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U.S. Military History, Current Events and Veterans Issues
Where Duty, Honor and Country
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Captain Edward Vernon Rickenbacker
(1890 - 1973)
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He was called America's Ace of Aces during World War I, the highest scorer of American aerial victories over the Germans. He could just as easily have been labeled the "luckiest man alive," however, since he survived--by his own count--135 brushes with death during his exciting lifetime.
After his father's death in 1904, 14-year-old Edward ("Rick") went to work.
Edward Vernon Rickenbacker was born in Columbus, Ohio, on October 8, 1890. The son of Swiss immigrants, he was the third of eight children. His parents christened him Edward Rickenbacher, but he later added Vernon as a middle name "because it sounded classy" and changed the spelling of his last name to Rickenbacker so it would be less Germanic. He answered mostly to "Rick" but would be best known during later years as "Captain Eddie." His father was a day laborer, and life was not easy for a lad who spoke with an accent that reflected his parents' household language.
Young Rickenbacker was admittedly a bad boy who smoked at age 5 and headed a group of mischievous youngsters known as the Horsehead Gang, but he was imbued with family values by frequent applications of a switch to his posterior by his strict father. One of his father's axioms that he followed all his life was never to procrastinate.
Rickenbacker age 18
At age 8, he had his first brush with death when he led his gang down a slide in a steel cart into a deep gravel pit. The cart flipped over on him and laid his leg open to the bone. He quit school at 12 when his father died in a construction accident, and he became the major family breadwinner for his mother and four younger siblings. He said in his memoirs, "That day I turned from a harum-scarum youngster into a young man serious beyond my age." He sold newspapers, peddled eggs and goat's milk, then worked in a glassmaking factory. Seeking more income, he worked successively in a foundry, a brewery, a shoe factory and a monument works, where he carved and polished his father's tombstone.
Engines became young Rickenbacker's passion, and he found a job that changed his life in 1906 when he went to work for Lee Frayer, a race car driver and head of the Frayer-Miller Automobile Co. Frayer liked the scrawny, scrappy lad and let him ride in major races as his mechanic.
Rickenbacker driving William Jennings Bryan, Abilene, TX, 1909
Rick later went to work as a salesman for the Columbus Buggy Co., which was then making Firestone-Columbus automobiles. He joined automobile designer Fred Duesenberg in 1912 and struck out on his own as a race car driver. He soon established a reputation as a daring driver and won some races--but not without numerous accidents and narrow escapes. After each crash he telegraphed his mother, telling her not to worry.
Although Rickenbacker set a world speed record of 134 mph at Daytona in 1914, he was never able to win the big prize at Indianapolis. While preparing for the Vanderbilt Cup Race in California in November 1916, he had his first ride in an aircraft--flown by Glenn Martin, who was beginning his own career as a pilot and aircraft manufacturer. Rickenbacker had a lifelong fear of heights, but he had not been apprehensive during the flight.
Rickenbacker in flight suit
When America entered the war in 1917, Rickenbacker volunteered despite the fact that he was making a reported $40,000 a year at the time. He wanted to learn to fly, but at 27 he was overage for flight training and had no college degree. However, because of his fame as a race car driver, he was sworn in as a sergeant and sailed for Europe as a chauffeur. Contrary to legend, he was not assigned to General John J. Pershing but did wangle an assignment driving Colonel William "Billy" Mitchell's flashy twin-six Packard. He pestered Mitchell until he was permitted to apply for flight training, claiming to be 25, the age limit for pilot trainees.
After only 17 days as a student pilot, Rick graduated, was commissioned a lieutenant and assigned to the 94th Aero Squadron, under Major John Huffer, based at Gengoult Aerodome near Toul, France. Equipped with Nieuport 28s, it was the first American-trained fighter squadron to draw blood, when 1st Lt. Douglas Campbell and 2nd Lt. Alan Winslow brought down a Pfalz D.IIIa and an Albatros D.Va on April 14, 1918.
