Knights Without Parachutes — eddie rickenbacker

Last Words of the Red Baron

February 24, 2018 • eddie rickenbacker • red baron

"I would become miserable if now, honored with glory and decorations, I became a pensioner of my own dignity in order to preserve my precious life for the nation while every poor fellow in the trenches endures his duty exactly as I did mine."

Pilot Training 1918

January 13, 2018 • eddie rickenbacker • pilot training

Later generations of pilots will be known for avoiding doctors, but Rickenbacker gets the doctor to help him. He wants to prove that Lt Spiegel could do the job just as well as him. So he gets himself sent to the hospital to show he is dispensable.

December 1917 Air War - Ring Out the Old, Ring In the New

December 16, 2017 • eddie rickenbacker • ernst udet • eugene bullard • frederick libby • raoul lufbery • red baron • wwi

"As the winter deepens, air traffic slows down. There is much rain and snow. Even on dry days the heavy clouds drift so low that no takeoffs are ordered. We sit around in our rooms. I am quartered in the country house of a lace manufacturer."

Overview of WWI Aviation on the 99th Anniversary of Armistice Day

November 10, 2017 • billy mitchell • charles nungesser • eddie rickenbacker • ernst udet • eugene bullard • frank luke • georges guynemer • mick mannock • raoul lufbery • red baron

November 11th, 1917 - the soon-to-be famous, the soon-to-be dead, and the soon-to-be adrift in a world not at war, one year from now.

Rickenbacker's Revenge

October 14, 2017 • eddie rickenbacker • ivy league

Eddie and the Ivy Leaguers One hundred years ago in October, the Red Baron was already legendary. Other pilots - Boelcke, Guynemer, Ball, Immelmann - were also legends, and already dead. The Lafayette Escadrille was legendary. Some were dead, and some were getting ready to pass on their experience to arriving Americans, as the last round of WWI aviation legends began to assemble "over there." Eddie Rickenbacker (still spelled "Rickenbacher" since he had not yet, as the newspapers later put it, taken the Hun out of his name) had recently had his first solo. He didn't wreck the plane on his...