There’s a rare silent video featuring two supremely confident pilots smoking cigarettes and smiling for the camera at an airfield in Toul, France.
The smaller man has a great smile. He’s in full uniform, splashed with medals, speaking to the videographer and glancing proudly at a Nieuport 28C.1 fighter plane.
It’s April, 1918, weeks before his death, and Major Raoul Lufbery is at his fighting best. The 33-year-old is a World War I rock star, commander of the U.S. Air Service’s 94th Aero Squadron.
Two years earlier he was the eighth volunteer to join the famed Lafayette Escadrille – a group of 38 fun-loving, determined American pilots who helped France battle German aggression before the U.S. joined the war in the spring of 1918.
Lufbery was America’s first “Flying Ace,” having shot down his fifth German aircraft on October 12, 1916. He ultimately shot down 16 enemy aircraft, third-highest among American aces during the war.
“He was a remarkable man and a great pilot,” said Lufbery’s great-nephew, Raoul Lufbery III, of International Falls. “The press was just all over him in his latter years, because of his fearlessness. He had no fear of flying, and no fear of engaging the enemy. And I find that pretty remarkable.”
Lufbery III bears a striking resemblance to his great uncle. The major was the younger brother of Lufbery III’s grandfather, the late Charles Lufbery, who named his son Raoul Lufbery II.
Lufbery III, 65, was facility manager of Voyageurs National Park from 1977 until his retirement in 2012. He is a native of Wallingford, Conn., where the French-born Major Lufbery lived for about a year with Charles.
His home on Rainy Lake contains dozens of artifacts associated with the major: photos, paintings of the man in dogfighting action, his Purple Heart, and his National Aviation Hall of Fame medal – awarded to “the best of the best in aviation,” Lufbery III said.
His grandpa Charles, a veteran of the French Army during World War I, often joined the family for Sunday dinner when Lufbery III was a child, and shared stories about he and his younger brother.
The major was a quiet, self-educated world man who loved dogs, as did Charles.
“They loved to walk in the countryside,” Lufbery III said. “They loved the waterways, rolling hills – all the good things that country life brings. They would go out for hours and pick mushrooms, bring them back, and of course eat them and give some away. That was one of their interesting hobbies along the way.”
World traveler,
deadly fighter
Major Lufbery traveled the world and declared his American citizenship after a difficult childhood in France, where he was born in 1885. In 1912 he met a stunt pilot named Marc Pourpe, who hired young Lufbery as a mechanic and taught him to fly.
He joined the Lafayette Escadrille in May, 1916.
And his legend quickly grew.
He used what became known as the Lufbery Circle, a combat tactic in which pilots flew in a circle, watching out for each other and assisting during aerial attacks on Europe’s Western Front.
Lufbery had 20-10 vision. So, in those early days of aviation long before radar, he often spotted enemy fighters long before they saw him.
He always had a plan of attack. And he had that fearless factor.
Within days during the summer of 1916 he shot down four enemy aircraft, earning the French Medaille Militaire and Croix de Guerre with Palm.
He achieved “Ace” status in October by destroying a German Roland CII plane in a dogfight. He was promoted to adjutant and awarded a second Palm for the Croix de Guerre.
“Major Lufbery got to be a very efficient and deadly combat pilot,” Lufbery III said. “He just went in extremely confident, and he was going to do his job. To me, if anyone, especially in that era, could get into those rickety planes and go out there and do aerial dogfights, having no fear was an extremely valuable asset.”
Lufbery was commissioned as a major into the U.S. Army Air Service late in 1917. The Lafayette Escadrille was disbanded, and he became commander of the 94th Aero Squadron in the spring of 1918.
The squadron was fondly known as the “Hat in the Ring Gang.” The pilots created a squadron insignia showing a red, white and blue hat passing through a large ring, symbolizing America’s readiness to “toss its hat into the ring” during World War I.
They also adopted two young African lions as mascots, and named them Whiskey and Soda. A photo shows Lufbery cradling Whiskey, who liked to slurp whiskey and was said to be aggressive toward everyone but the major.
“And as the undisputed star of the group, Lufbery was bombarded by perfume-laced letters from adoring females,” according to www.usaww1.com.
The fliers included Eddie Rickenbacker, America’s “Ace of Aces,” who was guided by Lufbery and recorded 26 confirmed aerial victories during the war.
Rickenbacker later wrote: “Everything I learned, I learned from Lufbery.”
Death of a hero
Those colorful times were short-lived.
Lufbery’s plane was out of commission on May 19, 1918, when a two-seat German reconnaissance plane flew over the airfield at Maron, France. He jumped into another biplane fighter to engage the plane. But his machine gun jammed and Lufbery’s craft was hit with enemy artillery. It caught fire and flipped over, and he either fell or jumped to his death.
Lufbery III said he believes the major fell, due to his plane’s violent reaction and the rollover.
“Lufbery was noted to say, because they didn’t have parachutes back then, that under all circumstances, should you get hit or if your plane goes on fire, try to ride your plane out until you can get it on the ground,” he said. “That was the only way you were going to survive, if you were lucky enough. Something happened where, I believe, he was ejected from the plane, rather than jumping from the plane, as you sometimes read in the historical novels.”
His funeral drew generals and other dignitaries, and hundreds of American and French officers. He was buried in a cemetery near the airfield. In 1928 his body and those of several other squadron pilots were reinterred in the Lafayette Escadrille Memorial and Crypt in the village of Marnes-la-Coquette, near Paris.
Lufbery III, his wife, Lynn, and their son, Raoul Lufbery IV, also of the Falls, visited the marble-and-stone memorial in April, 100 years after the squadron was established. The Lufberys often travel to Air Force bases and memorial events to speak on behalf of the major.
“I’m more than proud and happy to represent him – and all veterans, for that matter, of wars in the past, who have given so much,” Lufbery III said. “And we need to continue to support them, no matter if it was 100 years ago. Because veterans do wonderful things for this country, and it’s often forgotten, the sacrifices they make in order to keep our freedoms and the values that we have as Americans, on the forefront. I’m grateful to veterans like my great uncle in World War I, up to the veterans who are fighting our current wars and conflicts today.”
Then and now
The 94th Aero Squadron is now the 94th Fighter Squadron, a unit of the U.S. Air Force’s 1st Operations Group at Joint Base Langley-Eustice, Virginia.
A century after those raucous beginnings, its planes still bear the old “Hat in the Ring” emblem.
The last surviving squad member of the Lafayette Escadrille, Col. Paul Rockwell, died Aug. 22, 1985, at age 96. A 2006 movie, “Flyboys,” is based on the squadron’s exploits.
See www.usaww1com for more information on the pioneering wartime aviators.
