For several days, not a single mission had been mounted. Once again, disappointment hushed the normal banter of the eager pilots over breakfast.

Shortly after noon the sun finally broke through the clouds, and hope mounted for some activity. Rickenbacker was scheduled for an afternoon flight with Captain Hall who had been transferred from the 103rd shortly after his second victory. The captain's experience and combat record had impressed Rickenbacker, and he was excited to be teamed with the man who had become a friend and mentor. They were standing by in their flight suits when, at five o'clock, a call came through from French headquarters at Beaumont to alert the pilots at the aerodrome that an enemy two-seater was heading their way. Five minutes later the two American pilots were airborne and weaving among the scattered clouds looking for the intruder.

Rickenbacker spotted it first, a small moving speck in the distance. He dipped his wings towards Captain Hall to get his attention, then darted back and forth towards the enemy aircraft to point his flight leader in the proper direction. The frustration continued to mount as Captain Hall kept flying straight ahead towards enemy lines, instead of breaking off to pursue the distant invader. Finally Rickenbacker broke away. He'd go after the enemy airplane alone.

Coaxing his engine to maximum speed, Rickenbacker sped closer towards the distant airplane, carefully maneuvering his own bi-plane for maximum tactical advantage in the attack. The enemy plane stayed its course, apparently unaware that it was now practically in the gun sights of the American pilot. Rickenbacker smiled to himself. The French observers who had phoned in the report had been wrong, it wasn't a two-seater. It was a large, three-seat plane with big guns pointing in all directions.

Rickenbacker closed in, zooming upwards for the kill, his finger tensing on the triggers of his own guns. The fuselage was directly in front of him. This was going to be all too easy. Squinting across the nose of his Nieuport he prepared to release a deadly volley when his eyes noticed the circular cocard pained under each wing. No wonder the big airplane hadn't been concerned about his presence. It was a FRENCH airplane!

Rickenbacker cursed his folly as he veered away. No wonder he couldn't get Captain Hall to break away. The veteran pilot must have realized the distant speck was an ally. Now he probably was laughing his head off at Rickenbacker's rookie mistake.

Scanning the distant skies over the German lines, Rickenbacker searched for Captain Hall. In the distance he could see the unmistakable puffs indicating Archie beyond the lines. The German ground forces were shooting at something in the air, and that something could only be Captain Hall. Rickenbacker quickly sped that direction. As the range closed he found his mentor, calmly doing acrobatic maneuvers over the German batteries, dodging their sharpshooters and taunting them to waste even more ammunition. Captain Hall was, in Rickenbacker's opinion, the epitome of the American fighter pilot.

As Rickenbacker's Nieuport approached, Hall veered away from the enemy fire to join his partner. Apparently he had been waiting for Rick to realize the error of his earlier zeal, and had been amusing himself more than a mile inside enemy territory with his loops, barrels, side-slips and spins directly over the heads of the gunners on the ground. Now Captain Hall changed direction and began climbing into the sun. Rickenbacker followed close behind, surmising that the veteran had a good reason for the maneuver. Minutes later he realized his assumption was indeed correct. An enemy scout was flying towards the duo's position, and this time the sleek lines of a German Pfalz was unmistakable.

The enemy plane was on a course that would take it directly into the path of the two Americans and Rickenbacker hung close to Hall, hidden by the fading sun to the west. When Captain Hall put his plane into a dive on the Pfalz below, Rickenbacker wisely stayed above to cut off any attempted retreat.

The enemy pilot saw Rickenbacker first and pulled back on the stick to begin a rapid climb for battle. Suddenly Hall opened up with his own guns, and the German pilot realized for the first time that the odds were two-to-one against him. He lost all heart for the fight and started to turn for home. It was exactly what Rickenbacker expected, the move he had positioned his Nieuport to prevent. As the Pfalz went into a steep dive, Rickenbacker was on his tail and lining up his guns. When he was within 150 yards he pulled the triggers, sending a stream of deadly bullets into the enemy airplane's tail. This time there were no jams as the machinegun hammered the Pfalz. Rickenbacker pulled out of his dive and leveled to watch as the doomed enemy circled slowly out of control and crashed into the forest below. Captain Hall had his third victory, Rickenbacker his first. More importantly, the 94th Aero Squadron had moved two notches closer to the 103rd Squadron's impressive tally.

World War I aerial victories were counted differently, depending upon which allied nation a pilot flew for. The earliest pilots flew either for the French or the British. British pilots used a fractionalized counting system (if two pilots shot down one airplane or balloon, each got a half of the victory); while the French counted a downed airplane or balloon as a full victory for each person involved. If two, 2-seater French airplanes (with both a pilot and observer in each) combined to shoot down one enemy aircraft, each man in each plane was credited with the victory (4 credits for one downed enemy).

When the U.S. Army Air Service began operation, its squadrons opted for the more liberal French count. Under this method, the Pfalz shot down by Captain Hall and Lieutenant Rickenbacker on April 29th counted as one victory for each. By extension then, it also counted as TWO victories for their squadron.

During World War II the Army Air Corps reverted to the WWI British model of fractionalizing each victory. Under that system, two pilots involved in a single shoot-down would each get credited with a HALF victory.

In Pursuit of First Place

At the beginning of May 1918, all but one of the 19 American aerial victories had been scored by either the 103rd Aero Squadron (14 victories) or the 94th Aero Squadron (4 victories). The only Ace among them remained Paul Baer. Over the following 31 days the pilots of the Hat In The Ring were determined to try and become the leading squadron in the new Army Air Service.

The month started on an ominous note when Major Lufbery and Lieutenant Rickenbacker teamed up for the first mission of the new month. The only victory scored that day would be the loss of an American airplane, not that of an enemy. When the engine on Lufbery's Nieuport failed, the American Ace of Aces (he had achieved 16 victories with the Lafayette Escadrille), crashed and rolled. Fortunately, the Major survived unscathed.

The following day Lieutenant James Meissner was flying with a 3-plane patrol when he and his comrades attacked three enemy bi-planes. Meissner netted the fifth victory for the 94th Aero Squadron, but almost at the loss of his own life. Following his vanquished foe in a steep dive, the entire left, upper wing of his Nieuport was stripped of its canvas while he was well beyond friendly lines. Only Meissner's skill as a pilot enabled him to carefully nurse his airplane across the lines to crash in friendly territory.

On May 3 Captain David Peterson and Lieutenants Chapman and Loomis engaged five enemy scout planes. Loomis' machineguns jammed, though the intrepid pilot continued to engage the enemy as if he were still armed in order to render some confusion to the dogfight. Captain Peterson scored one victory as did Lieutenant Chapman, though the latter victory was unconfirmed. Worse, before the battle ended, Chapman was himself shot down. Later that same day, Lieutenant Winslow was taking off for a mission when his engine failed, causing him to crash. In the first three days of the month the 94th had scored two confirmed victories, while losing two aircraft to mechanical failure and a third to enemy bullets.

On May 5 the 1st Pursuit Group headquarters was established at Gengault, France where the 95th Pursuit Squadron arrived after aerial gunnery school, and the 94th Aero Squadron was moved to the new aerodrome. From that date on the two squadrons remained together throughout the war, and the competition for first place became a 3-way race between the two squadrons of the 1st Pursuit Group and the 103rd Aero Squadron (3rd Pursuit Group).

