The Man, The Myth and The Legend: Author John F. Ross’s new book on Eddie Rickenbacker Celebrates the Life and Times of America’s First Aviation Hero
By Mark Rhodes
Eddie Rickenbacker’s natural charisma helped forge the public image of military aviation as a glamorous, albeit risky profession. (National Archives)Eddie Rickenbacker is a major figure in U.S. Military History, becoming America’s first flying Ace in World War I and subsequent Medal of Honor winner. After the war, his work as a businessman and aviation advocate with Eastern Airlines helped pave the way for sustainable, safe and reliable commercial aviation in post World War II America. Add to this his dashing exploits as an early pioneer of auto racing and his many escapes from death (the publicity material for Enduring Courage lists eight separate incidents, including a horrific Pacific Ocean crash where he and several others were stranded on rafts for 24 days in 1942) and you have a great example of American Heroism taken to the nth degree.
Despite this, Eddie Rickenbacker, while not an obscure figure is not exactly the household name he was in the first half of the 20th century. John F. Ross’ brilliant new biography Enduring Courage: Ace Pilot Eddie Rickenbacker and the Dawn of the Age of Speed (St. Martin’s Press) is a welcome corrective to this, placing Rickenbacker’s contributions in a variety of fields in proper context in 20th century American history. Mr. Ross paints a picture of a tough-as-nails, complex man whose quick thinking, physical skills, hard edged charisma and instinct for survival helped make him one of America’s most influential and admired men of the first half of the 20th century. Mr. Ross was nice enough to correspond via email about his work and the man, the myth and the legend of Eddie Rickenbacker.
IF USA: Rickenbacker was a world-class racecar driver in the early days of competitive auto racing. If WWI had not intervened, do you think he would have been remembered as a great figure in the history of Auto Racing?
JR: “Always tricky to speculate, especially in a business as risky as car racing, but I believe that Rickenbacker could well have gone on to great heights in racing. In the 1916 racing season, just before America entered the war, Rickenbacker was ranked number three in the standings and made handsome earnings. His grin and trademark white car and clothes were recognizable at all the major racing events. Even more important, he had made major time-saving innovations in the pit, along with managing his crew quite effectively. His experience on many tracks and road races was lengthy, his tactical savvy honed to an edge.”
“One thing that bedeviled him was the high torque of European engines, such as Peugeot—and he felt he was at a disadvantage driving American-built cars. In December 1916, with Europe in full-scale war, Rickenbacker sailed to Britain to find out why. Then war intervened. If you add up all his experience—his savvy with engines and managing pit crews, his ability to stay alive and nerve at the wheel—it seems that he would have had a good chance to keep on winning.”
IF USA: Rickenbacker transitioned from being a world-class racecar driver to being a top ace in WWI; was this a natural transition for Rickenbacker? Did the physical skills and bravery needed for racing prove valuable in his service as a military aviator?
JR: “Rickenbacker was unusual because he was an early adapter of two quite distinct technologies, the car and the airplane. When a technology is young—with the car and the airplane, for instance—there are no equipment manuals, established training regimens, or understanding of a machine’s tolerances. So much has to be learned by observation and intuition, many decisions made fast.”
“Rickenbacker’s racing career prepped him well for flying in the war. He certainly had superb physical traits, but there was much more to it than that. He could listen to an engine and tell what was wrong. He continually tweaked the technology and made innovations. But most important, he developed, as well as anyone, a comfort with high levels of risk—and managed to find a balance between timidity and recklessness. So many men he knew died simply because they couldn’t find that right balance. So he was a pioneer of risk management long before anyone called it that.”
IF USA: Rickenbacker was a very dashing figure in the black and white photos of him during WWI. Do you think this visual image helped set a stylistic influence on American aviators, particularly military pilots from that point forward?
Eddie Rickenbacker (seated in auto) was a noteworthy figure in the rough and tumble days of early American auto racing participating in the Indianapolis 500 on several occasions. (Auburn University Special Collections and Archives)JR: “I write in my book Enduring Courage that Eddie was the first person your eye would fall upon when looking at a photograph of a group of aviators. There’s something about his face, the keenness of his eyes and the turn of his lips into a smile, the way he holds his tall frame, which makes one want to study it. One thinks that perhaps somewhere in his features are important clues to the very nature of courage itself.”
“Airplanes were just a little over a decade downwind of Kitty Hawk when World War I began. Only just a few years after that, an entirely new icon of American manhood had emerged—the ace fighter pilot, created by Rickenbacker and others. It wasn’t just the silk scarf or jacket but their approach to terrible risk that created the iconic new figure. Rickenbacker’s modest, almost casual-seeming Midwestern approach to risk had a major influence on so many others that followed him, certainly, WWII fliers but also businessmen and explorers, as well as the ‘right stuff’ generation of early astronauts.”
IF USA: Aerial combat was obviously new when Rickenbacker became America’s premier ace in WWI. Did his style as a fighter pilot influence air combat strategy and technique?
