Aces and Arizona Balloon Busters

Frank Luke Jr.
Medal of Honor
19 May 1897 - 29 September 1918

There's been talk in these spaces recently regarding killing balloons versus killing aircraft. That fellow in the opening photo was a noted balloon buster and a personal hero of mine. He's up there on the masthead between two of my other heroes, Eddie Rickenbacker and Robin Olds. General Olds would have recognized them both as kindred spirits. Frank Luke Jr. was a bit of a maverick, to say the least.

How good a pilot was Luke? How tough was balloon busting? Let's ask Eddie...

Captain Eddie Rickenbacker said of Luke: “He was the most daring aviator and greatest fighter pilot of the entire war. His life is one of the brightest glories of our Air Service. He went on a rampage and shot down fourteen enemy aircraft, including ten balloons, in eight days. No other Ace: Britain’s Bishop from Canada, France’s Fonck or even the dreaded Richthofen had ever come close to that.” (Source)

I'll also chime in with this - balloons were tough nuts to crack, they were heavily defended by both AAA and supporting fighter aircraft. A pilot had to go to the balloon to kill it, there was no subtlety to it. You bored in, you dodged, you danced, you fired.

Balloons were important military assets, used to observe the enemy and direct artillery. The man in the balloon's basket was a trained observer, with a wireless to communicate with the ground. Long before pilots wore parachutes, the balloonists had them.

Flying against an enemy aircraft may or may not have been a tough proposition. Many enemy pilots had less than ten hours in the machine they were expected to fight in, many died within hours of reaching the front, easy meat for the more experienced pilots opposing them. Often they never saw the plane that killed them. Experienced pilots don't want to mix it up, they sliced in unseen, fired when the enemy's wings filled their windscreens, then they would dash away to fight again.

More like sharks than knights in my estimation. But war is unrestrained violence, to win you must kill your enemy. The Experten as the Germans called them in World War II knew this. Guys like Rickenbacker, Luke, Guynemer, Nungesser, Bishop, McCudden, Richthofen, and Boelke knew this in World War I. Bong, Olds, Hartmann, and the other aces knew this in World War II and later.

Speed is life.

Where did the term "ace" originate, well, with the French in the First World War. They had the first one, fellow named Adolphe Pégoud, of whom I wrote in a Friday Flyby a few years back, along with other French aces, including that rakish lad Juvat wrote about on Monday.

Adolphe Pégoud being awarded the Croix de Guerre 

According to what Juvat likes to call "the source of all knowledge" -

Use of the term "ace" to describe these pilots began in World War I, when French newspapers described Adolphe Pégoud, as l'As (French for "Ace") after he became the first pilot to down five German aircraft. The British initially used the term "star-turns" (a show business term), while the Germans described their elite fighter pilots as Überkanonen (which roughly translates to "top guns"). (Source)

That jibes with many of the books and magazine articles which I've read over the years. Rather a lot really, mind you, fighter pilots have fascinated me since I was six years old. Though the term Überkanonen is new to me, I had read that German WWI aces were known as Kanonen, which translates to cannons, or guns (of the artillery sort). Also interesting is that I recall reading that a German pilot in the Great War wasn't considered an ace until he had ten kills. Which early in the war also qualified him for the Pour le Mérite, also known as the Blue Max (Blauer Max), Germany's highest award for personal achievement in the First World War. The requirements for the Blue Max went up as the war dragged on, the ten kill guideline stuck, even until the Second World War as I recall.

(Source)

As for the main subject of this post, Frank Luke Jr., these two videos tell his story. While the two videos conflict in some of the details, there is no disguising the fact that Lieutenant Frank Luke Jr.was an extraordinary pilot, and someone you should remember.

18 kills in 17 days? Amazing.

Other old posts on WWI aces:

• The Commonwealth Aces here.
• Die Deutsches Kanonen hier.
• The American Aces here.

World War One in the air continues to fascinate me. No doubt I'll write of those days here again. (And again, and again...)