Volume 15 Number 007 The Last Full Measure – Captain Eddie Rickenbacker

Lead: For 400 years service men and women have fought to carve out and defend freedom and the civilization we know as America. This series on A Moment in Time is devoted to the memory of those warriors, whose devotion gave, in the words of Lincoln at Gettysburg, the last full measure.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: His racing exploits earned him the name "Fast Eddie." He participated in the 1912, 1914 1915 and 1916 Indianapolis 500 and ended up years later buying the racetrack and running it until 1945. Yet, it was in the air that Edward Vernon Rickenbacker revealed true genius, courage, and skill. Born the third child of eight to William and Elizabeth Rickenbacker of Columbus, Ohio in 1890, he revealed a daring spirit from almost the beginning. His years as a racecar driver gave him a lucrative income and also brought him into contact with pilots of those newfangled air machines.

An intensely patriotic man, Rickenbacker changed the spelling of his name during World War I removing the Germanic "h," and substituting a second old-fashioned Anglicized "k." Soon after the war began, he volunteered for service. At first he was assigned as a driver to Gen. John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force, but then he was asked to apply his mechanics skills to the car of Col. Billy Mitchell, Chief of the U.S. Army Air Service. Soon he was training for air combat and soon after being assigned to the famed 94th Aero Squadron, on April 6, 1918, he brought down his first enemy airplane. By the following October Rickenbacker had downed 26 German aircraft. He was America's “Ace of Aces.”

Between the wars he got involved in business starting his own auto company where he hoped to bring technological advances, such as four- wheel braking, to the industry, but his company was soon swallowed up by the big boys. In 1938, Fast Eddie bought tiny Eastern Airlines and turned it into one of the most prosperous major national carriers of the postwar era. He ran the airline until he was forced out after a major business downturn in the late 1950s.

During World War II, Rickenbacker volunteered again, but this time instead of fighting, he worked directly for Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson surveying worldwide the needs and capabilities of allied air forces. While on a mission in the Pacific in October 1942, his plane, a B-17, went down. He and the crew endured 23 days floating at sea but only one man died. Rickenbacker, the oldest man in the group, came away 54 pounds lighter. For his exploits in World War I, in 1930 he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. He died in 1973.

Research assistance by Tenzin Tsayang, at the University of Richmond, this is Dan Roberts.

Resources

Jeffers, H. Paul. Ace of Aces: The Life of Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker. New York: Ballantine Books, 2003.

Lewis, W. David. Eddie Rickenbacker: An American Hero in the Twentieth Century. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005.

Rickenbacker, Edward Veron. Captain Rickenbacker's Story Of The Ordeal And Rescue Of Himself And The Men With Him. New York: American Brake & Shoe Foundry (private printing), 1943.

______. Fighting the Flying Circus. Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, 1965.

______. Rickenbacker; An Autobiography. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1967.

Sisson, Kathryn Cleven and Patrick G. Lawlor. Eddie Rickenbacker: Boy Pilot and Racer. Boulder, CO: Blackstone Audio, 2007 http://www.historynet.com/captain-eddie-rickenbacker- americas-world-war-i-ace-of-aces.htm/print http://militaryhistory.about.com/od/airforce/p/rickenback er.htm

Copyright by Dan Roberts Enterprises, Inc.