JR: “Definitely. He had seen too many friends go down in flames to romanticize air war. He was extremely businesslike in his approach to combat, styling it ‘scientific murder.’ He focused on developing ways of making it more effective, until he had a philosophy of air combat that he could pass along to newbie pilots, who were particularly vulnerable against the veteran German flyers. ‘The experienced fighting pilot does not take unnecessary risks,’ he would write later. ‘His business is to shoot down enemy planes, not to get shot down. His trained eye and hand and judgment are as much part of his armament as his machine gun, and a fifty-fifty chance is the worst he will take or should take, except where the show is of the kind that either for offense or defense justifies the sacrifice of plane and pilot.’ Call it a cold-eyed pragmatism, but it influenced not only his personal style of combat but how he served so effectively as a leader of the 94th Squadron and worked on new tactics in formation flying.”
IF USA: Rickenbacker famously cheated death dramatically a number of times in his life. Was he the kind of guy who was a magnet for danger or were these just fluky things that just happened to him?
JR: “It’s almost unbelievable how many times he narrowly escaped death in everything from car-racing accidents, in which he went airborne because they didn’t have seatbelts, to awful plane crashes and a horrific 23-day stint aboard life rafts in the Central Pacific. A partial explanation is that he liked risk—he was what one psychologist calls a ‘sensation seeker’—and put himself in those situations often. You know the type. But it’s more complex than that. For an extremely poor boy growing up on the wrong side of the tracks in Columbus, Ohio, there weren’t many options for getting ahead aside from working in soul-sucking factories. But car racing provided an opportunity for a kid with guts and nothing to lose. He was physically and mentally cut out to handle high-stakes danger certainly, but he did it not only for the thrill but the chance to become somebody. And luck plays a role too, but one must wonder in Rickenbacker’s case about Pasteur’s observation that ‘chance favors the prepared mind.’”
“He was also just a cussedly tough guy. He reflected once on how many times he was lying somewhere badly hurt on a field, in a hospital, when it would have been the easiest thing just to let go. He remembered ‘when I felt myself pushing my toes into the pearly gates.’ It came as a feeling of serenity, ‘everything was mellow and sweet and beautiful…I had that feeling before…and so I recognized it instantly. I said to myself, ‘Whoa, back away from there,’ and I started fighting with all my strength.’ That kind of inner courage is a hard thing to quantify.”
IF USA: Rickenbacker was an influential figure in the American public after WWI as a businessman who helped build Eastern Air Lines into a major commercial airline. Did he have great influence on the development of commercial aviation or was he just a savvy businessman with a high public profile?
JR: “Rickenbacker and the other principals of the four major commercial airlines all had a major influence on building a viable commercial air network. The challenges and expenses of building a civilian airline network were formidable. There was no infrastructure to facilitate civilian flying whatsoever, from airfields with adequate lighting to mechanical support for still-unreliable airframes. Crashes occurred frequently—and the public remained skeptical about climbing aboard at all. The government wanted to be involved too—and that had to be sorted out.”
“Not only did Rickenbacker and the others have to be savvy businessmen but they also needed to be able to sell a vision of a sustainable future of civilian air flight. In May 1935, Rickenbacker scheduled 15 daily round trips between New York City (Newark) and Washington, DC, an innovation later known simply as ‘the shuttle.’ Passengers loved it. Initiatives flew off his desk. Eastern established the industry’s first pension plan and was also the first to mandate a forty-hour workweek for mechanics. He stressed safety as well as efficient fleet utilization, pushing for planes to spend more and more time aloft.”
“He certainly used his public profile as well, building the Eastern brand with shrewd publicity, which included a magazine in which he used to write about aviation.”
IF USA: Rickenbacker’s life was colorful and full of drama, and he was a well-known public figure during most of his lifetime. Why do you think he is not as well known in his death as say Charles Lindbergh or other pioneering figures of aviation?
JR: “Good question. There are many factors. First, Rickenbacker achieved his fame throughout the course of many races and dogfights while Lindbergh jumped out of obscurity with his bold solo flight across the Atlantic. That single act is more memorable than a spate of less seemingly dramatic events. Also, Lindbergh’s star rose during the emergence of the new celebrity culture. It was the roaring ‘20s when F. Scott Fitzgerald would glamorize celebrity for celebrity’s sake. Soft spoken and handsome, Lindbergh made a figure more hero-like than Rickenbacker, who had rugged good looks but also a crustiness of character and an unsophisticated way of speaking. Rickenbacker’s exploits also didn’t have the benefit of being promoted to large audiences by radio or talking films.”
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Photo Caption ER COCKPIT: : Eddie Rickenbacker’s natural charisma helped forge the public image of military aviation as a glamorous, albeit risky profession
(Photo Credit: National Archives)
Photo Caption: AUTO RACING: Eddie Rickenbacker (seated in auto) was a noteworthy figure in the rough and tumble days of early American auto racing participating in the Indianapolis 500 on several occasions.
(Photo Credit: Auburn University Special Collections and Archives)
