The Lafayette Escadrille: The American Volunteers Who Flew For France in World War One

- [Narrator] FedEx is a proud sponsor of the Lafayette Escadrille.

(upbeat music) Funding for the Lafayette Escadrille was also made possible by the generous support of the following entities.

(upbeat music) (classical music) In April, 1916, a year before the United States entered world war one, seven American volunteers formed a fighter squadron to fly for France, risking their lives for their sister republic.

They became the foundation of American combat aviation.

(classical music) (photo shutter effect) (airplane engine roaring) - [Mme.

Le Verrier] I have just left the Church in the Avenue d'Alma after attending the service in honor of your son.

(somber music) (airplane engine roaring) It was a sad celebration of your independence day and brought home to me, the beauty of heroic deaths and the meaning of life.

Is a self-sacrifice of this one who comes to us for no other reason than to make right triumph over wrong, is worthy of peculiar honor.

(somber music) America has sent us these sublime youth and our gratitude for him is such that it flows back upon his country.

(somber music) Never since the outbreak of the war has public sentiment been more deeply aroused.

(somber music) - [Edmond Genet] After the service, most of us attended the usual 4th of July ceremony held at Lafayette's grave.

Chapman's name was linked with that of Lafayette and the bond of good feeling between the sister republics was very strongly in excellent express.

(classical music) - [Narrator] But in the second year of the great war, the United States was still neutral and general Pershing would not visit Lafayette's grave for another year.

(classical music) (airplane engine roaring) (upbeat music) In the summer of 1914, a 20 year old Yale dropout named William Thaw arrived in France with his aeroplane to fly in a race, do a little business and enjoy the beau monde that a wealthy young sportsman could expect to find in Belle poque Paris.

- The Bella park was the so-called beautiful time lasted roughly up until the outbreak of world war one in 1914.

William Thaw came from great wealth, Pittsburgh fortune.

Now he was somebody who had money and he had no qualms about using it to enjoy himself.

- [Narrator] Paris had long been the favorite destination of wealthy Americans, and the beautiful luxury in summer of 1914 seemed the perfect time to be there.

- There was a sense of high culture that they shared.

I think it was just a sort of sense that they were at an apex of a long developing civilization.

- Particularly with Americans, there'd been a long tradition.

There was this sense of kinship we're sister republics.

And we need to remember that.

- [Narrator] Perhaps nothing symbolized boldness of the new century and the dynamic kinship of France and America for than the aeroplane.

(upbeat music) William Thaw left Yale after his sophomore year to learn to fly with Glenn Curtis's flying boats, but he wanted to be where the action was.

And the frontier of flight was in France.

In 1914, he created his flying boat and sailed for France, hoping to enter the prestigious Schneider cup race.

For William Thaw everything seemed perfect for an exciting summer.

(upbeat music) (gun shots) - The first world war is interesting because everyone was preparing for it.

I mean, they were huge masses of men conscripted to serve in armies.

Plans for war plans, alliances among the great powers.

And yet in a certain sense, they don't think anybody really believed what would happen, could happen.

(upbeat music) - I think a lot of mistakes were made by governments in July of 1914.

The Russians, I think could have exerted a moderating influence on the Serbians.

The Germans could have exercised a moderating influence on the Austrians and they failed to do so.

- [Narrator] As the war erupted with ever greater force, president Woodrow Wilson, cautioned Americans, the United States must be neutral.

In fact, as well as a name, we must be impartial in thought as well as action.

But there were many Americans who were very partial to action and rushed to France's aid.

Champing at the bit was a self-described dreamer from Asheville, North Carolina, who wrote a letter to the French council in New Orleans the very day Germany declared war on France.

- [Kiffin] Dear sir, I desire to offer my services to the French government in case of actual warfare between France and Germany.

I'm 21 years old and am very anxious to see military service and rather fight under the French flag than any other.

As I greatly admire your nation.

If my services can be used by your country, I will bring my brother who also desires to fight for the French flag, yours most sincerely Kiffin Yates Rockwell.

- The Rockwell brothers were Carolinians.

They'd lost their father when they were relatively young.

- By all accounts, Kiffin was a bit of a loner.

He had apparently very strong opinions on a sense of honor.

- The Rockwell brothers did not wait for an answer from the French council to book passage to France.

Also in Paris was a wealthy, idealistic young architecture student named Victor Chapman, a direct descendant of founding father John J. Chapman was an intense loner who had suffered the death of his beloved mother when he was six and the drowning of his younger brother a few years later.

His sorrow made him empathetic toward others, as well as reckless.

- Victor graduated from Harvard in 1913.

And then when the war broke out very quickly made his decision that he wanted to be part of it.

