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Frank Luke Jr.: a dauntless spirit.

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For a man only twenty-one years old, he had accumulated a long list of nicknames. Some of his squadron mates called him "The Arizona Boaster," while others simply called him, "Yellow." But after a few brilliant weeks in the air, he accumulated more titles: "The Balloon Buster from Arizona," "Sausage Cooker," "Lone Eagle," "Wild Man in the Air," and "Arizona War Eagle." Still others referred to him as "the nut," more out of awe than derision. (1)

In many respects they were all correct. His real name was Frank Luke Jr., and for a time, he was a media sensation around the world. Luke was the first American pilot and the first Arizonan to be awarded the Medal of Honor. His death, as initially reported, had some of the trappings of a modern rendition of the Battle of the Alamo for a public that saw him as representing the last of the wildwest. To this day, his statue stands in front of the Arizona State Capitol building--a monument to Luke's bravery and audacity.

For many years Luke stood in the shadow of Eddie Rickenbacker, another famous aviator of World War I. History tends to be kind to those fortunate enough to survive the horrors of war, and in the case of Rickenbacker his leadership and record more than helped preserve his image in the minds of many Americans.

The reality is that for two short weeks Eddie was ranked the number two pilot--in terms of enemy kills--behind Frank Luke. Rickenbacker inherited his title "Ace of Aces" only after Luke was shot down. Rickenbacker himself acknowledged the skill of this young boy from the west; "Had Lieutenant Luke lived he would have put me out of business as the leading ace long ago." Rickenbacker recognized that Luke's fighting style was all-out and dangerous. "He was a wild man in the air." (2)

From the Arizona Territory

Frank Luke, Jr., was born in 1897, a few years before Arizona became a state. He was one of nine children from a devoutly Catholic family living in Phoenix. His father, a tax assessor and part-time land speculator, had come to Arizona in the 1870s and made a tidy sum investing in silver mines. Frank was raised at a different time. He got his first rifle at the age of twelve and spent his idle time horseback riding, hunting, and camping with his friends out in the desert and mountains.

Phoenix was a town of only a few thousand people. There were Indian reservations on the outskirts of the city that still bore the trappings of the "old west." Frank worked summers in the dusty little town of Ajo, near the Mexican border, working in the mines digging copper. For a short time, he and a friend ran a dance hall in Ajo, teaching the grungy miners how to dance. He boxed in the mining camp, mostly as a form of gambling and cheap entertainment. Most of Phoenix's streets were still dusty, unpaved lanes, though new technology in the form of the telephone and the automobile was slowly creeping in to drive a nail into the western lifestyle.

The airplane had been invented a little more than a decade before and the Great War had already begun to transform this new technology into an effective tool of warfare. Frank Luke wanted to embrace the future by becoming a pilot. Given his charged personality and lifestyle, aviation seemed a perfect fit. He applied to the Army Air Service, but weeks went by with no response. An impatient Frank wrote the Army, demanding that he be sent to aviation training. The Army apparently acquiesced and on September 29, 1917, he reported for training at Austin, Texas.

Into the Air

Competing against many men who had college degrees, Frank attacked his aviation studies with zeal. The schooling in Austin focused on the basics of aviation and flight as well as on the uses of engines and machineguns. After graduation, Frank was sent to Rockwell Field, in San Diego, California, for flight training. Commissioned as a second lieutenant, he finally realized his desire, a chance to fly. In Frank's own words, "I'm a different person when I'm in the air." (3)

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During his time in San Diego, Frank met a young woman, Marie Rapson. He approached romance the way he did everything in life. After knowing the young woman for only a few weeks, Frank proposed marriage. She was enthralled by the young, wild man who had swept her off her feet. Frank would invite her down to the field to watch him fly. After buzzing the field, he would stall the aircraft by flying straight up and letting the gravity-fed motor sputter out of fuel. Diving down right at his fiance at the last possible moment he would kick the motor back in and roar over her head. (4)

Upon winning his wings, Frank traveled to New York to board a ship that would take...

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