[Sailor Steve]

Frank Luke - The Controversy:

Every American aviation fan knows the story. Frank Luke joined the 27th Aero Squadron on July 31, 1918. During the month of August he gained a reputation as a loner, conceited, braggart, liar, even coward. He would pretend to have engine problems while on training flights, disappear for a time, then return home with tales of having attacked the enemy. Never any confirmation, but stories of the "Huns" he had shot down. At one point he claimed to have shot a German off of Major Hartney's tail.

Harold Evans Hartney had an interesting career of his own. Born in Ontario, Canada, he joined the war early on. As an FE.2 pilot he claimed to have been shot down by Manfred von Richthofen, though it was more likely Paul Strähle. This was the fourth time Hartney had been wounded. After recovering he recieved an unexpected and most unusual order, to return to Canada where he would be transferred to the United States Air Service to take command of the 27th Aero Squadron. There was a rule that American troops could not be commanded by a foreign officer. This was overcome by President Woodrow Wilson himself, making Harold Hartney and Major Geoffrey Bonnell American Citizens on the spot. Hartney commanded the 27th all through their training and posting to the Western Front.

Of the event in question, Hartney had found that he had an enemy plane on his tail. After an evasive maneuver he looked again and the enemy was gone. Did the German overshoot and go looking for an easier victim? Did Hartney's maneuver throw him off? Or did Frank Luke indeed shoot the enemy off his commander's tail, or at least make him run? While Luke's reputation as a braggart and a liar spread, Hartney himself was inclined to beleive the boy from Arizona. When Hartney was promoted to Lt Colonel and assigned command of the 1st Pursuit Group, Captain Alfred Grant took over as commander of the 27th Aero. Grant didn't like Frank Luke, and didn't trust him. Then, on September 12, Frank Luke pulled his usual stunt of faking engine problems and disappearing. This time, however, he went alone after a German balloon, and shot it down in front of witnesses. Then, on the 14th, two more. The next day it waws three. Two more on the 16th. Five on the 18th. And then nothing until the 28th, when he got two more. The ten days off was due to his enforced leave after losing his friend Joe Wehner, and then finding himself given an easy behind-the-lines mission on his return.

Every American aviation fan knows the story. On his last day Frank Luke shot down three more German balloons, was forced to land, faced off a company of German infantry, pulled his two .45 Colt automatics and killed six of them before they shot him dead. It's in this last part that the controversy comes. Luke had been grounded by Captain Grant, due to his continuing refusal to obey orders. He took a SPAD up anyway and beyond question shot down three more German balloons. But what happened after that? After the War, Captain Frederick Zinn single-handedly created the concept of "leaving no man behind". He stayed in Europe so he could have access to German records regarding nearly two hundred American airmen still listed as "Missing". Under Zinn's direction a Captain McCormick interviewed surviving citizens of Murvaux, the town closest to where Frank Luke disappeared. McCormick interviewed fourteen denizens of Murvaux, and then dug up the body of the American aviator buried there. The Germans had left the wristwatch behind when they looted the body for souveniers. Beyond question it belonged to Frank Luke. The townspeople signed an affadavit attesting that Luke had landed near the town. When approached by German troops he drew his "revolver" (singular) to defend himself. "A moment afterward he fell deaad following a serious wound he recieved in the chest." One of the problems with this story is that none of the citizens of Murvaux were fluent in English and Capatin McCormick spoke almost no French. Years later Fred Zinn, who was fluent in French, interviewed the surviving Murvaux citizens himself. Zinn discovered that none of the French were allowed closer than 100 metres to the airplane, and most were much farther away than that. How much did they really see? One account said that Frank pulled his pistol and fired a shot into the air, but none of the Germans fired back. Another account says the Germans abused the body, one of them kicking it. Against that is the fact that they French were kept well back, and a soldier prodding the body with his boot to see if it was really dead could, at range, be taken for a kick. The testimony in Zinn's documentation is certain about one thing, though - the German soldiers did not fire at Frank Luke.

Then there was Bernard Mangels. former Leutnant der Reserve, commanding Ballonzug 35. There is no contemporary report, but in a letter to historian Royal Frey Mangels says "Before Frank Luke had a chance to open fire, we let loose with a machine gun barrage. The pilot lost control of his aircraft which crashed with great impact near the balloon. Fortunately it did not catch fire. When our people rushed up to the wreckage to rescue the unfortunate from the desperate situation, he showed only weak signs of life. He passed away shortly thereafter. A machine gun bullet which hit the radiator ricocheted and struck his chest. Our people removed the body of the brave enemy and put it in an empty room in our camp." No, gun battle on the ground, no strafing of troops, no abuse of the body.

On the other hand the French said the pilot landed the plane and climbed out, apparently trying to reach a nearby stream. Everyone agrees that, like the Red Baron, there was only one bullet hole, in the chest. Also factors in the equation are the prejudices of the witnesses. The French wanted to make the Germans look as bad as possible, which likely influenced their testimony. Bernard Mangels was by all accounts a kindly man, and took offense to the suggestion that men under his command would abuse the body of a fallen enemy. Both testimonies are based on memories from years, even decades earlier.

On November 20 1918 Captain Alfred Grant put in the request that Frank Luke be awarded the Medal of Honor. The original request lists his accomplishments while alive, and have nothing to do with the manner of his death. By the time the Medal was awarded the citation only contained the (probably spurious) events of the day he died. Though Eddie Rickenbacker was the first to be recommended for the Medal of Honor, Frank Luke was the first to actually receive the award. Joseph Wehner was also recommended for the MoH, but proceedings were dropped at the request of his mother, who felt her son wouldn't want it.

After the Great War ended Frank Luke was glorified in books by Norman S. Hall (not the Norman Hall who co-wrote Mutiny on the Bounty and was himself a WW1 pilot), Arch Whitehouse and Harold Hartney himself. Those books, especially the first two, are filled with grandiose stories of Luke's amazing accomplishments, almost all of them provably false. What is the truth about Frank Luke's death? The only certainty is that we'll probably never know.

Criticism of Frank Luke:
"There is only one sad thing about it, he can't keep it up. He will not stick to formations. I have warned him. I told him he will be picked off sure as fate, perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow, but he does not seem to be able to understand such things. We simply have to trust to chance."
-Major Harold Hartney, interview with George Seldes.

"It isn't courage exactly. He has no imagination. He can't imagine anything happening to him. He thinks he's invincible. If he ever finds himself he may be almost as good as he thinks he is."
Lt Jerry Vasconcells, squadron-mate

Praise for Frank Luke:
"If Frank Luke were alive tody, I wouln't be here."
-Edward V. Rickenbacker, during a parade in his honor as America's "Ace of Aces". Luke was America's leading ace at the time of his death, and Rickenbacker always maintained that had the "Arizona Balloon Buster" lived he would have retained that title.