He felt very strongly sort of bonds of friendship with the French and feel very strongly that the French were on the side of Liberty and democracy against German repression and the German efforts to dominate the European continent.

- [Narrator] On August 21st with the war not three weeks old, a group of 43 Americans, including William Thaw and the Rockwell brothers, Matt at the hotel des Invalides the burial place of Napoleon and were sworn in to the infamous French Foreign Legion.

- With the foreign Legion, that's if you wanted to fight, it was the only vehicle for fighting in the French army without renouncing your US citizenship, which was a non-starter for these guys.

They may have chosen the expatriate life, but they're patriotic Americans.

They were not about to give up their citizenship.

The Legion only asked that you follow orders and the questions asked were few.

- [Narrator] William Thaw wrote home to his family.

- [William] I am going to take a part however small in the greatest and probably last war in history, which has apparently developed into a fight of civilization and barbarism.

- [Narrator] Victor Chapman joined the Legion a few weeks later, feeling a sense of belonging for perhaps the first time in his life.

- I think he found himself in his element that he was able to do so many useful things, that he was a good soldier, that he felt he was contributing to a worthy cause.

- [Narrator] Not all the Americans were elite altruistic, idealists.

Marching and fighting along with them from that first day was Weston Bert Hall, depending on which story he told, he was either from Kentucky, Missouri, or Texas.

- Bert Hall as kicked out of his father's house at the age of 13, for lying to him, which kind of set a trend for Bert's life.

He ended up doing a lot of different odd jobs, working for circuses, working on the railroads, et cetera.

He got a job as a chauffer for a mobster at one point.

And then he took a job as a taxi driver in Paris.

- He famously claimed to have been the sole pilot, of the Ottoman Empire in 1913.

- [Bert] There was no hands-across-the sea Lafayette stuff about us Americans who joined the foreign Legion in Paris when the war broke out, we just wanted to get right close and see some of the fun.

We didn't mind taking a few risks.

As most of us had led a pretty rough sort of life as long as we could remember.

- [Narrator] After a month of drilling Bert Hall, William Thaw and the Rockwells were marched to the Chemin des Dames sector, the historic Ridge Northeast of Paris, where the Germans retreated after the Battle of the Marne.

(upbeat music) - [Bert] The trenches had been very hastily made.

So we started out the first day to improve them.

And believe me, you can dig some when the shells are falling all around and you're digging is very essential to your health.

(upbeat music) (bomb explosion) - In the trenches in early October, Thaw was watching a plane overhead and said to Kiffin Rockwell's brother Paul.

One day soon, a squadron of American volunteers will be flying for France.

(upbeat music) - He said, "what am I doing down here?

I could be up there!"

- And he said, "You have to help me.

I want to be a pilot.

I don't want to be an infantry guy.

I want to be a pilot.

I am a pilot."

- - [Narrator] Observation was the most important aspect of aviation in World War One.

But Thaw was anxious to become a fighter pilot.

He bluffed his way past training in order to fly the Caudron, an aircraft he'd never flown before.

- [William] I told them my name was W. Caudron Thaw, and finally persuaded them to give me a try.

I was rather up against it though, as I'd never flown on land, never with a propeller in the front, and never with that control.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Thaw was the first American to be brevetted approved to fly-in France, and he was assigned to Squadron C.42 at the end of March.

Meanwhile, more Americans headed to France in defiance of President Wilson and even their own families.

- [Edmond] My dear little Mother, try not to feel too badly over my going.

God is going to take care of me.

I never expect to come back.

I can give my life just as freely for the Tri-color as I can for Old Glory.

Your ever-loving son, Edmond.

- [Narrator] Edmond Genet was descended from General George Clinton, hero of the American Revolution and Edmond 'Citizen Genet,' the French envoy to the United States during the French Revolution.

The pious and passionate 18-year-old was also concealing a secret.

He had deserted the United States Navy Genet was determined to get to the Front as quickly as possible.

- [Narrator] On the Rochambeau, Genet met another fugitive abandoning his past and a vast family fortune to join the war.

- [Edmond] I also have quite a good friend in Norman Prince, one of the first Americans to try aviation.

He is a rich young fellow about 25 I should judge, and very quick and sensible.

He...is entering the French aviation corps.

Norman Prince was the son of Frederick Henry Prince a demanding industrialist who held a controlling interest in the Chicago Stock Yards.

- [Guillaume] Norman and Freddy both went to Groton and then Harvard.

Norman went on and got his law degree from Harvard Law School.

And their father tough, tough man who I think really wanted to have both his sons to participate in his family business and take over the family company.

- [Narrator] But Norman had other plans.