Calamity continued to detract from the Hat In The Ring Squadron's efforts to overtake the 103rd for first place. Two days after moving to the aerodrome at Gengault, Captain Hall and Lieutenants Rickenbacker and Eddie Green attacked three enemy scouts near Preny. Rickenbacker destroyed a Fokker monoplane, though it wasn't confirmed or credited until six months later, and Green shot down an enemy Pfalz that was never confirmed or credited. Captain Hall dove on an enemy Fokker so intent on victory he did not notice the fabric stripping away from his wings. The problem was compounded when a dud anti-aircraft shell further damaged his wing, and the popular pilot and well known American author crashed behind the lines. Wounded, he was taken prisoner. He survived the war to write again, penning the popular book Mutiny on the Bounty, among others.

During yet another flight that same afternoon, Major Lufbery shot down an enemy scout plane (unconfirmed). Returning from a mission, Lieutenant James Meissner hit a hole while taxiing across the field and flipped his Nieuport over. By the day's end, none of the 94th's three victories had been confirmed or credited, and the squadron had lost two aircraft and one veteran pilot. The 1st Pursuit Group's 147th Aero Squadron also suffered its first casualty on this day when Private Henry Black, a member of the ground crew, was struck by lightening and killed.

On May 8 Lieutenant Paul Baer of the 103d had a double victory, destroying two enemy airplanes after a 10-minute dogfight and boosting his tally to seven victories. The next day the 94th Aero Squadron destroyed two more aircraft, but once again it was THEIR OWN. Captain Kenneth Marr and Lieutenant Thorne Taylor landed at the field from opposite directions and in the confusion, collided head-on sending both airplanes spinning. Fortunately both pilots walked away from their shattered Nieuports.

The comedy of errors was not confined to the 94th. On May 10th the 147th squadron, which had suffered its first casualty less then a week earlier to lightening, received its first type XXVIII Nieuports. Upon landing, one of the new airplanes sank in a mud hole, destroying the undercarriage. Two days later Lieutenant James Healy crashed on landing, destroying another of the new Nieuports. Though injured, once again the pilot survived.

During that second week of May many missions were flown, and enemy aircraft attacked. Rickenbacker and two other pilots of the 94th engaged an enemy Fokker near Thiaucort on May 11, but the results were inconclusive. On May 13 Lieutenant Campbell shot down an enemy single-seater while well inside German territory. The victory went unconfirmed. Finally, on May 15, things began to improve. Captain David Peterson shot down two German bi-planes raising the 94th's tally to 8 (not counting Rickenbacker's unconfirmed victory of May 6th), and becoming the first pilot in the 94th to get a double victory in a single day. In the afternoon Captain Peterson, Captain Hall (MIA), and Lieutenants Rickenbacker, Meissner, and Charles Chapman (KIA) were presented the French Croix-De-Guerre for their earlier victories. After an impressive ceremony Rickenbacker joined Major Lufbery and Colonel Billy Mitchell in a 20-minute air show for the crowd. After the ceremony the new hero of the 94th, Captain Peterson, was transferred to the 147th Aero Squadron. Two days later he gave his new command its first aerial victory.

If the awards ceremony had been intended as an incentive, it certainly worked. When the ceremony was over Lieutenant Meissner grinned at Rickenbacker and said, "I feel that 'Hate-the-Hun' feeling creeping over me. What do you say to going up and getting a Boche?" Rickenbacker was more than ready and the two took off shortly thereafter. They even found and attempted to engage two enemy aircraft, but returned empty handed at the end of the day.

On May 17th Rick went hunting enemy airplanes with a vengeance. Climbing to a chilly 18,000 feet he shook off his discomfort to circle the skies well inside the enemy lines, crossing into Germany as far east as Metz. Patiently he clung to the ceiling as he scanned for a target. As the morning wore on, so too wore Eddie's deliberate patience. Down to less than an hour of fuel, disappointment began creeping in when at last he noted three German Albatroses take off for a reconnaissance over the French lines. Rick remained high above as the three aircraft spread out, then pushed the stick forward to begin his dive on the trailing airplane. Without even checking his speed, he estimated that the dive had granted him as much as 200 miles per hour (top speed for the Nieuports was close to 120 mph). Without wavering he kept the nose pointed at his enemy and, when at last the quarry noted the hunter and went into his own steep dive, Rickenbacker stayed his course. Closing within 50 yards, Rickenbacker pulled the trigger and watched a stream of flaming bullets pierce the enemy airplane's back seat. The German pilot slumped over the controls and continued his dive to its conclusion on the ground.

Determined to follow his victim towards the ground, Rickenbacker maintained his own dive to the last minute, then pulled back on the stick. There was a loud crash and for the first time he became aware of his own precarious situation. Looking to his right he was horrified to see that all the fabric of his upper wing had been ripped away. The Nieuport rolled to its side, then began its own tailspin to doom. The other two German airplanes dove in to apply the coup de grace. Bullets whined around the cockpit as Rick fought the controls. He didn't begrudge the enemy for attacking his already wounded airplane, though he later said he was critical of their bad judgment in wasting ammunition on a plane that was already destroyed. Perhaps at last the enemy pilots recovered their good judgment, for with the Nieuport continuing to spin earthward, they at last broke off contact to continue their mission.

Having dropped 15,000 feet in a matter of minutes, Lieutenant Rickenbacker watched the ground spin dizzily towards him and wondered if he would survive the crash to have his shattered body imprisoned by the Germans below. From less than 3,000 feet he could see people on the ground, watching his demise. The stick fought his hand as he tried to control the floundering Nieuport when, with a total disregard for the consequences, he pulled open the throttle. The sudden burst of speed suddenly leveled the airplane, and the rudder began responding to the stick. The enemy airplanes had vanished in the distance. Now it was only Rickenbacker and his desperate attempts to climb. It proved useless, with wind whipping through the barren right wing he could only manage a semi-level flight at low altitude. Then the German Archie began, and explosions burst around him.

At under 1,000 feet the Nieuport slipped across no man's land and into allied territory. With the engine running wide open, Rick came in for a landing. The Nieuport pancaked to the soft mud, destroyed beyond repair, but miraculously, Eddie Rickenbacker walked away. Almost as amazing, the dead pilot of the Albatross he had nearly given his life to destroy had fallen across the stick of his own in such a way that the doomed enemy plane had also glided across the lines to crash in France. Eddie's victory was verified, his third downed airplane (his second confirmed kill).

Despite such problems, the tide was turning for the young American pilots. The day after Rickenbacker's near-fatal combat mission, Lieutenant Doug Campbell attacked an enemy bi-plane near Verdun. When the Hat In The Ring pilot's guns jammed after a few bursts, the intrepid airman bluffed his way through a series of aerial maneuvers until he had cleared his guns to score his own second victory. Campbell caught up to his friend Rick the next day when he scored his third, again only after his guns jammed on the first assault and he had made a series of courageous maneuvers while working to free up his weapons.

Unreliable engines, fragile wings, and temperamental machineguns made fighting the German pilots difficult. The Nieuport 28 was fast and maneuverable, but its other drawbacks had caused the French and British air services to reject it. The fact that these airplanes were then passed off on the new United States Air Service reflects much of the greatest battle the early American combat pilots faced, not aerial combat against armed Germans, but a political war for recognition in the traditional halls of the U.S. military. Air power was not seen as an important factor by American military war planners. A squadron would be formed on paper, then wait for weeks for the arrival of airplanes cast off by other air services, and then have to fly unarmed while awaiting a requisition of armament.

