{"id":25002,"date":"2012-10-08T12:45:16","date_gmt":"2012-10-08T17:45:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=25002"},"modified":"2012-10-08T12:46:05","modified_gmt":"2012-10-08T17:46:05","slug":"rickenbacker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=25002","title":{"rendered":"The Ultimate American"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is a short list of people who genuinely, truly inspire me. Ernest Shackelton, we’ve talked about. Stanislaus Schmajzner is coming up shortly. \u00a0Lech Walesa will get an article soon.<\/p>\n

But today would have been the 132nd birthday of Eddie Rickenbacker.<\/p>\n

And if you’ve never heard of him, join the club. \u00a0 And yet in his day – and he had a long day – he may have been the ultimate manifestation of what it meant, and means, to be an American.<\/p>\n

Rickenbacker was born in Edward Rickenbacher, in 1890, in a poor neighborhood in Columbus Ohio, the son of Swiss-German immigrants. \u00a0His father died when he was 13; in his autobiography, Rickenbacker said it was an accident; one of his biographers claimed the elder Rickenbacher died after a fight. \u00a0Young Eddie left school after seventh grade, working a long series of odd jobs, including a job in a foundry. \u00a0He discovered an aptitude for mechanics, as well as a desire to learn, even taking a corresondence course in engineering.<\/p>\n

He supplemented his informal and semi-formal education with lucky bits of practical experience; he told the story of encountering a broken-down car out on the road, with its driver, completely flummoxed by the breakdown. \u00a0Rickenbacker had never worked on a car – but he took his correspondence-school engineering and natural mechanical aptitude and figured the problem out, and got it back on the road – and left him with the car bug at a time when cars were what the Personal Computer would be in about 1975; a toy of the very wealthy.<\/p>\n

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Rickenbacker, early in his racing career, at the wheel of a “Firestone\/Columbus” racer. In those days, race cars carried on-board mechanics – partly to fix things, partly to counterbalance the car on tight turns.<\/p><\/div>\n

Rickenbacker went from an accidental tinkerer to a salesman to, in very quick succession, a race car driver. \u00a0Staring with the American branch of Peugeot, he quickly went over to the Maxwell team, back in the days when race car drivers were like extreme sports celebs today, barnstorming around the country and racing in cobbled-together tracks, in the days long before drivers wore helmets, much less roll bars. \u00a0Rickenbacker raced in four Indianapolis 500 races back in the late oughts and the early teens.<\/p>\n

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Rickenbacker, at the wheel of a “Blitzen Benz”, in which he set a land speed record in the Teens. I didn’t mention that he held a land speed record, did I? Yep. That too.<\/p><\/div>\n

He got into aviation the same way he got into cars; he happened upon a barnstorming aviator who’d had mechanical problems; he traded some mechanical help for a ride in the plane. \u00a0And again, he was hooked. \u00a0The pilot, fatefully, turned out to be T.F. Dodd, who became one of the pioneers of American military aviation, and served as the top aviation officer for the American Expeditionary Force in World War I.<\/p>\n

Around then, World War I broke out. \u00a0Rickenbacker went to Britain – ostensibly to race, but with an ulterior motive of finding ways to get into the fight. \u00a0The British treated the celebrity – who at the time still spelled his name “Rickenbacher” – with suspicion, keeping him under surveillance as a potential German spy. \u00a0He returned to America, believing war was imminent, and hatched a plan to recruit fellow race drivers – mostly daredevils and risk-addicts with strong mechanical aptitude – to serve as pilots.<\/p>\n

When the US entered the war, Rickenbacker – he’d changed the spelling to make it look more American – joined the Army as an infantryman, but quickly parlayed his celebrity and his contact with Dodd into a job first as an engineering officer with the first of the US Army’s new fighter squadrons, the 94th Pursuit Squadron. \u00a0He quickly wangled his way into a flight assignment (he had to roust up another engineer to take his job first).<\/p>\n

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Rickenbacker, by his first plane, a French-built Nieuport 17. The plane contributed to one of his many brushes with death. It was a very maneuverable plane – but prone to having the fabric skin of its upper wing rip off if it went too fast in a dive. Which it did, once, when Rickenbacker was trying to evade a German attack. He managed to coax the plane in for a landing – more or less miraculously.<\/p><\/div>\n