Before graduating Harvard Law in 1911, he secretly learned to fly at the Wright Brothers' Winter Flying School.

Norman traveled under an assumed name to avoid his father's wrath.

As 1914 ended, Prince conceived the idea for an all-American flying corps serving France, and covertly boarded a boat for Le Havre in January.

- [Norman] Dear Mama, I have just put foot ashore in France.

I hope you are well and that papa has not taken too much at heart my leaving home at this time.

I believe I can find a place to do some efficient and useful work for the cause to which I am so deeply devoted.

My love to you all.

I shall write often.

Affectionately your son, Norman.

- [Narrator] Prince set himself up in a nice hotel in Paris and immediately contacted prominent French military personnel and prominent members of the American colony.

- [Narrator] Through his connections, Prince, and his Harvard friend Elliot Cowdin, were able to enlist directly into the Service Aronautique, bypassing the Foreign Legion and the trenches.

- [Narrator] On the eve of his departure for training at Pau, Norman Prince met William Thaw in Paris, who was on his way to the front to fly with squadron C.42.

They shared their ideas for an all-American air squadron and agreed to pool their efforts.

- [Narrator] Still on the ground, however, were a number of Americans still fighting with the French Foreign Legion.

They fought in desperate battles in Artois, Champagne and Verdun.

(bomb explosion) - [Soldier 1] They were German soldiers in the forefront of the war, and it was my duty to kill them.

- [Soldier 2] The corporal dropped beside me and I knew by his fall he was dead.

- [Soldier 3] I could hear the bullets cutting the leaves and twigs all around me, ping, ping.

- [Soldier 4] The German line looked like a wall of fire and hellish flames from the bursting shells We rushed back to help our comrades but there was little we could do.

One soldier was lying with his head split apart as thought it had been done with an axe - [Soldier 5] One man with a horrible eyeless face wandered around the parapet.

(bomb explodes) - [Soldier 6] One had been killed by a piece of shell casing that made a great hole through his chest.

Arms and heads and legs and man meat and horse meat all one great sickening trail - [Soldier] As fast as men fell, it seemed as if new men sprang up out of the ground to take their place.

- [Soldier] Wounded lay so thick they were trampled on.

- [Soldier] Up until that minute I had never felt a real desire to kill a German.

Since then I have had nothing but murder in my heart.

(upbeat music) (birds chirping) (upbeat music) - [Edmond] My dear little mother, ten of us met at the Place d'Opra and went to the Embassy to express our thanks to the Ambassador for using his influence to secure us the two days leave and to be photographed for the press.

Our picture ought to be in the papers and I only hope you see it and recognize your youngest.

Directly back of me was Victor Chapman.

The boy sitting to my left is William Dugan from Rochester, New York.

The colored fellow standing toward the center of the back row was the life of the party.

- [Narrator] The life of the party was Eugene Bullard.

There was no racial segregation in the Foreign Legion, the son of a slave could fight beside two descendants of Founding Fathers.

Bullard would later join the Air Service and become the first African-American fighter pilot.

James McConnell was one of hundreds of American volunteer ambulance drivers.

A graduate of the University of Virginia's Law School, his wealthy family cut him off financially when he volunteered for France, and he wrote articles for American magazines to support himself.

- [Alexandra] I think with this conflict, McConnell really brought it home to readers in America that being an ambulance driver was almost the same as being in combat.

He was being in combat.

He makes the case for America entering into the war.

- [James] When, at the end of an evacuation, one draws a stretcher from the car, and the poor wounded man lying upon it murmurs, "Merci" that is what urges you to hurry back for other wounded, and to feel grateful that you have the opportunity to serve the brave French people in their sublime struggle.

- [Narrator] McConnell was awarded the Croix de Guerre for his courage.

But he still felt that he wasn't doing enough - [James] The more I saw the splendor of the fight the French were fighting the more I began to feel like an embusque, a shirker.

So I made up my mind to go into aviation.

- [Narrator] Convalescing in Paris from a bullet wound through the thigh from the Second Battle of Artois, Kiffin Rockwell ran into William Thaw.

- And it was over a bottle in a Paris cafe that basically Thaw convinced Rockwell to try aviation.

- [Kiffin] Dear Mamma, I am transferred to the aviation as a student-pilot.

That is a jump from the lowest branch of the military service to the highest.

It is the most interesting thing I have ever done.

I am perfectly satisfied here and everyone treats me royally.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] A month later, Rockwell made a new friend.

- [Kiffin] Dear Paul, An American named Chapman, from the 3eme de Marche, arrived here this morning and seems to be a very fine fellow indeed.

- [Victor] Dear Papa, I find a compatriot I am proud to call my own here.