The French, the British and the Germans worked hard to improve their airplanes, their weapons, and their aerial tactics. American pilots were assigned to squadrons, provided cast-off machines and materials, and expected to survive on their intrepid spirit alone. Before the war, Rickenbacker had been stunned by the Army's response to his attempt to build a squadron from the ranks of race car drivers. It had been scoffed at, largely because the Army felt a knowledge of engines would be detrimental to a pilot and temper their zeal in battle or make them hesitant to fly if an engine sounded less than up-to-par. Such sheer idiocy went even further, and was more deadly. Rickenbacker always claimed he was happy to see a parachute unfurl beneath one of his victims. His war was against machines, not men. French and British pilots were also often known to have parachuted to safety from a shot up airplane. American pilots didn't even HAVE parachutes.

"We air-fighters cannot understand why we cannot have parachutes fitted on our aeroplanes to give the doomed pilot one possible means of escape from this terrible death. Pilots sometimes laugh over the comic end of a comrade shot down in course of a combat. It is a callousness made possible by the continuous horrors of war. If he dies from an attack by an enemy it is taken as a matter of course. But to be killed through a stupid and preventable mistake puts the matter in a very different light."

Eddie Rickenbacker
Fighting the Flying Circus

The tragedy that befell the 94th Pursuit Squadron on May 19 brought Rickenbacker face to face with the parachute issue. While Doug Campbell was bagging his third victory, two German 2-seaters were engaged in a dogfight near the aerodrome with two green American pilots. When it appeared that the enemy aircraft would escape the novice Americans, it was more than Major Lufbery could stand. The now famous pilot jumped into a nearby airplane and gave chase.

Lufbery made one round of the two machines as the ground crews watched from the distant American aerodrome. Suddenly he veered away as if to clear a jamb in his guns. Looping back into battle, enemy rounds raked his airplane, puncturing the fuel tank. The ground crews watched in horror as the flames spread, and Major Lufbery slid back along the fuselage of his burning plane towards the tail. Moments later, from a height of about 1,000 feet, America's first Ace of Aces leaped from his nearly incinerated Nieuport. The plane crashed in a field near a river, and it was later speculated that Lufbery was trying to leap into the water from that height himself. Instead his body plummeted to earth to fall on a picket fence. If the great Ace had possessed a parachute, he might well have survived that day. The following morning he was buried in the Aviators Cemetery at Sebastapol, France with full military honors.

At one point during the summer Rickenbacker confronted a major at Air Service headquarters in Paris regarding the parachute matter. He was told that the parachutes were too large and heavy for the small fighters. Rickenbacker knew this was not true, the Germans had developed parachutes small enough for THEIR pilots. "Rickenbacker," the Major finally stated coldly, "if all you pilots had parachutes, then you'd be inclined to use them on the slightest pretext, and the Air Service would lose planes that might otherwise have been brought down safely." It took all of Rick's will-power to keep his temper from exploding at that.

The death of Major Lufbery was a severe blow to the psyche of the men of all three active American pursuit squadrons. Somehow the intrepid young men rose above it. To Lieutenant Paul Baer of the 103rd was bequeathed the title American Ace of Aces, and on the day they buried an aerial legend, Baer added to his own enviable record by achieving his eighth victory. The next day, Rickenbacker got his fourth (third confirmed) and Baer shot down his ninth...and last, enemy plane. Baer had been Ace of Aces for but two days before he was shot down, wounded and captured. His title, a deadly one to be sure, passed on to Lieutenant Frank Bayliss, an American pilot with the French Escadrille of the Cigognes, Spad 3. Bayliss would achieve a total of 13 victories before he was killed on June 17.

By the end of May the two squadrons of the 1st Pursuit Group were competing fiercely for first place. The 95th Pursuit Squadron ended the month with fourteen victories, the 94th with eighteen. On the next-to-the-last day of the month Rickenbacker got his fifth confirmed victory to become the second American Ace of the war, and the following day Lieutenant Campbell got his fifth, making the Hat In The Ring Squadron the only American squadron with two Aces. The 103rd Pursuit Squadron of the 3rd Pursuit Group still held first place in the victory category with 21.

Despite all the problems with airplanes, guns and weather, in the first 10 weeks on the front the three American Aero Squadrons had claimed 53 victories over the enemy.

During the month of June the action slowed down somewhat. For Rickenbacker, his 6th victory (5th confirmed) achieved on May 30th would be his last for three and a half months. The 103rd kept its lead intact though only achieving three victories for the month. The 94th crept closer after four victories though the 95th managed to muster only one. The new pretender for the crown appeared to be the newly arrived 27th Aero Squadron. Recognizable for the eagle with spread wings painted on the side of their Nieuports (claimed to have originated on the side of an Annhauser Busch Beer Wagon), the Eagle Squadron managed thirteen victories.

By July 1 the 1st Pursuit Group's fourth squadron, the 147th, was ready for action. The tally of aerial credits was as follows:

1st Pursuit Group

3rd P.G.

27th Aero
94th Aero
95th Aero
147th Aero

103rd Aero

6 23 15 0 24

NOTE: The numbers used in this and successive tables reflect the victory credits based upon Historical Study 133 which was prepared by the US Air Force in 1966. As such, it lists victory credits for a given month that include victories not verified until later months, or even after the war had ended. Historical records therefore, may show one squadron having led all others on a particular date, when in fact on that date the pilots themselves may have been aware of a different set of numbers.

On July 2 a patrol of nine planes from the 27th Aero Squadron attacked nine planes of the infamous Richthofen Flying Circus. Six pilots contributed to two downed aircraft, raising the Eagle Squadron's tally by a dozen. The same day pilots from the 147th engaged in two separate actions, netting six victories for the new arrival.

For more than three months the Hat In The Ring Squadron had been trying hard to overtake the 103d, and trailed by only one victory going into July (since Rickenbacker's May 7th victory still hadn't been confirmed, the recognizable difference on that date was actually a two-victory margin on the books). On July 7 the 94th added five more victories to its tally, pulling into the lead for the first time. It was the event the pilots of the squadron had worked so hard to achieve for months. The 95th Aero Squadron had ambitions of its own, raising its tally to 18 on July 5, then scoring two more victories the following day.

The single victory scored by the 95th on July 10 still left the Kicking Mule Squadron seven victories behind the 95th, but it was notable for a different reason. The Fokker that was destroyed near Chateau-Thierry that day fell victim to one of the most popular and well-known flight leaders in the squadron. Lieutenant Quentin Roosevelt was the youngest son of former President Theodore Roosevelt.

Quentin had arrived with the 95th Aero Squadron on May 6th when it had joined the 94th at the forward aerodrome. Due his famous name, the squadron commander had made the young pilot a flight leader, even before he had ever made a flight over the lines. Quentin protested, advising that his lack of experience could be a danger to his men, but the squadron commander insisted. It was a novelty to have the son of an American president leading a flight of experienced fighter pilots.

The next morning Quentin and three of his men prepared to take off for their first mission. Quentin called his pilots together and inquired who among them had the most experience. "As soon as we leave the ground," Lieutenant Roosevelt informed his men, "the man with the most experience will take the lead and I will fall back into his position. They may be able to make me Flight Commander in name, but the best pilot in my group is going to lead it in fact." And that was exactly how Quentin Roosevelt operated until his death on July 14. During his tenure on the front, though ordered to the role of flight leader by his superiors, not once did Quentin occupy that role in the air. His death, like that of Lufbery, was a heart-rending tragedy for the entire American Air Service.

