RAOUL LUFBERY

Raoul Lufbery playing with the lion-cub Whisky

Raoul and Charles worked in Wallingford for two years, making casket handles at the silver factory of Simpson, Hall, and Miller. Then around 1908 Raoul left Wallingford for a life of adventure. His first stop was Cuba. He did not stay there long before going to New Orleans where he found work as a baker. He left New Orleans for San Francisco where he took a position as a hotel waiter. Tiring of that occupation, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and served a stint in the Philippines and in the process became a naturalized American citizen. While in the Army, he won a number of shooting prizes and became the best marksman in his regiment. After his discharge, Raoul travelled first to Japan then to China and India where he became a ticket collector in the Bombay Railroad station. While in India, at Calcutta, in 1912 he met the French exhibition flyer, Marc Pourpe, and eventually signed on as his mechanic. Together they toured China and Egypt where Pourpe made his famous flight from Cairo to Khartoum and back. In the summer of 1914 Raoul accompanied Pourpe to France to pick up a Morane Parasol aircraft. They had intended another tour of the Orient. But when war was declared in August, Pourpe enlisted in the French Air Service. Raoul enlisted in the French Foreign Legion as an infantryman on 24 August 1914 in order to be "detached" to the Service Aeronautique. He made the transfer to aviation on 31 August to serve at the Front as Pourpe's mechanic. Meanwhile his brother, Charles, had left Wallingford for France and soon enlisted in the French Army, fighting in the infantry until he was gassed and wounded by a grenade.

	On 2 December 1914 Marc Pourpe was killed in an airplane accident as he attempted a night landing in fog. Pourpe was probably the closest friend Lufbery had ever had. One observer who was close to them both called their friendship "a veritable cult." For some unexplained reason Raoul blamed the Germans for his comrade's accidental death. Vowing revenge, Lufbery transferred to the aviation pilot school at Chartres and received his brevet militaire on the Maurice Farman on 29 July 1915.

He next attended the schools at Amberieu and at the R.G. A. (Reserve General Aeronautique), completing his training on the Voisin on 1 October 1915. On 7 October Caporal Lufbery was assigned to the Front as pilot with Escadrille V.B. 106. He flew with that squadron until 22 May 1916 when at his own request he returned to the Nieuport Division of the G.D.E. (Group de Division d'Enlrainement) for retraining as a combat pilot. While there, like other great future combat pilots, he first showed little indication of the consummate fighter he would become. Rather, he demon-strated a clumsiness in a chase machine which nearly forced his instructors to wash him out and return him to the Front as a bombardment pilot. However, through diligent work, he ultimately overcame his weaknesses and finished Nieuport school on 22 May, 1916, having mastered aerobatics and combat flying. On 24 May Lufbery was assigned to the Escadrille

Americaine which had just moved from Luxeuil to Bar-le-Duc in the Verdun sector. The American pilots' first impressions of their new comrade was of a man short in stature—five foot-seven inches tall—who was broad shouldered and powerfully muscled and displayed a charming smile. But they soon learned how deceptive that smile could be. It concealed a modest, almost sullen man who knew no fear. The mechanical skills Raoul had learned while in the company of Marc Pourpe soon paid dividends as he quickly built a reputation as one of France's premier combat pilots. The fact that he kept his bus in perfect running order considerably helped him to build his large list of victories. Lafayette pilot Edward Hinkle said this of Raoul: "Lufbery was a wonderful mechanic and his plane was always the best in the Escadrille. Anyone would rather have a second-hand Lufbery machine than a new one, anytime." Another secret to his great success was the painstaking care he gave to his machine gun and its ammunition. He practiced endlessly with his Lewis gun and personally examined each round for defects before sliding it into the drum magazine.