A tall, lanky Kentuckian called Rockwell.

He got his transfer about a month ago from the Legion.

- I think maybe Rockwell saw in Chapman maybe the best of himself.

They both truly felt that this fight wasn't simply a fight between Germany and France, it was about something larger.

This was a fight for civilization.

And I think they saw it in those terms.

This is something that is larger.

"We have an obligation here.

We need to do our part."

- [Narrator] After the better part of a year flying reconnaissance and bombing missions at the front, Norman Prince, Elliot Cowdin and William Thaw were given leave for Christmas 1915.

They were immediately beset by the press who were entranced by the wealthy, young gentlemen pilots.

- [Narrator] Their visit had an unforeseen effect, the French government saw the dashing aviators and the interest they stirred at home as valuable propaganda to bring the United States to the fight.

(upbeat music) Back in Paris, Thaw and Prince found the government increasingly receptive to the idea of an American squadron, and in mid-March, General Headquarters finally gave its approval.

Thaw contacted his squadron commander from C.42, Capitaine Geroges Thenault, for whom he'd flown for over ten months, and suggested he apply for command.

On April 16, 1916, the Escadrille Amricaine received its official designation, Escadrille N-124.

- [Yvon] So Geroges Thenault was designated as the boss, because he speaks English.

His deputy was Alfred de Laage de Meux, who was fluent in English.

- [Narrator] The Escadrille was ordered to Luxeuil-les-Bains in a quiet sector near the Vosges in Eastern France.

Capitaine Thenault met McConnell, Rockwell, Prince and Chapman when they arrived on April 19th.

Thaw, Bert Hall, Elliot Cowdin, and Lieutenant de Laage de Meaux followed within a few days.

- [Narrator] The escadrille members looked around their new post with wonder and astonishment and began to size each other up.

For each, it was a brand-new war.

- [Victor] We are finely situated in this spa town eat at the best hotel in town with our officers, live in a villa on the hill with an ordnance to clean up, and bathe and drink hot waters.

Meanwhile we wait for the Avions to be shipped.

- [Narayan] On the southwestern side of Luxeuil was what described by Geroges Thenault as being the largest and most beautiful airbase in all of France.

- [Jean-Patrice] During the First World War, which was the period when the base was established, it was at the same time close to the front, but not too close to the front.

So, an ideal location to host bombing aircraft, which was the first mission of the base.

- [Jim] In their hangars stood our trim little Nieuports.

I looked mine over with a new feeling of importance and gave orders to my mechanicians for the mere satisfaction of being able to.

- [Michael] The Nieuport 11 is a tiny, tiny airplane.

- [Steve] It was a French Bbe because it was so small.

It was a very maneuverable sprightly little airplane whose engine was a rotary engine.

The propeller and the engine revolved together, giving the airplane a great amount of torque.

- [Michael] In a rotary-powered airplane, the crankshaft is bolted to the airframe.

The engine and the propeller spin at the same speed.

So in an 80 LeRhone, about 1200 RPM for that engine, so you got about a 350-400 pound mass of metal spinning at 1200 RPM.

- Which could be good or bad.

It could be good to help you turn really quickly or it could be bad because you can quickly lose control of it as well.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Early in the morning of May 13, 1916, the Escadrille Amricaine left the ground for the first time as a squadron.

Capitaine Thenault and William Thaw took along the greenest pilots Chapman, Rockwell and McConnell.

- [Geroges] Flying in a wild-duck wedge, with Rockwell at the head I was last of one file to keep an eye on my colts and on the other side Thaw as a skilled pilot to protect that file.

- [Jim] I looked down and saw the trenches and when I next looked for our machines, I saw clusters of smoke puffs.

We were being fired at the puffs were white, or black, or green, depending on the size of the shell used.

It struck me as more amusing than anything else to watch the explosions and smoke.

- [Geroges] It was a long way home, and we had only just enough gas to get back to our ground if we didn't want to land in the cabbages, as we French say.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] The exhilarated pilots were surprised when, upon their return, they were treated as celebrities.

(upbeat music) - [Victor] Cowdin and Prince returned from Paris with a press reporter, and a cinema.

I never was so be-photo'd or ever hope to be again.

The United Press reporter was beaming all over with the thrills of it as we each dived just over him, then came round and landed.

Kiffin and Berty Hall were much peeved to think that some person was going to make heaps of money out of us, and we'd risked our necks for nothing.

"Think of the honor," said I.

"Oh, no, give me the cash and keep it," said Bert.

- [Kiffin] Dear Paul, there is gonna be a damned sight too much publicity as it is, and every time something happens, four or five will be sending telegrams to the papers.

So I had rather not bother with any of it as all this junk they pull off makes me sick.