On the last day of July the 95th had a great day, earning seven victories and taking first place among the squadrons. On the morning of August 1 the tally sheet read:

1st Pursuit Group

3rd P.G.

27th Aero
94th Aero
95th Aero
147th Aero

103rd Aero

29 28 31 26 27

The 95th's tenure in first place was short lived. August 1 was a disastrous day for the pilots of the 27th. Six pilots were shot down in an action that made it one of the deadliest days in the air of the war. Though the loss of six pilots demoralized the survivors and halted missions for nearly a week, pilots of the Eagle Squadron did claim six victories of their own, eclipsing the lead of the 95th. For nearly 2 1/2 months the 27th would continue to be the front-runner in victories, much of that time thanks to Frank Luke. When at last the 94th would regain the lead it held for most of the month of July, it would be primarily because of Eddie Rickenbacker.

For his own part Lieutenant Rickenbacker was quickly becoming the most popular pilot in his squadron. From his first mission on March 6 until his last flight over the lines on November 11, he logged more hours in the air than perhaps any other American pilot, certainly more than any pilot in the 1st Pursuit Group. Through the period he engaged in 134 air battles by his own count, shot down 26 enemy planes, held the title Ace of Aces in two separate periods, and earned an unprecedented NINE Distinguished Service Crosses.

In those months of combat he survived engine failures, shredded wings, sheets of flaming Archie, and thousands of enemy bullets. He flew dozens of one-man volunteer missions behind enemy lines, single-handedly engaged enemy flights that outnumbered him as much as seven-to-one, and returned to the aerodrome repeatedly in aircraft so full of bullet holes and shrapnel punctures that the aircraft was beyond repair. Amazingly, though it all, the intrepid airman was not even slightly wounded one time. That amazing record is what made his series of hospital confinements during the summer of 1918 so incongruous.

During June, Rickenbacker missed much of the action when a fever sent him to the hospital in Paris. It was while writing a letter from his hospital bed that he innocently enough made the change in the spelling of his name that made headlines and forever marked him as Rickenbacker instead of Rickenbacher. He was finally released from the hospital on July 4 and went into Paris to celebrate. The following day, before returning to his squadron, he decided to visit the American experimental supply aerodrome at Orly.  It was a most fortunate decision.

For several weeks the American pilots had heard reports of a new French airplane capable of speeds faster than their Nieuports.   These were purportedly aircraft that could climb to higher altitudes yet were durable enough to survive fast dives or tricky aerial maneuvers. Built by the Societe pour L'Aviation et ses Derives, it became known as the SPAD, and sitting on the field at Orly were three brand new ones. Rick noticed one had the numeral "1" painted on its side.

"Is this one of the new planes meant for the 94th Aero Squadron?" he asked a mechanic, who affirmed that indeed it was. "Well, I'm with the 94th," Rick told him and, in his characteristic style of doing what needed to be done first, then asking permission, he strapped himself in and flew it back to his aerodrome at Touquin. To his delight upon his return, Major Kenneth Marr who was now commanding the squadron, congratulated him for acquiring the sleek new airplane and assigned it to Rickenbacker. Rick knew he could have perhaps, been court-martialed for his impulsive actions that day.

Returning to the air, Rick was thrilled with his new SPAD and its capabilities; but one old problem and one new problem began to plague his efforts. The old problem was the continuing tendency of the aircraft's machineguns to jamb. Much of this was due to improper sized shell casings. Rickenbacker did his best to alleviate this by creating a die to measure each shell, then personally loaded his guns before each mission. As a fail-safe measure, he had his mechanic attach a leather strap to a large wooden mallet, which he then hung around his wrist. Thereafter, when a shell hung in his guns, he cleared it with a quick rap from the mallet. Most of the time it worked.

The new problem was more personal. Upon his return to the air Rick began experiencing a sharp pain in his ear. On July 10 he was sent back to Paris where it was lanced and didn't fly again until the end of the month. Even then, the pain persisted and became worse. For days he continued to ignore the pain, an often difficult effort when it was compounded by the chill and pressure of high altitudes.

On August 8 Rickenbacker shot down a Fokker but the victory was never confirmed. The one piece of good news during these otherwise dismal month was that at last the entire squadron was finally outfitted with the new SPADs. Ten days later the Mastoiditis in Rick's ear was so bad he couldn't get out of bed. He was quickly sent back to the hospital and Eddie Green replaced him as flight leader for that day's scheduled mission, flying SPAD number 1. Eddie regained his consciousness on Sunday enough to recognized Captain Marr standing by his bed. Marr came to bring the sad news that Green and Walter Smythe, perhaps Rick's closest friend in the squadron, had collided in the air and plummeted to their deaths. It was yet another sad moment for Rick, more so in the knowledge that had the men been allowed parachutes, both would probably have survived to fly again.

The tragedy of such needless losses, coupled with mechanical failures, lack of proper supplies and support at the top, all made worse by the fact that during the month of August the entire 1st Pursuit Group had only achieved ten victories, was driving morale low. During the last week of August Rickenbacker was recovering from his second ear operation when his friends from the squadron came to visit him in the hospital. They shared with Rick how badly things were deteriorating among the pilots and wished him a speedy recovery. They also told Eddie that when he returned, they wished he would return as the commander of the 94th Aero Squadron.   Eddie informed that that if ordered to command the squadron, he would accept the position, but they might not like the results. As commander he would be tough, demanding, and determined to make the squadron the best in the American Air Service. It was the news his friends were hoping to hear.

St. Mihiel Offensive

The new Army Air Service had indeed been vastly overlooked by most of the American Army's higher command. There was however, one highly placed ally, the commander of the Air Service and Rick's friend Colonel William Billy Mitchell. Mitchell had been the first American to fly over enemy lines and, though never credited with a combat victory, spent his share of time away from his desk and on the field at the aerodromes throughout France or in the cockpit of an airplane.

During the last week of August while Rick was recovering in the hospital Colonel Mitchell was eagerly trying to give his pilots a fighting chance to prove their full worth. Germany's spring offensive had been crushed and the enemy routed. Now Allied war planners were setting the stage for the first major offensive of the war involving the American Expeditionary Force. Mitchell had earnestly promoted a campaign that would involve a combined air-ground assault, the first in history. Ultimately the plan was approved and the flamboyant Air Service commander began assembling the largest aerial armada in history: seven hundred fighters, four hundred observation planes and four hundred bombers. It was a gamble which, if it failed, would have confirmed the attitude of the traditional military commanders that airplanes provided only a minor and insignificant role in the process of war. The ultimate success of Mitchell's intrepid airmen during the months of September and October 1918 indisputably proved the value of the Army Air Service.

Plans for the campaign that became known as the St. Mihiel Offensive were made with great secrecy, but the men of the A.E.F. could sense that something big was in the offing. When all the squadrons of the 1st Pursuit Group, now called the 1st Pursuit Wing, were moved to a forward aerodrome at Rembercourt on September 3, everyone knew the tone of the war was about to change. Learning of his squadron's move to the Verdun sector, Rickenbacker pronounced himself cured and requested permission to rejoin the squadron. His ear was indeed cured, and never bothered him again.   Rick headed for Aviation Headquarters in Paris, from which he drove the staff car of Colonel Mitchell to the aerodrome at Rembercourt. He arrived back in the field on September 11, the day before the St. Mihiel Offensive was to begin.

