He was called America’s Ace of Aces during World War I, the highest scorer of American aerial victories over the Germans. He could just as easily have been labeled the ‘luckiest man alive,’ however, since he survived — by his own count — 135 brushes with death during his exciting lifetime.

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in Aviation History magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

Edward Vernon Rickenbacker was born in Columbus, Ohio, on October 8, 1890. The son of Swiss immigrants, he was the third of eight children. His parents christened him Edward Rickenbacher, but he later added Vernon as a middle name ‘because it sounded classy’ and changed the spelling of his last name to Rickenbacker so it would be less Germanic. He answered mostly to ‘Rick’ but would be best known during later years as ‘Captain Eddie.’ His father was a day laborer, and life was not easy for a lad who spoke with an accent that reflected his parents’ household language.

Young Rickenbacker was admittedly a bad boy who smoked at age 5 and headed a group of mischievous youngsters known as the Horsehead Gang, but he was imbued with family values by frequent applications of a switch to his posterior by his strict father. One of his father’s axioms that he followed all his life was never to procrastinate.

At age 8, he had his first brush with death when he led his gang down a slide in a steel cart into a deep gravel pit. The cart flipped over on him and laid his leg open to the bone. He quit school at 12 when his father died in a construction accident, and he became the major family breadwinner for his mother and four younger siblings. He said in his memoirs, ‘That day I turned from a harum-scarum youngster into a young man serious beyond my age.’ He sold newspapers, peddled eggs and goat’s milk, then worked in a glassmaking factory. Seeking more income, he worked successively in a foundry, a brewery, a shoe factory and a monument works, where he carved and polished his father’s tombstone.

Engines became young Rickenbacker’s passion, and he found a job that changed his life in 1906 when he went to work for Lee Frayer, a race car driver and head of the Frayer-Miller Automobile Co. Frayer liked the scrawny, scrappy lad and let him ride in major races as his mechanic.

Rick later went to work as a salesman for the Columbus Buggy Co., which was then making Firestone-Columbus automobiles. He joined automobile designer Fred Duesenberg in 1912 and struck out on his own as a race car driver. He soon established a reputation as a daring driver and won some races — but not without numerous accidents and narrow escapes. After each crash he telegraphed his mother, telling her not to worry.

Although Rickenbacker set a world speed record of 134 mph at Daytona in 1914, he was never able to win the big prize at Indianapolis. While preparing for the Vanderbilt Cup Race in California in November 1916, he had his first ride in an aircraft — flown by Glenn Martin, who was beginning his own career as a pilot and aircraft manufacturer. Rickenbacker had a lifelong fear of heights, but he had not been apprehensive during the flight.

When America entered the war in 1917, Rickenbacker volunteered despite the fact that he was making a reported $40,000 a year at the time. He wanted to learn to fly, but at 27 he was overage for flight training and had no college degree. However, because of his fame as a race car driver, he was sworn in as a sergeant and sailed for Europe as a chauffeur. Contrary to legend, he was not assigned to General John J. Pershing but did wangle an assignment driving Colonel William ‘Billy’ Mitchell’s flashy twin-six Packard. He pestered Mitchell until he was permitted to apply for flight training, claiming to be 25, the age limit for pilot trainees.

After only 17 days as a student pilot, Rick graduated, was commissioned a lieutenant and assigned to the 94th Aero Squadron, under Major John Huffer, based at Gengoult Aerodome near Toul, France. Equipped with Nieuport 28s, it was the first American-trained fighter squadron to draw blood, when 1st Lt. Douglas Campbell and 2nd Lt. Alan Winslow brought down a Pfalz D.IIIa and an Albatros D.Va on April 14, 1918.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to