- Kiffin Rockwell, who was concerned about too much publicity, and with Norman, I think, getting a film crew to the unit, you cannot underestimate the power of the media storm.

- [David] But there was a sensationalist aspect to it.

And the French high command knew that.

And that's one of the reasons why they authorized the squadron in the first place.

And arguably it was, they achieved their purpose, they wanted to provoke a reaction in the United States.

- [Victor] From now on you must not believe too much of what the papers say I am reported killed twice already, and more than one of us is severely wounded several times.

- [Jean-Patrice] The Lafayette Escadrille gained trust and confidence very fast.

One of their first victories in the air occurred quite soon after their arrival.

(upbeat music) - [Kiffin] I saw a Boche machine about seven hundred meters under me and a little inside our lines.

I immediately reduced my motor and dived for him until I was about twenty-five or thirty meters from him.

Then, just as I was afraid of running into him, I fired four or five shots, then swerved my machine to the right to keep from running into him.

The machine itself fell to one side, then dived vertically toward the ground with a lot of smoke coming out.

(upbeat music) - And the word of the victory was at the aerodrome when he got back and the men lifted him out of the airplane and carried him around on their shoulders because it was a huge, huge thing, and it was carried in all the press in the United States and France, and he was hailed as a great hero.

- [Narrator] The next day the Escadrille left the safety of Luxeuil to take part in the Battle of Verdun.

- In the early part of 1916, the Germans decided that they had a very good thrust line from Verdun, that that would be a great place to break through and point a dagger towards Paris.

And they thought the French would also defend it because they had an emotional attachment to Verdun.

(upbeat music) So, they fought for roughly nine months, and it started out with the largest artillery bombardment of history.

(upbeat music) (artillery bombings) There would be roughly a million casualties by the time the battle was all said and done.

(upbeat music) (artillery bombings) - In the summer of 1916, the Lafayette Escadrille was stationed at a place called Behonne.

It was just on a ridge above Bar-le-Duc, and the flying there was in the Verdun sector and it was very, very intense.

(upbeat music) - [Kiffin] We are very nicely quartered here, having a very nice villa to live in, having a cook also, so we don't have to go out for meals.

We are certainly living an incongruous life.

We live like princes when not working.

An auto comes and takes us up to the field, we climb into our machines which the mechanics have taken care of, they fasten us in and fix us up snugly, and put the motor en route, and away we go to prowl through the air, looking for an enemy machine to dive on and have it out with.

- There was a road that connected Behonne/Bar-le-Duc to Verdun.

And it quickly took on the nickname the Voie Sacre, the Sacred Road.

This one road was very important because it was the lifeline to keeping Verdun able to resist the Germans.

(upbeat music) - [Victor] Morning and evening, when the weather permits, we fly high and low over that smoldering inferno which has been raging since February.

- [Jim] Peaceful fields and farms, and villages adorned that landscape a few months ago when there was no Battle of Verdun.

Now there is only that sinister brown belt, a strip of murdered Nature.

(bomb explodes) - [Victor] The landscape, one wasted surface of brown powdered earth, where hills, valleys, forest and villages all merged in phantoms was boiling with puffs of dark smoke.

- [Jim] Every sign of humanity has been swept away.

The woods and roads have vanished like chalk wiped from a blackboard.

Of the villages nothing remains but gray smears where stone walls have tumbled together.

The great forts of Douaumont and Vaux are outlined faintly, like the tracings of a finger in wet sand.

- [Steve] The primary German plane that they faced at that time was the Fokker Eindecker, which was not a very good airplane.

It was a crummy airplane in the air.

- It was hard to fly.

It was slow.

It was a monoplane, which means it wasn't as strong as the biplane designs of that time.

But it did have the advantage of having that forward-firing, synchronized machine gun that would allow you to shoot through the arc of the propeller without putting a hole in your prop.

- [Steve] So, from that standpoint, it was a very deadly airplane.

(airplane engine) - The Nieuport, you had to know how to aim a Lewis gun that was above your upper wing firing over the propeller so it wouldn't shoot it off.

- The difficult thing about having a Lewis machine gun mounted in that manner was that it was fed by a single drum which contained as few as 47 rounds of ammunition.

So we're talking about perhaps just maybe four or five seconds of firing time before that drum had to be changed and then, in a 100 mile-an-hour wind, take this cartridge off and put another drum on in its place.

- How can you possibly do this where you're literally, you know, trying to hold the stick in between your knees.

Forget about the rudder pedals now, and the throttle, because you've got one hand trying to get on the gun, the machine gun, and God forbid it jams up on you and you have to clear the jam, or reload, and fly, and navigate, and try to find your enemy in the sky.