Much had changed during Rick's brief absence. Major Carl Spaatz had transferred from the 94th to a new job as Chief of Staff for the 1st Pursuit Wing, now commanded by Major Harold Hartney of the 27th. Lieutenant Alfred "Ack" Grant had assumed command of the 27th and had his hands full with a boisterous young pilot named Frank Luke. Rick's good friend Jim Meissner had assumed command of the 147th Aero Squadron.

The offensive began right on schedule at 5 a.m. the following day, the American artillery and infantry hampered but not precluded from action by the rainy weather. The pilots, eager to enter the fray and prove their value to the offensive, were not so lucky. One flight of eight airplanes from the 27th managed to get airborne after daylight, but most planes were grounded until afternoon. Lieutenant Luke of the 27th managed to shoot down a German observation balloon, the first confirmed victory of his soon-to-be impressive streak, but it was the only victory scored by any member of the 1st Pursuit Wing.

Elsewhere American pilots faired somewhat better on the first day of the offensive, knocking down 12 airplanes in addition to Luke's balloon. Lieutenant David Putnam of the 139th had held the title American Ace of Aces since the death back in June of Frank Bayless. On September 12th Putnam shot down his twelfth enemy aircraft to increase his tally. It was his last victory, for before the day ended Putnam was himself shot down and killed.

Rickenbacker's tally stood at five confirmed victories so the title Ace of Aces was temporarily held by Lieutenant Edgar Tobin of the 103rd Aero Squadron, 3rd Pursuit Wing who had six.

On Day 2 of the offensive the 103rd, operating under the 1st Pursuit Wing, destroyed seven enemy planes, five of which were confirmed. They were the only victories of the day, but on September 14 things began to happen quickly. The brash Frank Luke of the 27th knocked down two more balloons while Eddie Rickenbacker pulled even with Ace of Aces Lieutenant Tobin when he shot down a Fokker near Villey Waiville. It was Rick's his sixth confirmed victory.

On September 15 Rickenbacker shot down his second Fokker in two days, becoming the leading American Ace with seven victories. It was the same day the incredible Frank Luke shot down three balloons to become an Ace in just four days, but no one would ever have expected such a run of "luck" to continue. To the amazement of all, and to some degree to the chagrin of Ack Grant who had to exercise authority over the free-thinking and sometimes rebellious Luke, Luke went out the very next day to bag two more balloons and tie his record with that of the Air Service's leading ace.

Shortly after Rickenbacker had been acclaimed the new Ace of Aces he had told his good friend Reed Chambers: "Any other fellow can have the title any time he wants it, so far as I am concerned."

"Mingled with this natural desire to become the leading fighting Ace of America was a haunting superstition that did not leave my mind until the very end of the war. It was that the very possession of this title - Ace of Aces - brought with it unavoidable doom that had overtaken all of its previous holders. I wanted it and yet I feared to learn that it was mine! In later days I began to feel that this superstition was almost the heaviest burden that I carried with me into the air. Perhaps it served to redouble my caution and sharpened my fighting senses. But I never was able to forget that the life of a title-holder is short."
Eddie Rickenbacker
Fighting the Flying Circus

Rick bore that burden, or at least shared that burden with Frank Luke, for one more day. The St. Mihiel offensive ended on September 16, the day after Rick became America's leading Ace and the same day on which Luke pulled even with him. American forces, well supported by Colonel Mitchell's Air Service, pushed the German army more than 10 miles backward, leaving the enemy forces in disarray. Mitchell himself was rewarded with promotion to Brigadier General.

Meanwhile, aerial action began to slow down in and around Verdun, but not enough to slow the rampage of the intrepid Frank Luke. On September 18 Luke did something seldom accomplished by any pilot in WWI or any war since...FIVE victories (3 planes and 2 balloons) in a single day. After destroying 12 aircraft in seven days he was the undisputed leading American Ace, a title Rickenbacker was more than happy to pass on to him.

What did bother Rickenbacker was that, thanks to Frank Luke, the 27th Pursuit Squadron was the leader among all of the Air Service's squadrons, a position Rick had always expected his own Hat In the Ring Squadron to hold. While not necessarily sorry to see the burden of the Ace of Aces title pass to another, Rick was determined to do whatever it took to see his squadron reclaim its role as America's leading fighter squadron. By the unofficial tally at the time, the 27th lead the 94th by SIX victories.

On September 24 Major Marr returned from Air Service Headquarters in Paris to advise the men of his squadron that he had been ordered to the 2nd Pursuit Group as its commander. That evening Lieutenant Rickenbacker called the 19 pilots of the Hat In The Ring Squadron together to address them for the first time as their new commander. "I want no saluting," he told them, "no unnecessary deference to rank. What I want is VICTORIES! We're all in this together, pilots and mechanics. We need each other and we're going to work together as equals, each man doing his job." Rickenbacker further assured his pilots that he would lead them from the cockpit of an airplane, not from a desk. He would lead by example.

Returning to his billets after similarly addressing his mechanics and ground crews, he wrote in his personal diary:

"Just been promoted to command of 94th squadron. I shall never ask a pilot to go on any mission I won't go on.
"I must work now harder than I did before."

Seven-To-One

September 25, 1918

Lieutenant Rickenbacker had the early morning skies to himself as he winged his way on a solo, volunteer flight east of the lines at Verdun. Foremost on his mind was his speech the night before, and the responsibility he had set for himself to lead by example. After patrolling among the clouds for a time, he suddenly noticed two large specks in the distance. Maneuvering his SPAD closer, the specks became recognizable as large, German Halberstadt photographic planes. Flying protection for them were five German Fokkers. Rick was outnumbered seven-to-one.

Heedless of the odds, Rickenbacker remained high above, hidden by the sun, until the enemy formation had passed below. Then he pushed the stick forward and nosed down in a steep dive, directly into the trailing Fokker. He noticed the enemy pilot turn his head as SPAD 1 closed the distance but it was too late. Rick's finger was on the trigger, his aim true, and the Fokker was soon spiraling towards the ground trailing black smoke.

The other four Fokkers panicked and the formation was immediately splintered, allowing Rickenbacker to continue his dive unfettered until he was on the tail of one of the Halberstadts. Noses down, the pilots of the photographic planes were diving for safety as SPAD 1 followed them relentlessly. From their seats behind the pilots, the observers of the Halberstadts were firing backward at the American. Rickenbacker dived beneath the nearest airplane, then zoomed up under its belly.

The enemy pilot appeared to be a wise veteran, for he kicked his tail around to give his gunner a good position from which to rain fire on the attacker. Rickenbacker broke off to dive, only to find the second Halberstadt on his tail and a stream of bullets streaking past his face.

The three pilots dodged and weaved in their aerial joust, but Rick knew his time was running out. Fuel was low and the four Fokkers were recovering from the initial shock and turning back towards the battle. Rickenbacker maneuvered until the Halberstadts were only about 50 yards apart and directly below him, then sideslipped to the right. The nearer Halberstadt shielded him from the second, making the contest of the gunners a one-on-one battle. Rick leveled out, kicked his nose to the left, and pulled the trigger. The nearer photographic plane passed directly through the stream of bullets, and in minutes burst into flames and plummeted to earth like a falling comet.

