Red A has it and when he sobers up he will provide our next challenge.
Gervais Raoul Lufbery was an American who was born and raised in France. He served in the US Army from 1907-1909. In 1912, Lufbery traveled to French Indochina, where he took a job as a mechanic for French aviation pioneer Marc Pourpe. When war broke out in France, Pourpe joined the French Air Force (Aéronautique Militaire) as a pilot. Meanwhile, Lufbery joined the Foreign Legion and later transferred into the Aéronautique Militaire as a mechanic. Pourpe's death in a crash ignited Lufbery's desire for revenge and he applied for pilot's training.
Late in 1914, Lufbery was accepted into the pilot training program and was trained on the Nieuport. Although he became an ace, Lufbery was not a naturally gifted pilot. His success was due to perseverance and attention to mechanical detail. He was often harassed by fellow pilots for working with the mechanics on his plane. Lufbery also inspected and polished each bullet in his gun's drum to help avoid jams, a frequent problem of the Lewis gun.
The French Air Force assigned him to the Escadrille Americaine (Lafayette Escadrille), a fighter unit composed almost completely of Americans. He transferred to the fledgling United States Army Air Service with the rank of major. He was one of the first American aces in WWI, sixteen of his seventeen confirmed kills occurring in a French uniform. Lufbery is attributed with inventing the precursor to the modern airport flight pattern. He directed that all approaching aircraft in his command would circle the field at least twice before landing, watching for others taking off or landing. This process eventually became the "Down Wind, Base, and Final" standard airport pattern that pilots use every day in VFR flight.
On May 19, 1918, Lufbery took off in his Nieuport 28 in an attempt to intercept a German reconnaissance plane near his home airfield. Closing in to attack, the German gunner's fire hit the Nieuport. At an altitude of several hundred feet, Lufbery jumped out of the plane, possibly to avoid fire and attempted to land in the nearby Moselle River. His falling body struck a metal garden picket fence, causing his death. Lufbery was buried with full military honors at the Aviators Cemetery at Sebastapol, France. His remains were later removed to a place of honor at the Lafayette Memorial du Parc de Garches in Paris.
Whiskey and Soda were the names of two lions the Lafayette Escadrille had as mascots.
Raoul Lufbery is featured in To the Last Man: A Novel of the First World War by Jeff Shaara, which I recommend.
