Frank Luke

Frank luke jr.

Frank Luke Jr. , nicknamed "Balloon Buster" (* 19th May 1897 in Phoenix , Arizona ; †  29. September 1918 in Murvaux in France ) was an American military pilot and after Eddie Rickenbacker second most successful fighter pilot in the US Air Service in WWI .

Life

Frank Luke's family was from Germany , immigrated to the United States , and settled in Phoenix, Arizona in 1873 . The fifth child of Frank Luke sr. was frank jr.

In 1917, after the United States entered the war, Luke enlisted in the US Army . He received his training as a fighter pilot in Texas and California . As a second lieutenant he came to France for further training in March 1918 and was transferred to the 27th Aero Squadron in July.

Together with his partner Lieutenant Joseph Frank Wehner , he had many successes against German reconnaissance tethered balloons , until Wehner died on September 18, 1918. On the same day, Luke scored his 13th aerial victory over a Halberstadt C.

He got his nickname as "Arizona Balloon Buster" because he shot down 14 tethered balloons and 4 airplanes with his SPAD S.XIII between September 12 and 29, 1918.

death

On September 29, 1918, Luke destroyed three tethered balloons during the Meuse-Argonne offensive before he was wounded in the shoulder by anti-aircraft fire and landed on a tributary of the Meuse near the village of Murvaux, which was occupied by German soldiers. According to legend, Luke opened fire on the Germans with his Colt in 1911 before he was killed; a day later, Entente soldiers are said to have found his body with a gunshot wound in the chest.

According to the latest research, Luke was shot down by machine gun fire during the offensive on September 29, 1918 when an observation balloon of the German balloon train 35 (BZ 35 at FLA 12) was attacked. Lieutenant Bernhard Mangels, the leading officer of the balloon procession, described the incident as follows:

"Before Frank Luke had a chance to open fire, we let loose with a machine gun barrage. The pilot lost control of his aircraft which crashed with a great impact near the ballon [...]. When our people rushed up to the wreckage to rescue the unfortunate from the desperate situation, he showed only a weak sign of life. He passed away shortly thereafter. [...] Our people removed the body from the brave and put him into an empty room in our camp. The next morning we buried Frank Luke in the garden of the Lion castle. "(Arand, p. 437)

“Before Frank Luke had a chance to open fire, we shot a machine gun salvo [at him]. The pilot lost control of his aircraft, which crashed with great force next to the balloon. [...] When our people rushed to the wreck to save the unfortunate man from the desperate situation, he showed only faint signs of life. He passed away shortly afterwards. […] Our people recovered the brave's corpse and laid it out in an empty room in our camp. The next morning we buried Frank Luke in the garden of Lion's castle. "(Arand, p. 437, translation)

Medal of Honor

In 1921 he was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously after his body was identified and villagers confirmed that he had fought on the ground against German troops before his death.

Honors

• Medal of Honor (United States)
• Distinguished Service Cross (United States)
• Croce di Guerra (Italy)
• The Luke Air Force Base in the west of Phoenix, Arizona is named after him.
• Lukeville , Arizona, a US border town was also named after Frank Luke Jr. named.
• The character Blaine Rawlings in the movie Flyboys was inspired by Frank Luke.

literature

• Frank Luke, like many other aces who flew with the patterns described in each case, is presented by Jim Winchester in the book Combat Airplanes - The best fighters and fighter-bombers in the world - from 1914 until today .
• Arch Whitehouse: Flieger-Ase 1914-1918 . Motorbuch-Verlag, Stuttgart 1970, pp. 83-93.
• Tobias Arand: The estate of Lieutenant Bernhard Mangels from Münster. Exemplary considerations for the content and formal indexing of war photo albums of German veterans of the First World War . In: Westphalian research. Journal of the LWL Institute for Westphalian Regional History 58, 2008, ISSN  0083-9027 , pp. 421–439.

Web links

Commons : Frank Luke  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Frank Luke at acepilots.com