With the four recovered Fokkers now diving on top of him, Rick opened his engine and began a mad dash for home. The other pilots of the Hat In The Ring squadron had just finished eating when SPAD 1 taxied to a stop. Their new commander had demonstrated his promise to lead by example and earned a double victory before many of them had finished breakfast.

Scourge of the Sky

When the successful St. Mihiel offensive had ended weeks earlier, the German forces had been pushed ten miles back to their last line of fortifications along the Hindenburg Line and the Argonne Forest. On the morning of September 26 the Allies launched the Meuse-Argonne Offensive to dislodge the German forces from this this last region. In six weeks the success of this final campaign was so successful that Germany was crushed to its knees and the war was ended. The role of the Army Air Service in the success of that offensive can not be understated. Much of the credit for swiftly ending the war must be given to the brave pilots who flew deep into Germany to bomb its cities and destroy its war machine. The Kaiser committed much of his own air power to the task of shooting down these bombers before they could reach their targets. The fighter pilots of the US Army Air Service met them head-to-head, flying protection for the bomber pilots.

On the first day of the Argonne Offensive the 94th Aero Squadron was assigned its first-ever balloon patrol mission. Rickenbacker himself led the 6-plane flight which lifted off at 5:20 a.m. to attack two different Drachens. To Rick's delight, despite the difficulty of bagging the large, well protected observation balloons, his pilots succeeded in destroying both. Returning to the field as dawn was breaking, he was so absorbed in thoughts of pride in his pilots, he didn't notice the German Fokker that shadowed him until the distance between the two was less than 100 yards. The German pilot angled towards Rickenbacker as his machineguns opened up, and for a moment it appeared that if neither pilot hit the other with his bullets, the two airplanes would certainly crash together. At the last minute the German pilot dove and Rick was on top of him. A stream of flaming incendiary bullets, loaded that morning for the balloon attack, quickly destroyed the Fokker. Meanwhile, Rick's own SPAD began to shudder and shake from the effects of its own wounds. Carefully the Hat In The Ring commander nursed his vibrating craft back to the aerodrome. Upon landing it was found that one blade of the propeller had been completely severed by the Fokker's machinegun rounds. Once again however, Rick walked away from a shot-up airplane without a scratch.

Lieutenant Frank Luke returned early from his well-earned leave in Paris to fly again on the first day of the new offensive. On that day his wingman was shot down, the second such tragedy that had befallen the great American Ace, and one that prompted his decision to fly strictly lone-wolf missions. On September 28 he had another double victory, flaming his eleventh balloon and his fourth airplane.   On the same day, Eddie Rickenbacker bagged his FIRST balloon, his eleventh confirmed aerial victory.

On September 29th Luke flew a voluntary night mission against three enemy balloons along the Marne river. By the time he was done his victory score stood at eighteen. In the eighteen days from September 12 to 29, and despite the fact that there was one week therein when he didn't fly, Luke had claimed more victories than even the great Raoul Lufbery had in the entire war. Those last three balloons were costly. Luke never returned, and once again Lieutenant Eddie Rickenbacker had to deal with the inherent danger of being America's Ace of Aces.

The month of October was a good month for Hun hunting all across the Western Front. On October 1 Rick got his second balloon and on October 2 he had a double victory, first destroying an enemy Rumpler near Clery-le-Grand, then teaming with his good friend Lieutenant Reed Chambers to shoot down a large Hanover. It was the first enemy airplane among Rickenbacker's fourteen confirmed victories to land inside friendly lines, and Rick and Reed were quick to claim it as a war trophy, painting their names on its side.

The following day Rickenbacker shot down a Fokker and then teamed with Lieutenant Coolidge to destroy a large Halberstadt. The official tally was up to sixteen. Like the famed Red Baron whose presence in the sky had instantly generated both fear and challenge in his adversaries, Eddie Rickenbacker and his now famous SPAD 1 had become the American response to a German legend. But, though SPAD 1 was proving unstoppable to the Germans, the Autumn weather of northern France did what nothing else could do. After the double victory of October 3 the Hat In The Ring Squadron was stymied for five days. As the weather improved slightly on October 9, SPAD 1 was back at work and the night skies were brilliantly lit by a burning Drachen, Rickenbacker's third balloon and his seventeenth official victory. Captain Eddie Rickenbacker had finally equaled the record of his own personal hero, Major Raoul Lufbery.

October 10 was notable for many developments:

On that day Eddie Rickenbacker claimed two more victories, surpassing both Lufbery and Luke to become the most victorious airman of the war.

It was a day during which he learned a vivid lesson about the responsibilities of command from the 147th's Lieutenant Wilburt White.

It was a day on which he witnessed an act about which he later wrote: "For sheer nerve and bravery, I believe this heroic feat was never surpassed."

It was also the day of ....

The BIG Dog Fight

The day's mission began as an effort to destroy two German balloons at Dun-sur-Meuse. The 94th Squadron fielded 14 SPADs from the aerodrome, taking off at 3:30 in the afternoon. To fly protection for the pilots of the Hat In The Ring who were assigned the task of shooting down the two Drachen, eight planes of the 147th flew on one flank with seven planes from the 27th covering the other. It was one of the largest aerial armadas Captain Rickenbacker had ever seen as he climbed several thousand feet above his pilots to observe the mission.

As quickly as the 30 airplanes passed the lines they were met with heavy Archie, but the flight leaders maintained their formations flying deeper into Germany until the first of the two balloons could be seen floating in the distance.

Captain Rickenbacker scanned the distance and soon noted the approach of eleven German Fokkers bearing down on the seven planes of the 147th, now separated somewhat from the rest of the flight. Rick dipped his wings and dove to warn the pilots, noting as he did, the approach of another eight Fokkers from the direction of Metz. He halted his dive to keep his altitude while he assessed the situation and planned the best avenue of attack. When the first enemy flight passed beneath him he noted the bright red noses that marked them as airplanes of the infamous Flying Circus.

When the enemy formation had passed Rick dipped over and dove on the trailing Fokker. His first burst of machinegun fire ripped into the gas tank and the enemy airplane burst into flames to plunge earthward. Rick noticed the German pilot leap from the inferno and, moments later, float safely earthward beneath the canopy of his parachute. The American pilots had heard reports of German pilots parachuting safely from destroyed aircraft on the Italian front, but this was the first time it had ever been witnessed on the Western Front. Rickenbacker watched the amazing escape for a moment, even wondered to himself, "Why the Huns had all these humane contrivances and why our own country could not at least copy them to save American pilots from being burned to a crisp!" Then he resisted the temptation to watch the miraculous escape to its conclusion, wished the enemy pilot well, and turned back into the foray below. There, an equally incredible display was unfolding.

Nearly two dozen aircraft dodged and weaved through the skies over Germany in a classic jousting match by the Knights of a new generation, while an almost equal number was poised in the distance for similar combat. What he saw next he later described as an "extraordinary spectacle in midair...which in all my life at the front I have never seen equaled in horror and awfulness. The picture of it has haunted my dreams during many nights since."

Lieutenant White was the perfect man to lead his planes of the 147th in this unprecedented aerial battle. He was experienced, an Ace with 7 victories, and a well-liked and admired leader. The mission this day would be his last before returning to the United States to visit his wife and two small children. Before going home however, he had to see his young pilots safely through one more battle.