- [Narrator] Competition was settling in among the Americans.

Who would get the next kill?

- [Bert] I brought down a German at Malancourt, near Verdun.

In this encounter we fought at 15,000 feet.

I killed the Boche pilot and the whole outfit fell nothing was left of machine or men.

- [Kiffin] Bert Hall attacked a Boche this afternoon at 4,000 meters high, brought him down.

Give Bert some publicity.

- When Hall scored the second victory for the unit, it became undeniable that he was an asset.

However dubious he may have been in other ways, when it came to being a fighter pilot he was the real deal.

- So every aspect of life in a fighter squadron is competitive.

And you would think that that would drive people apart, you know, because they're fighting each other all day.

It is a tremendously unifying force.

It creates unit cohesion because when you go out to fight somebody else, you know, those are your guys that are with you in the formation.

You've been through everything together.

(upbeat music) Then you create a community that is willing to take risks on behalf of each other.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Two days after Hall's victory, Rockwell and Thaw took off for dawn patrol, and Thaw scored his first victory when they attacked a group of enemy fighters beyond Verdun.

- [William] No credit to me.

I just murdered him.

He never saw me.

- [Narrator] Thaw and Rockwell barely had time to refuel their planes before Capitaine Thenault led them with Lieutenant DeLaage and Victor Chapman on a patrol toward St. Mihiel.

(upbeat music) - [Thenaul] Suddenly, in the distance eastwards, towards Etain, I perceived a dozen Boche two-seaters, flying low over their own lines.

They were too low, too numerous, and too far behind their own lines for us to attack.

Suddenly a pilot, I don't know who it was dived like a meteor straight towards the Boches.

- Chapman peels off and goes after them in his usual hell-for-leather way.

- [Thenault] Without the least hesitation everyone followed, joysticks right forward at full speed.

(airplane engine roaring) - [Kiffin] Suddenly there were machines all around me shooting away, and I thought for a minute or two I was going to stay in Germany, especially when an explosive bullet came through my windshield and exploded in my face.

I got four or five little pieces around my mouth, but that makes no difference.

- Rockwell's windshield was smashed, and Thaw took a wound to the arm that also broke a bone.

And all in all, this second dogfight did not go very well, and it was because Chapman had not practiced discipline.

- But his action by itself did endanger the lives of his comrades.

So I guess in that sense it was irresponsible.

- I'm gonna tie this scarf around my neck, screw this helmet on my head, and go do some damage.

And that was their attitude.

- [Thenault] I was anxious to get back to our ground at Bar-le-Duc to reassemble my pilots I landed.

A big fellow, his face all covered with blood, was waiting for me.

It was Kiffin Rockwell, who burst into a flood of abuse against Germany and her disloyal methods.

- So three of the men were either wounded or barely got back home alive.

And the ironic thing is that, on that day, on that very day that this incident happened, the man who was to become the superstar of the squadron, Raoul Lufbery, showed up.

He reported to the squadron on that day and what he thought when he got there was probably, "This is not good."

(Steve laughs) - This was their first view of Raoul as a pilot, a new member of their squadron.

And Raoul was not a tall man, so they all noticed he was rather short, about 5 foot 7 inch.

- He was French-born to an American father, so he had connections to the United States, but he spoke mostly French with a little bit of English.

And the men didn't know what to think about him.

The first letters about him was, "I don't know about this guy."

- He was extremely quiet, almost shy.

And he did not really get close to anyone, super close nor did he share a lot of information.

- [Ted] No man alive can truthfully say that he knew him.

I ate, slept, drank and fought beside him for months on end.

I discussed combat tactics and played bridge and went on binges with him.

I was in daily contact with a figure of flesh and blood, but know him?

Not a chance.

Where he went, what he did, what lay behind that broad forehead and those inscrutable eyes, no one ever knew.

I only know one certain thing about him.

Raoul Lufbery flew, fought and died for revenge.

- Raoul Lufbery had one motivating factor.

He was motivated by the fact that his best friend in all the world, Marc Pourpe, who was a famous French exhibition pilot Marc Pourpe had joined the French Air Service at the beginning of the war, and Luf was working for him as a mechanic.

And when Marc Pourpe died in an accident, he blamed the Germans for his dear friend's death.

And so his whole motivation in the war was to go out and shoot down Germans.

- [Narrator] The squadron gained a reprieve as bad weather set in.

- [Victor] I sit in an upper window with waves of leaden clouds drifting by, and the indefatigable gramophone churns out some vulgar tune below, and the other heroes play poker, and the Captain practices scales on the piano.

- [Steve] Captain Thenault was a good commander.

He was a good pilot.

