Knights Without Parachutes — lafayette escadrille

These are highlights from an article about Kiffin Yates Rockwell that was sent to email subscribers. Of the Lafayette Escadrille pilots - American pilots fighting for France before America entered the war - Kiffin Rockwell was not the first to die. That was Victor Chapman on 24 June 1916. But as any branding expert could tell you, a memorable name sticks in the mind better (see here for what it feels like to be named Kiffin), and more importantly, on 13 May Rockwell had scored the first aerial victory for the Lafayette Escadrille, the first victory to an American pilot.If Hollywood made a movie that stuck...

How did the fighter pilot image, promoted by the United States Air Force, shown in many movies, and imitated by many hopeful pilot candidates, get started? It began in WWI, in 1916, a long time before America's entry into the war. The first American aviators were in the Lafayette Escadrille (also known as "Escadrille Lafayette", "Escadrille Americaine" in an effort to clarify that America wasn't in the war, but Americans were.) The next "generation" (in the sense that many of the first had already died and some of the new ones never met the old ones) didn't fit into one squadron and...