The lead Fokker was lining up behind the tailing SPAD in White's formation even as Rickenbacker turned away from the scene of his recent victory. White noted the threat to one of his pilots, came out of his own swoop, and dove on the enemy. It looked to be too late as the German prepared to open fire on the trailing SPAD. White's airplane continued its course, two airplanes approaching each other at more than 100 miles an hour. Before the German could pull the trigger to flame the young pilot of the 147th, Lieutenant White intervened. Never wavering, his own airplane slammed into the German machine, telescoping both in a grinding crunch of fabric and metal. As the spared young pilot flew out of harms way, Lieutenant white and his German counterpart crashed together in the forest below.

Rickenbacker was not the only pilot in the air stirred and stunned by Lieutenant White's heroic sacrifice to save a comrade. The horrible scene took all desire for the fight from the Germans, and the remaining Fokkers broke away and headed for home. Rickenbacker banked and headed to the other flank where the seven SPADs of the 27th Squadron were tangling with the eight Fokkers from Metz. As he did he noted one of his own airplanes had been hit as it dove on the targeted Drachen. Rick raced to the rescue but it was too late. The hapless American did his best to control his flaming airplane and somehow managed to make a rough landing in German territory.

Rick looked around briefly and as he did, noted another SPAD diving past him with two enemy Fokkers on his tail. It was his good friend and Ace pilot Jim Meissner. For the third time in nearly as many months, Rick came to the rescue of his old prot�g�, flaming one of the Fokkers and forcing the other to turn away.

By the time the great dog fight over Germany concluded the pilots of the 1st Pursuit Wing scored more than a dozen victories. For Rickenbacker the tally was now up to nineteen confirmed victories, more than any other American pilot of the entire war.

On October 19 Rickenbacker and several other pilots of the Wing were ordered to Souilly for a grand and impressive ceremony. As a list of names was read Major General Mason Patrick, Chief of Air Service, presented nearly two dozen awards of the Distinguished Service Cross. Lieutenants James Meissner and Ralph O'Neill each received two awards. When Captain Rickenbacker's name was called he was presented a Distinguished Service Cross with 4 Oak Leaf Clusters. Each oak leaf represented an additional award of this distinguished honor--one award for each of his first five confirmed victories in April and May. (The Fokker Rick had destroyed on May 7 remained unconfirmed until November 16, 1918 so was still not counted among his list of victories.)

By the time World War I ended Captain Rickenbacker would earn an unprecedented NINE awards of the Distinguished Service Cross, a record that has never been equaled in U.S. military history.

The ceremony of October 19 was inspiring, impressive, and moving. For Rick it was a moment of great pride in his squadron, his personal record, and the new United States Air Service. It was also a time of reflection and some sadness:

"I could not help thinking of the absent pilots whose names were being read out but who did not answer, and for whom decorations were waiting for deeds of heroism that had ended with their death. There was White, for whom the whole Group mourned. What a puny recognition was a simple ribbon for heroism such as his! There was Luke--the most intrepid air fighter that ever sat in an aeroplane. What possible honor could be given him by his country that would accord him the distinction he deserved.
"One thing was certain. The reputation of these great American airmen would live as long as the comrades who knew them survived. Perhaps none of us would ever live to see our homeland again. I glanced down the line of honor men who were standing immobile in their tracks, listening to the last notes of 'The Star Spangled Banner'! Who will be the next to go, I wondered, knowing only too well that with ever fresh honor that was conferred came a corresponding degree of responsibility and obligation to continue to serve comrade and country so long as life endured."
Eddie Rickenbacker
Fighting the Flying Circus

The Finish Line

Rick returned to the air as the war quickly wound to a close. On the ground American Doughboys were pushing the German forces steadily backward, buying each yard of gained territory with their blood, but emerging from each battle victorious. In the air the U.S. Army Air Service ruled the skies, but not without casualties themselves. Like the men on the ground, every step forward came at a great price.

On October 22 Captain Rickenbacker shot down an enemy Fokker near Clery-le-Petit, then repeated that success the very next day opver LeGrande Carre Farme. Four days later he flamed two more Fokkers bringing his official record at the time to 22 victories (with two more that had not yet been confirmed). On October 30 he engaged the two Fokkers of the famed Flying Circus over St. Juvin, destroying one and sending the other scurrying home. Returning home he destroyed the Drachen at Remonville to achieve his last aerial victory. It was enough...a valiant record by one man of firm conviction and dedication to service.

On November 10 Captain Rickenbacker was awarded two more Oak Leaf Clusters for his Distinguished Service Cross, these for his victories of September 14 and the following day. Two more Oak Leaf Clusters would follow, one for his September 25 double-victory when he attacked alone against seven-to-one odds, the last for his victory the next day.

Apprehension and some sadness hung over the ceremony that day that also saw DSCs awarded to Reed Chambers, Douglas Campbell and others of Rick's friends. Four planes from the 94th Pursuit Squadron had been missing for nearly 24 hours, and Rick feared he had made one of his worst errors as a squadron commander.

The weather during those early days of November had been terrible, continuous rain and heavy fog that made flying difficult. Everyone knew that the war was quickly coming to a close, and pilots were frustrated at their inability to get their flight time before the war ended. The previous day three of Rick's pilots had virtually begged him to allow them to take off into a heavy fog to attack a Drachen. Rick resisted at first, but their eagerness and their arguments finally persuaded him to consent. As the three prepared to take off, Rick was approached by Major Maxwell Kirby, a newcomer on the scene. Major Kirby had never flown over enemy lines, but was scheduled to assume command of a new group of Squadrons. Kirby wanted experience before taking his new position, and requested permission to join the other three pilots. Rickenbacker grudgingly consented, then watched with intrepidation as the four took off into the fog. That night he cursed himself when none of them returned to the aerodrome. He was certain he had, at a time when peace was imminent, needlessly sent four men to their doom.

Up to and immediately after the 10 a.m. decorations ceremony, no word had arrived regarding the fate of the four Americans. Not until after lunch did Rick note SPAD 3, belonging to one of the missing pilots, on the field. Optimism returned when he learned its pilot had been forced to land in friendly territory to spend the night, but had managed to return home that morning. One of the other missing pilots had phoned in with a similar story. Lieutenant Dewitt had crashed inside allied lines the previous evening, but walked away safely and would return by car later in the day.

A short time later Major Kirby phoned in. His first flight over the lines had left him lost in the fog, and he was forced to land at the first field he saw. That very morning, while Rick was receiving his sixth and seventh awards of the DSC, Kirby had taken off from the distant field to return home. En route he had again become lost in the fog. While searching for his way back he suddenly noticed a Fokker flying almost beside him. Both pilots were surprised by the presence of each other and simply stared for a moment. Then the German put his airplane into a dive and Major Kirby dove in behind him, firing all the way. The Fokker crashed in the fog, and Kirby pulled up within 50 feet of the ground to avoid the same fate. Later he claimed he "had scared the (enemy) pilot to his death."

The first American aerial victory of World War I was claimed by Alan Winslow and Douglas Campbell of the 94th Aero Squadron on April 14. Major Kirby's victory on November 10 was to be the last of The Great War. The Hat In The Ring Squadron had started the fight...and finished it.

On the morning of November 11 only one plane could be found in the skies near Verdun. All flights had been grounded for weather, and the previous evening the word had reached the men in the field that an armistice had been reached to end The War to End All Wars. Rickenbacker couldn't resist one last flight however, and left the aerodrome at 10 a.m. Shortly before the 11 a.m. he was over the lines, looking below at German and American infantrymen huddled in their foxholes and trenches, weapons poised and ready to fire on anyone foolish enough to encroach. As he winged over the German troops at only 500 feet, some dared to shoot his way, but the fire was half-hearted.