He was a good officer but he was a terrible piano player, and the only person in the squadron that did not know that was Captain Thenault.

- [Kiffin] We are very unlucky in having a captain who is a nice fellow and brave, but doesn't know how to look after his men, and doesn't try to.

I have been fighting with him ever since being back, mainly about the fact that I have no machine, he having given my old one to Prince and not managing right about getting me a new one.

I think that in a few weeks I will be pretty sick with the outfit.

- [Narrator] Scarcely a month since their first flight as a squadron, the pilots' skills and demeanor were on hand for all to see.

- [Jim] Kiffin, Bill, Chapman, & co. are the most serious, Lufbery included.

They are all one could ask for.

Prince and Cowdin are in it for the sport, and while they do their work, will never ring any gongs.

Hall is minus a few cogs but runs along in the average.

Johnson & Rumsey frankly dislike the game, and I believe Balsley needs a new pair of drawers whenever he goes out.

- Everybody knows who in a squadron wants to get kills.

And it's not everybody.

- [Thenault] The 17th of June...we were patrolling on the right bank of the Meuse and were supposed to remain there, but Chapman saw that all the Boches were on the left bank and, like a tiger, dashed at a group of them.

- [Kiffin] Chapman has been a little too courageous and got me in one of the mess-ups because I couldn't stand back and see him get it alone.

He was attacking all the time without paying much attention.

(upbeat music) - [Jim] He attacked four machines.

Swooping down from behind, one of them, a Fokker, riddled Chapman's plane.

(gun firing) - [Kiffin] The result was that he attacked one German, when a Fokker got full on Chapman's back, shot his machine to pieces and wounded Chapman in the head.

- [Jim] A stability control had been severed by a bullet.

Chapman held the broken rod in one hand, managed his machine with the other, and succeeded in landing on a nearby aviation field.

His wound was dressed, his machine repaired, and he immediately took the air in pursuit of some more enemies.

He would take no rest.

- [Narrator] A few days later, Chapman loaded his Nieuport with some oranges to take to the nearby hospital.

Clyde Balsley had been shot through the pelvis with an explosive bullet and wasn't allowed to drink water.

The oranges were to alleviate the wounded pilot's thirst.

(airplane engine roaring) Chapman took off shortly after the first patrol headed out.

(upbeat music) - [Kiffin] The Captain, Prince and Lufbery started first.

On arriving at the lines, they saw at first two German machines, which they dived on.

When they arrived in the midst of them, they found that two or three other German machines had arrived also.

- Victor seeing them, rushed to their assistance.

(upbeat music) His two comrades did not see him come, and since the odds were two to one against them, they broke off the encounter.

Victor charged in and attacked.

And was shot down very, very quickly.

The report suggested that he was killed instantly, fell over the stick in the aircraft, and the aircraft simply plunged straight into the ground.

- [Kiffin] I feel very blue tonight.

Victor was killed this afternoon.

He fell inside the German lines.

I would like to see every paper in the world pay a tribute to him.

There is no question that Victor had more courage than all the rest of us put together.

We were all afraid that he would be killed, and I rooming with him had begged him every night to be more prudent.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Kiffin Rockwell, did not attend the funeral service for his friend.

(airplane engine roaring) Instead, he flew with renewed vengeance, putting in more hours than any other pilot.

- [Kiffin] I have flown between forty and fifty hours over the lines, and have attacked over twenty machines, shooting up a lot of them very badly, but never having the luck for one of them to fall over the trenches.

- There had to be a witness or an airplane.

You had to have ground witnesses for the airplane going down, a location and a time.

And so you could report that you had a victory, but if nobody saw it, if it was a cloudy day and the visibility was lousy, and you didn't have a ground observer for that, the victory wasn't awarded.

- [Narrator] After two months without any certified victories, Bert Hall got his second kill and Lieutenant De Laage his first.

And Raoul Lufbery found his winning combination of skill and luck.

- [Raoul] I moved in rapidly, not giving him time to collect his wits.

He didn't last long.

He fell into a spin at the first burst of my machine gun and crashed to earth, just inside his lines.

Imagine my joy.

It took me two months and 16 combats to achieve this result.

- And then quickly gets a series of kills almost on a daily basis there for a week or so.

- I think Lufbery had a couple things going for him.

He certainly had an ability to see better in the air than most pilots.

- [McPeak] He was especially good with machinery, than Lufbery was.

- [Steve] He tuned his own engine.

He checked every round of ammunition to make sure that it was the proper size.

- Making sure that every bullet that went into the chain was straight, there were no burs, nothing that was gonna 'cause that gun to jam.

- He had no fear.

He would dive on an enemy aircraft to a point of near a collision point before he'd open his guns up.