And then he went on a tear, shooting down six German planes in his first month, becoming an “ace” (five kills), one of America’s first, before an ear infection – serious business in the days before planes were pressurized – grounded him for three months. \u00a0He recovered and, promoted to captain and\u00a0squadron\u00a0leader, banged out 20 more confirmed kills by the end of the war, including two kills on his first day back in action. \u00a0Most of the kills, as a matter of trivia, were among the hardest targets the German air service had to offer, the Fokker D-7 fighters that were at the time the best fighter plane in the air. \u00a0 \u00a0He was awarded the Medal of Honor for his exploits (belatedly, in 1931), and remained America’s top fighter ace until World War II, where he was first passed by Marine and future South Dakota governor Joe Foss.<\/p>\n

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Rickenbacker’s Spad 13, the plane in which he ran up most of his score. Also built in France, the Spad was one of the better fighter aircraft of World War I.<\/p><\/div>\n

He married his first and only wife, Adelaide, in 1922. \u00a0Adelaide was something of a throw-forward; outspoken, independent, divorced and both opinionated and not averse to make sure people knew it, she and Rickenbacker were married for the next 51 years, ’til Rickenbacker’s death in 1973.<\/p>\n

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The Rickenbackers, with their two adopted sons David and William.<\/p><\/div>\n

In 1920, capitalizing on his fame but driven by an urge to build a better mousetrap, he founded the Rickenbacker Motor Company. \u00a0The company’s goal was to build the most advanced cars on the market, incorporating the latest racing technology into passenger cars. \u00a0The biggest advance – four wheel brakes. \u00a0At the time, most cars had brakes on the two rear wheels; as a lifelong winter driver, I can only imagine how fun that must have been on the ice.<\/p>\n

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A 1923 “Rickenbacker Six”, serving as a pace car at the Indy 500. It was one of the most advanced cars of its era.<\/p><\/div>\n

It was an era long before the auto market coalesced into a “big three” – there were dozens of manufacturers at the time – but the bigger manufacturers at the time engaged in an epic PR battle to try to squeeze Rickenbacker off the road – fearing, as Rickenbacker related it, that their own backlogs of two-wheeled-brake vehicles would be unsaleable.<\/p>\n

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A Rickenbacker sedan.<\/p><\/div>\n

Rickenbacker Motor Company only lasted until 1927, but its legacy – the four wheel brake system, among many other advances – lives on today; most American auto makers adopted them within a few years. \u00a0While the major auto makers squeezed Rickenbacker out of the business, they quickly offered him work; he served as a regional sales director for their “Sheridan”, “LaSalle” and “Cadillac” marques, as well as serving, ironically, as head of American distribution for Dutch-owned Fokker Aircraft, 11 of whose aircraft he’d shot down during the war.<\/p>\n

Rickenbacker went on to buy the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, turning it into the national institution it is today (before shutting it down at the beginning of \u00a0World War II). \u00a0He sold it after the war, but it was during his ownership that many of the traditions of the storied race, and the Brickyard itself, were instituted.<\/p>\n

It was via his ongoing interest in aviation that he persuaded GM to invest in “North American Aviation”. \u00a0One of its subsidiaries, “Eastern Air Transport”, was a\u00a0fledgling\u00a0and failing airline; GM appointed Rickenbacker to take over the struggling carrier. \u00a0He merged it with Florida Airways, turned it into one of the country’s major air carriers, and then arranged to buy the airline from GM in 1938.<\/p>\n

It was around this time that Rickenbacker first delved into politics; although he never ran for office, he was an outspoken critic of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, earning the ire not only of the administration but of much of the press; liberal media bias is nothing new. \u00a0In 1934, he got into direct conflict with Roosevelt over the President’s decision to cancel all commercial air mail contracts and have the US Army Air Corps deliver the mail. Rickenbacker savaged this decision; when a number of Army pilots, untrained in all-weather cargo flight, were killed in accidents, Rickenbacker condemned the action as “legalized murder”; Roosevelt in turn ordered NBC radio to stop broadcasting Rickenbacker’s statements about Roosevelt.<\/p>\n