"I glanced at my watch. One minute to 11:00, thirty-seconds, fifteen. And then it was 11:00 a.m., the eleventh hur of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. I was the only audience for the greatest show ever presented. On both sides of no-man's-land, the trenches erupted. Brown-uniformed men pour out of the American trenches, gray-green uniforms out of the German. From my observer's seat overhead, I watched them throw their helmets in the air, discard their guns, wave their hands. Then all up and down the front, the two groups of men began edging toward each other across no-man's-land. Seconds before they had been willing to shoot each other; now they came forward. Hesitantly at first, then more quickly, each group approached the other.
"Suddenly gray uniforms mixed with brown. I could see them hugging each other, dancing, jumping. Americans were passing out cigarettes and chocolate. I flew up to the French sector. There it was even more incredible. After four years of slaughter and hatred, they were not only hugging each other but kissing each other on both cheeks as well.
"Star shells, rockets and flares began to go up, and I turned my ship toward the field.
"The war was over."
Eddie Rickenbacker
Rickenbacker, An Autobiography

When the American Expeditionary Force returned victoriously from France it came home to an adoring public with a plethora of admirable heroes like John J. Pershing, Douglas MacArthur, Billy Mitchell, Charles Whittlesey, Sergeant York and Eddie Rickenbacker. During the war only FOUR Medals of Honor were awarded. General Pershing ordered a review of lesser awards and ultimately more than 100 Medals of Honor were presented over the next five years. On May 29, 1919 in Phoenix, Arizona Brigadier General Howard R. Hickok presented the posthumous award of the Medal of Honor to the father of Lieutenant Frank Luke, making him the first Army airman to receive the award. Three years later posthumous Medals of Honor were awarded to Erwin Bleckley and Harold Goettler for their sacrifice on behalf of The Lost Battalion.

Captain Eddie Rickenbacker remained perhaps the most decorated American in history with NINE Distinguished Service Crosses. Two years earlier he had left for war as America's fastest and favorite race car driver. He returned home its most beloved and successful fighter pilot, with 26 confirmed victories. He was feted in parades, lauded in the news, and hailed for his war time success. For the kid who dropped out of school in the seventh grade to work for three dollars a week to support his mother and siblings, it was a unique example of the American Dream in action. But Rick was never one to ask for a free ride, or to settle for the success of the present. New challenges beckoned.

Rick's immense popularity resulted in many offers with financial considerations beyond his wildest dreams. He could be a movie star, an executive, a politician...just about anything he wanted; and he could command any salary he requested. Humbly, Rick declined each offer, opting instead to write an account of his war days in Fighting the Flying Circus, and speak on a lecture tour. In 1920 he returned to the automotive world, joining with partners in founding The Rickenbacker Automobile Company and development of the first car in history with both front and rear brakes. "It was too good a car," Rick later explained. "It introduced vibration dampers and four-wheel brakes to America. But there was too little difference between what it cost us to build and the price for which we had to sell it. So we folded up."

Folded up was putting it mildly. By 1927 Eddie Rickenbacker was 37 years old, flat broke, unemployed and a quarter-million dollars in debt. Friends suggested Rick declare bankruptcy, but he refused. He determined he would pay back his debts, no matter how hard he had to work.

"I was not ashamed and not afraid. Failure was something I had faced before and might well face again. I have said it over and over: 'Failure' is the greatest word in the English language. Here in America failure is not the end of the world. If you have the determination, you can come back from failure and succeed."

Rick's hard work consisted of returning to the racing world, this time to own and build a speedway on a track he had once visited as a driver. Under Eddie Rickenbacker the Indianapolis Speedway and its Memorial Day 500 mile race became as American as the man who owned it and made it an icon. And, true to his word, Eddie Rickenbacker paid back every penny lost by the Rickenbacker Automobile Company.

It may seem ironic that the greatest flying Ace of World War I would come home to spend the next decade pursuing a life on the ground, largely beyond aviation. In 1930 Rick's skill in the air was once again remembered by a grateful nation. On November 6 at Bolling Field near Washington, DC President Herbert Hoover read a citation detailing the day when Rickenbacker had single-handedly attacked a German flight despite seven-to-one odds. The citation was for the Medal of Honor, at last being presented to America's Ace of Aces.

Rick's famous seven-to-one battle had occurred on September 25, 1918...four days before Lieutenant Frank Luke's Medal of Honor action, making Rick the first American airman to receive our Nation's highest award, and the last of four World War I Army aviators to actually receive it. He was also the only one of the four to survive to wear it. (Two Marine Corps aviators, Gunnery Sergeant Robert Robinson and 2nd Lieutenant Ralph Talbot also received Medals of Honor during World War I. Talbot was killed in his heroic actions, but Robinson survived to wear his own well-earned Medal of Honor. )

Indeed if ever the United States produced a young man that defined the words Duty, Honor, Country and who became a living example of The American Dream, it was Edward Vernon Rickenbacker. When his Medal of Honor was presented in 1930 the 40-year old American hero had lived more life, and escaped more deadly situations, than could be imagined. He had overcome unimaginable failures and accomplished the kind of success most men only dream of. Perhaps what made Captain Eddie even more remarkable however, were some of the accomplishments of his life after the Medal of Honor. Eddie Rickenbacker was a man who believed he owed his country everything he could give, and he never stopped giving.

Appendixes to this series:

Billy Mitchell's

Aerial Armada

Frank Luke Victory Credits

Eddie Rickenbacker Victory Credits

American Aces of World War I (List)

Squadrons and Organization

Victory Credits (List)

WWI Victory Credits (Excel DB)

Sources:

Cooke, Donald E., For Conspicuous Gallantry, C.S. Hammond and Co., 1966
Manning, Robert, Above and Beyond, Boston Publishing Company, Boston, MA, 1985
Rickenbacker, Edward V., Fighting the Flying Circus,
Rickenbacker, Edward V., Rickenbacker, An Autobiography, Prentice Hall, 1967
Runyon, Damon and Kiernan, Walter, "Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker", Dell Publishing Company, New York, NY, 1942

Eddie Rickenbacker's tale of combat action in World War I as told in his book Fighting the Flying Circus is available in its entirety online. To read or print his exciting account, click below:

Fighting the Flying Circus
by Eddie Rickenbacker

Part I

Wings of Valor Home Page	Introduction	The Balloon Buster
For The Men on the Ground	Ace of Aces	Billy Mitchell's Aerial Armada
Fight for Survival Court Martial of Billy Mitchell	Charles Lindbergh A Different Kind of Hero	Older Heroes In a Brand New War

All the above pages can now be printed as a single MS WORD or Adobe PDF file in a single, full-color book complete with attractive cover, Table of Contents and appendixes. To go to our download page, click on the book cover below.

Part II World War Two	Coming in Summer 2006
	Part III US Air Force

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NOTE: The numbers used in this and successive tables reflect the victory credits based upon Historical Study 133 which was prepared by the US Air Force in 1966. As such, it lists victory credits for a given month that include victories not verified until later months, or even after the war had ended. Historical records therefore, may show one squadron having led all others on a particular date, when in fact on that date the pilots themselves may have been aware of a different set of numbers.