On 30 July 1916, following a two-month dry spell and sixteen unsuccessful combats, Sergent Lufbery received his first confirmed victory when he shot down a German bi-plane east of Etain, in the Verdun sector. The following day he attacked at close range a group of four two-seaters near Fort Vaux and sent one of them crashing to ground. His third victory came on 4 August when he again downed an observation craft above Abancourt, near Verdun. On 8 August he came upon a loan Aviatik near Fort Douaumont. Before pressing the attack, he carefully scrutinized the sky for enemy fighters, not sure if the machine was a decoy. He always cautioned himself before attacking enemy observation machines: "Always remember it may be a trap!" Convinced that the sky held no further threat, Lufbury brought his Nieuport in just below and behind the Aviatik's tail and emptied a full drum from his Lewis gun into the enemy's vitals. The bi-plane came apart and zigzagged groundward trailing greasy smoke as flame gushed up its fuselage. It slammed into the Ravine of the Viper and was soon consumed. For this and preceding actions, Sergent Lufbery was awarded France's Medaille Militaire and Croix de Guerre, with Palm. Capitaine Thenault was quick to recognize Lufbery's great flying skills and would always place him above the Squadron's patrols to "dominate the situation." To Thenault, Lufbery was a "superman" who had to be ordered to rest. "To fly high is very fatiguing," Thenault later noted, "as the sudden changes of altitude quickly tire the heart. But never have I met a pilot with more endurance than Lufbery. When the sky was clear he would go up three or four times a day to eighteen thousand feet just for his own pleasure, in a dilettante fashion. Never was he at all ill from it." Lufbery's closest brush with death came north of Mulhouse on 9 October 1916 shortly after he had broken off an unresolved combat with the skilled pilot of a Fokker single-seater, later thought to have been the great Oswald Bolke. Upon the Fokker's departure, Lufbery's attention had been seized by "a big white two-seater of very substantial appearance" which was heading for home across French soil. Lufbery rushed to attack, anxious to down the enemy bus within Allied lines. Disregarding caution, he hastily attacked the enemy's tail, firing his machine gun until his Nieuport nearly collided with the bi-plane. He yanked back on his stick and zoomed over the top of the German bus, preparing for a second pass, when suddenly his engine quit, silenced by three enemy bullets.

Lufbery landed on the nearest flying field where he was swarmed by "pilots, observers, mechanics" who had been following the combat. Lufbery ignored their questions as he climbed down and examined his Nieuport. His fighter had been sprayed with enemy fire: his hood was a sieve of holes; his motor destroyed; his gas tank perforated. A strut had been shot to kindling, and his left aileron had been blown away. Other slugs had torn open his left flying boot and had ripped through his flight suit, grazing his chest. But miraculously he himself had escaped without a scratch. Lufbery officially became an ace, the first American pilot to do so, on 12 October 1916, the same day Norman Prince was mortally injured. He scored his fifth confirmed victory against a Roland C.II three-seater while fighting to protect the allied bombers returning from the great raid against the Mauser Works at Oberndorf, Germany. Lufbery was cited in the Official Communique of the French Army for his action that day and was promoted to Adjudant and awarded another Palm to his Croix de Guerre. Following this great raid, on 18 October 1916, the Squadron was moved to Cachy to support the Somme Offensive. On 9 and 10 November Lufbery scored his first two "unofficial victories" with the planes falling too far behind enemy lines to be seen and confirmed by the three required impartial witnesses, either balloon or ground observers. His "unofficial victory" list would grow to enormous proportions. If those many victories could have been confirmed Lufbery undoubtedly would have been ranked near the top of the list with the great Allied aces. Edward Hinkle, who flew with Lufbery, believed his total to have been close to seventy enemy aircraft destroyed.

He recalled one day during his own tenure with the Squadron when Lufbery had knocked down seven enemy aircraft and had failed to receive credit for a single plane. Another Lafayette pilot, James Norman Hall, said that the seventeen official victories Lufbery was ultimately credited with was "no more than half the number of planes he actually destroyed." Carl Dolan also recalled a patrol he had flown with Lufbery in which he had seen Lufbery down three of the five German planes he attacked. And yet, only one of Lufbery's victories was confirmed. When Dolan had asked Lufbery if it had not bothered him that so many of his victories had gone unconfirmed, Lufbery had replied: "What the hell do I care. I know I got them." Unquestionably, Raoul Lufbery was the Lafayette Escadrille's greatest fighter pilot, and perhaps the greatest American fighter pilot of World War One. On a number of occasions, while out on patrol, he saved the lives of several of his young comrades by being nearby at the right moment. And while his American comrades were proud to call "Luf" one of their own and truly admired his courage and skill, they found him an enigma. Hinkle said this of Lufbery: "He was a strange man. A solemn man. He was a very quiet man, not easy to know. He never talked very much. I remember taking long walks in the woods with him to gather mushrooms for the cooks. He might not say a word in two hours." Carl Dolan remembered how Lufbery had been as much a loner on the ground as he had been in the air. When the other pilots would head for leave in Paris, Lufbery would often go home to Clermont-Ferrand where he had spent his youth, to visit family and friends. "In that part of his life he didn't mix with our crowd one bit," Dolan said. "The French felt he was an American, but Luf felt he was a Frenchman." Henry Jones remembered Lufbery in a 1969 interview. "Lufbery spoke with a strong French accent, a rough, tough person, but he would do anything for you. He was very well liked, and when he did go to Paris, he raised hell. He drove a Hispano-Suiza roadster which was loaned to him by the company every time he came to Paris with whores hanging all over it. The car was always waiting for Lufbery at Henry's hotel when he came on leave as a courtesy from the company." Edwin Parsons, another Lafayette pilot who flew many missions with Lufbery, summed him up this way. "To me, Luf was one of the greatest mysteries of the war. No man alive can truthfully say that he knew him. I ate, slept, drank and fought beside him for months on end. I discussed combat tactics and played bridge and went on binges with him. He saved my hide once when I was a very green young pilot. . . "I was in daily contact with a figure of flesh and blood, but know him? Not a chance. In contrast to him, the Sphinx was a child's primer. He kept his real self shut up like a clam in a shell. He was a man seemingly devoid of fear or, in fact, emotion of any kind. But what a man he was in the air! He had forgotten more about combat flying than most men ever knew." Lufbery lived to fight. With no concept of fear, the prospect of death could not dissuade him from his missions. And during his relentless hunts he often took as much as he gave, many times returning to the Squadron's airfield, his riddled plane a testimony to his fierce combats. Only one of the frequent attacks of rheumatism could keep him out of the sky, attacks which at one time became so severe that Lufbery required hospitalization. Often he flew in great pain, his joints and muscles half crippled. Raoul Lufbery and William Thaw were the only two American pilots ofN.124 to be given officer's commissions by the French Army. And while Thaw's commissioned had come early in his career, it took Lufbery nearly three years to receive the distinction in spite of his many victories, medals, and citations. One reason for the delay had stemmed from an incident at the train station at Chartres when Lufbery had accompanied a friend out onto the quai d'arrivee without the required ticket. The station attendant had tried to stop Lufbery then had physically attempted to eject him. Lufbery had considered the man's actions an insult to his Military Medal and with one powerful blow had knocked the attendant out and broke six of his teeth. Lufbery was arrested and taken before the station's military commissioner who sentenced him to thirty days in the stockade. Only Capitaine Thenault's direct intervention secured his release.