Capt. Rickenbacher signed this picture when he was with the 94th Aero Squadron during World War I.
Rickenbacker was not accepted by the other squadron members--mostly Ivy League college graduates--at first. They considered him a country bumpkin without any social graces. In fact, he was described by one Yale graduate as "a lemon on an orange tree" who tended "to throw his weight around the wrong way."
Rickenbacker was happier tinkering with engines than socializing. Older than all the others, he was conservative in his flying and had to work to overcome a dislike for aerobatics. When he first arrived at the squadron he was coached by Major Raoul Lufbery, the training officer, but he soon developed his own aerial fighting techniques. He shared credit with Captain James Norman Hall for his first victory on April 29, 1918. He scored his first solo conquest on May 7, but it was not confirmed until after the war, when Hall--who had been shot down and taken prisoner in the same fight--reported the death of Lieutenant Wilhelm Scheerer of his captors' unit, Royal Wurtemburg Jagdstaffel (Fighter Squadron) 64. As Rickenbacker's string of victories grew, so did the respect of his squadron mates.
Rickenbacker's technique was to approach his intended victims carefully, closer than others dared, before firing his guns. He had several hair-raising experiences when his guns unexpectedly jammed. He barely managed to nurse his Nieuport in for a safe landing on May 17, when the cloth ripped off its upper wing. But his luck held, and when he became an ace, his exploits--some wildly exaggerated by reporters--made headlines in the States. During interviews, he admitted he experienced fear during his encounters with the Germans but "only after it was all over."
Rickenbacker scored his sixth victory on May 30, but on July 10 he began to suffer from sharp pains in his right ear. In Paris, the problem was diagnosed as a severe abscess, which had to be lanced and treated. He returned to the 94th on July 31 and got back into his stride on September 14, when he downed a Fokker D.VII.
On September 25, Rickenbacker was given command of the 94th, and on that same day he volunteered for a solo patrol. He spotted a flight of five Fokkers and two Halberstadt CL.IIs near Billy, France, and dived into them. Firing as he went through the formation, he shot one of each type down. His aggressive actions that day earned him the French Croix de Guerre and the coveted U.S. Medal of Honor, though the latter was not awarded until 12 years later.
By October 1, Rickenbacker's score stood at 12 and he had been promoted to the rank of captain. He was the most successful U.S. Air Service fighter pilot alive, and the press dubbed him "America's Ace of Aces." He disliked that title, however, because he felt "the honor carried the curse of death." Three others had held that title before him--Lufbery, David Putnam and Frank Luke--and all had died.
Eddie Rickenbacker served as personal driver to General John Pershing
Rickenbacker was flying with greater confidence since the 94th had replaced its Nieuport 28s with more rugged Spad 13s in mid-July 1918. He had several close calls and crash landings. He barely made it back from one battle with a fuselage full of bullet holes, half a propeller and a scorched streak on his helmet where an enemy bullet had nearly found its mark.
During October 1918, Rickenbacker scored 14 victories for what he and World War I historians have always claimed made a total of 26. In the 1960s the U.S. Air Force fractionalized his shared victories, reducing his total to 24.33, including four balloons. He flew a total of 300 combat hours, more than any other American pilot, and survived 134 aerial encounters with the enemy. "So many close calls renewed my thankfulness to the Power above, which had seen fit to preserve me," he wrote in his memoirs.
Rickenbacker returns home from WWI [Feb. 17, 1919]
The kid from Columbus came home a national hero, but he had been humbled by the experience, unlike some who gloried in the brief fame they had won. He had no illusions about the durability of being a national hero, saying, "I knew it would be easy to go from hero to zero." Although he was wined and dined from coast to coast and received many offers to endorse commercial products, he refused them all. When a motion picture producer offered him $100,000 to act in unspecified roles, he declined, although he was by then broke from supporting his family.
When Rickenbacker left active duty, he was promoted to major. But he said, "I felt that my rank of captain was earned and deserved," and he used that title proudly the rest of his life.
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