- [Steve] There was a certain amount of competition for who shot down the planes.

When you read their letters, you can see that Kiffin thought that Norman Prince maybe made claims that for enemy aircraft that weren't that should not have been there.

- [Kiffin] No one thinks Prince got a German, in fact, everyone is sure he didn't yet the Captain proposed him for a citation.

Everyone said if he did they'd quit.

I am gonna have to call him out when he gets back as he talked awfully big behind my back while he was away.

We have all agreed to try to run him out of the Escadrille.

- Norman Prince and Kiffin Rockwell were both brave pilots, skillful pilots that took the fight to the Germans in the original squadron.

But, Prince had not been there in the beginning, like Rockwell and Chapman.

But Prince had made a decision that he was going to serve and the way to serve was by coming up with this idea of an all-American squadron.

And if you look at his grand plan, he had a lot of foresight.

And it worked.

- [Narrator] The aviators acquitted themselves well at Verdun, logging 1,000 sorties with 146 combats and 13 official victories, with one dead and three wounded.

But on September 12th, the escadrille was ordered to return to Luxeuil, without being told why.

The move was curious.

Thousands of men were being sent west to the Battle of the Somme.

Yet Escadrille N124 was going east.

But first they went to Paris on leave.

While drinking in Harry's New-York Bar, one of the pilots saw an advertisement placed by a Brazilian dentist asking 500 francs for a lion cub.

- And Thaw arranged to purchase the cub, and the others were quite delighted.

So Thaw tried to get the cub to go back with him to Luxeuil, and tried to pass the cub off as an exotic African dog.

But a small, squeaky roar pretty quickly revealed that this was not an ordinary exotic African dog, but maybe a lion cub.

- [Narrator] A frightened conductor made Thaw put the cub in a cage.

Jim McConnell said, "Why put him behind bars?

He'll see all the bars he needs traveling with this mob."

They named him Whiskey.

(upbeat music) Back at Luxeuil, the Escadrille received six brand-new Nieuport 17 fighters-larger and more powerful, with a Vickers machine gun that could fire 500 rounds through the propeller arc.

But base commander Capitaine Flix Happe strangely discouraged engagement with the enemy.

- [Geroges] Just think of restraining fanatics like Lufbery or Rockwell, when they had at their disposal superb new machines, fitted with the latest devices.

- [Narrator] Rockwell couldn't help but disobey orders.

- If you look at just the amount of time he logged in the air.

You know, under great stress.

The guy aged.

Just look at the photographs from the Spring of 1916 to September of 1916.

- His style was suicidal.

There was no way he was gonna survive the war in the air.

He just knew he was gonna die, and he accepted it, and he just thought every day that you wake up, that's one more day to live.

But it's not gonna last.

- [Geroges] On the 23rd Lufbery and Rockwell were flying over Hartmannsweilerkopf.

- [Narrator] Along the German border, Lufbery discovered his guns were jammed and retreated to the nearest friendly base.

Rockwell continued on alone.

- [James] Just before Kiffin reached the lines he spied a German machine under him flying at 11,000 feet.

I can imagine the satisfaction he felt in at last catching an enemy plane in our lines A captain, the commandant of an Alsatian village, watched the aerial battle through his field glasses.

He said that Rockwell approached so close to the enemy that he thought there would be a collision He plunged through the stream of lead and only when very close to his enemy did he begin shooting.

(speaking in foreign language) (airplane engine roaring) (speaking in foreign language) - [Jim] It crashed into the ground in a small field a field of flowers, a few hundred yards back of the trenches.

It was not more than two and a half miles from the spot where Rockwell, in the month of May, brought down his first enemy machine.

(upbeat music) There was a hideous wound in his breast where an explosive bullet had torn through.

(upbeat music) - Before dying, Kiffin told Paul Pavelka, he said, "If I am shot down, I want to be buried where I fell."

- [Jim] It was impossible, however, to place him in a grave so near the trenches.

His body was draped in a French flag and brought back to Luxeuil.

He was given a funeral worthy of a general.

Every Frenchman in the aviation at Luxeuil marched behind the bier.

As the slow-moving procession of blue and khaki-clad men passed from the church to the graveyard, airplanes circled at a feeble height above and showered down myriads of flowers.

No greater blow could have befallen the escadrille.

Kiffin was its soul.

- He fulfilled his destiny.

He was gonna die.

And he said so the night before, "Bury me where I fall."

- Every year, for the Memorial Day, the base commander of Luxeuil, and the members of the Association, put a wreath on the tomb.

- [Narrator] As Kiffin Rockwell said, "I pay my debt for Lafayette and Rochambeau."

(upbeat music)