On 24 October 1917 the now Sous Lieutenant Lufbery had another of his incredible days which Edward Hinkle had referred to. He had been called upon with the other Lafayette pilots to assist in stopping a German counterattack which had been launched in response to a French advance 2 1/2 miles into their territory. The first patrol had begun at 6:40 a.m. and had lasted approximately 1 1/2 hours. During that time Lufbery fought two combats with German fighters, proving victorious in both engagements. He returned to the Chaudun airfield to refuel and rearm his SPAD and again rose to combat, this time fighting it out with three German fighters, tumbling two of them to ground. Just before noon Lufbery left Chaudun for his third sortie and soon faced and fought two enemy fighters, knocking both of them down. And while it was a virtual certainty that Lufbery had shot down six enemy fighters in one morning's work, he only received confirmation for one official victory. Lufbery, the great marksman, had again made his fighter an extension of himself, turning his entire machine into a flying gun. Blessed with incredible vision, superb reflexes, and a timeless patience while stalking the enemy, these were the components which made up "Luf's private formula." Like all the great air victors who shared these traits, Lufbery never substituted opportunity and favorable position for reckless courage. Those who did so bought an early grave.

On 1 March 1917 while the Squadron was at Saint-Juste, Lufbery was made a Chevalier of the French Legion d' Honneur. His award document, dated 29 January, called him a fighter pilot of remarkable daring. This, he continued to prove by knocking down many more enemy planes before he left the Squadron to join American Aviation. Edward Hinkle best summed up the career of Raoul Lufbery while he was with the Escadrille when he later said of this great ace: "He preferred to patrol alone. Ninety percent of the time he was all by himself. Once Luf spotted an enemy plane, he took his time maneuvering into precisely the position he wanted. He attacked with the sun at his back, and many an enemy pilot never knew what hit him." Sous-Lieutenant Lufbery was commissioned a Major in the U.S. Air Service on 10 January 1918. On 22 January he was sent to the Headquarters of the 1st Pursuit Organization Center at Villeneuve-les-Vertus. He left there on 24 January for the American Aviation Instruction Center at Issoudun where his great talents as a combat patrol leader were squandered by his superiors who gave him a writing pad and pencil and a rolltop desk, and told him to write a pamphlet on "how to kill Germans." But on 18 February Major Lufbery had escaped his office confines through the intervention of Major Thaw and was assigned to the newly formed U.S. 95th Aero Pursuit Squadron which had just arrived at Villeneuve, the first American-trained pursuit squadron to enter the Zone of Advance. On 5 March the U.S. 94th Aero Pursuit Squadron also arrived from Issoudun and Major Lufbery served as combat instructor as he helped to prepare the novice pilots in the intricacies of patrolling. On 28 March 1918 Major Lufbery led Lieutenants Douglas Campbell and Edward Rickenbacker on the 94th's first combat patrol. Rickenbacker, soon to become America's top ace in World War One, later would write that "everything I learned, I learned from Lufbery." On the 29th Lufbery also led the 94th's second patrol accompanied by Lieutenants Thorne Taylor and John Wentworth. He continued to lead patrols daily. When not doing so, he was in the air hunting solo.

On 7 April the 94th, now under the command of Major John Huffer, was placed under the VIII French Army as an independent unit and was moved to the Gengoult airdrome, four kilometers northeast ofToul. The squadron's first combat occurred on 12 April near Xiveray when Major Lufbery single-handedly attacked three Albatros fighters and almost assuredly shot one down, adding yet another German plane to his list of "unconfirmed." He had successive combats on 23 April near St. Baussant, and again on 18 May when he fought it out with six German fighters over Norrey until his guns jammed and he was forced to withdraw. On 19 May 1918, at approximately 10 a.m., the antiaircraft batteries on top of Mont St. Michel began firing, their white puffs breaking at high altitude. Almost immediately Major Huffer received notice that a German photo-reconnaissance plane was heading toward the 94th's field. Seconds later it appeared. First Lieutenant Oscar J. Gude, the only pilot on the squadron's airfield who was ready for flight, climbed into his fighter and immediately rose to meet the enemy bus. Gude had yet to fight a combat with the enemy. As he gained altitude, the German bi-plane appeared to be struck by shrapnel. It fell into a spin and headed groundward but at 200 feet it recovered, and its pilot turned back toward his own lines. Gude followed the German bus. Through inexperience, he began firing with the enemy still far out of range, emptying his machine guns in a long continual burst while causing no damage to the observing plane. Major Lufbery, who had been following the engagement from his barracks, jumped onto a motorcycle and sped to the hangars as the enemy bi-plane again fell under a violent artillery barrage but still managed to maintain a steadily retreating course in the direction of Nancy. As Major Lufbery slipped into his flight suit, he soon discovered that his own Nieuport fighter with its well-maintained machine gun was out of commission. He climbed into Lieutenant Philip Davis's Nieuport, and with no time to check the machine gun, sped off and rapidly ascended to the attack. Major Lufbery engaged the enemy bus, a Rumpler, at two thousand feet. He fired several short rafales before swerving away, evidently in an attempt to clear a jammed round from his machine gun. Circling, he managed to do so then again attacked the enemy bus from the rear. From this point in the action on, a number of conflicting reports have been written as to what happened to Major Lufbery after the engagement began. Some eyewitness accounts record that Lufbery jumped from his flaming plane, while other witnesses say his plane was not burning, and that he fell out of the cockpit when his fighter flipped over. The official report states that his Nieuport shuddered when struck by enemy fire and burst into flame. A round from the enemy observer's guns had pierced his fuel tank then had entered the cockpit and shot away Lufbery's right thumb as he clutched the joystick. Lufbery attempted to put the fighter into a slip to force the growing inferno away from himself. But the wind from the rapidly plummeting plane only fanned the fire. Lufbery struggled out of the cockpit as flame swept down the fuselage and ignited his flight suit. Lufbery apparently jumped toward a stream beneath him that promised a remote chance for survival from a height of more than 2,000 feet. He missed the stream by a hundred yards, landing on a fence surrounding the garden of a house in the little town of Maron, just north of Nancy. Some thirty minutes later his comrades arrived at the scene where he had fallen. Already Lufbery's scorched body had been removed by the villagers to the town hall where they had covered it with flowers from their gardens. They gently transported it to the American Hospital near the squadron aerodrome. The next day, following a full military funeral, Major Lufbery was buried in the American Cemetery, Sebastopol Barracks. He was thirty-three years of age at the time of his death. Gone was the great Lufbery of whom Edwin Parsons had said few could equal and none could surpass. "His cool head, steady nerve and unerring aim were worth a whole squadron. He flew as the bird flies," Parsons said, "without any thought of how it was done." For his war service, Major Lufbery was awarded France's Croix de Guerre, with ten Palms, the Medaille Militaire, the Legion d'Honneur, and the British Military Medal. French Capitaine Georges Thenault, his Lafayette Escadrille commander, would later write of him: "His Spad was always the highest and every day he won new victories. He seemed to hardly care about having them confirmed, Calmly he reigned as a sovereign lord in his chosen element and beat down his foes to accomplish his duty and not for the sake of glory."

On 4 July, 1928 Lufbery's body was reinterred in the Lafayette Escadrille Memorial at Villeneuve, near Paris, there to rest in eternity with his comrades.

All rights reserved « The Lafayette Flying Corps »:
The American Volunteers in the French Air Service in World War One
Written by Dennis GORDON
A SCHIFFER MILITARY HISTORY BOOK - (Schifferbk@aol.com)