Still, Eastern thrived.<\/p>\n

On February 26, 1941, Eastern Flight 21, on approach to an airfield near Atlanta, crashed into a hillside. \u00a0Rickenbacker, flying to Atlanta on business, was gravely injured – massive internal injuries, many broken bones and dislocated joints, and an eyeball popped out of its socket. \u00a0He was trapped, immobilized, and – most frightening of all to Rickenbacker – soaked in aviation fuel. \u00a0The plane and its survivors sat on the mountainside until morning before searchers found them. \u00a0Although he’d spent the night encouraging the other survivors to hang on, Rickenbacker had passed out from shock and internal bleeding; he was initially left for dead, and taken off the hillside when the ambulance crews started hauling “bodies”. \u00a0He was left for dead again at the hospital; his injuries looked unsurvivable. \u00a0It wasn’t until a doctor noticed he still had a pulse that they worked on trying to save him, the better part of a day after the accident. \u00a0The newspapers announced that he had been killed in the accident.<\/p>\n

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The crash scene. \u00a0The DC3 – at the time, one of the most advanced passenger planes in the world – was landing for the second leg of a trip from DC to Houston.<\/p><\/div>\n

It wasn’t the last time in his life that they’d have to retract that story.<\/p>\n

In his autobiography, Rickenbacker described the scene – and his battle to stave off death – with riveting intensity. \u00a0He felt death calling to him – not for the first time in his life, naturally – and described the internal, mental battle to hold on, by far the most intense of his many brushes with death. \u00a0He was in the hospital for months, and took the better part of a year to get his eyesight completely back. \u00a0 There were eight dead and eight survivors.<\/p>\n

While he was recuperating, World War II began. \u00a0Rickenbacker wanted to fly again – but between his injuries and the usual fifty-year-old stuff, he knew he wasn’t in the game in that way anymore. \u00a0He visited flight schools, inspected pilots and aircraft, and lent his name and his expertise to the Air Force as it got ready to go fight. \u00a0And as US forces went into action around the world, he visited – partly as a morale-builder, partly because of his own vast technical knowledge of aircraft.<\/p>\n

It was on one of these missions that Rickenbacker had another brush with death. \u00a0On an inspection tour of bases in the Pacific, and carrying a message from President Roosevelt to General MacArthur in Australia, Rickenbacker’s plane – a B17 Flying Fortress – was en route to a planned fuel stop on Canton Island in the central Pacific. \u00a0A defect in a damaged navigational instrument caused the crew to fly the plane hundreds of miles off course; they ran out of fuel in the middle, almost literally, of nowhere. \u00a0The plane “ditched” – carried out an emergency landing in the ocean – and the plane’s crew of six, Rickenbacker and his assitant, all of them injured to one degree or another (and with Rickenbacker still walking with a cane and very much still hurting from the plane crash) climbed aboard three small life rafts.<\/p>\n

After a few days lost at sea, the newspapers again declared him dead. \u00a0His wife prevailed on the Army and Navy not to give up the search.<\/p>\n

The rafts’ emergency food supplies ran out after three days. \u00a0Rickenbacker described their battle to survive; they soaked their clothing with water from passing rain showers, caught and ate raw fish and a small shark, and whatever came their way. \u00a0In one memorable incident, when the fish gave out, Rickenbacker led the crew in a prayer for salvation – and a seagull landed on his head. \u00a0He grabbed the hapless bird, killed it, and the crew ate it raw. \u00a0One of the men died – but Rickenbacker led the crew to keep their spirits until, after 24 days floating at sea, a US Navy search plane found the rafts, on November 13 1942. \u00a0They had drifted on the current for thousands of miles before being picked up near Tuvalu.<\/p>\n

After the war, Rickenbacker continued running Eastern, making it the most profitable airline in the country for many years (he was forced out as CEO during a downturn in 1959, and spent the rest of his life as a conservative activist (who urged respect but caution for the Soviets, whom he’d visited extensively during the war). \u00a0He wrote his biographpy, “Rickenbacker” in 1967 – I probably found it on my dad’s bookshelf when I was nine or ten years old – and clearly remember reading in the newspaper that Rickenbacker died of a stroke in 1973. \u00a0For the first time, there was no retraction.<\/p>\n

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And Rickenbacker’s example, like those of Shackelton and Schmajzner – never, ever give up – has kept me going through an awful lot of much, much lesser trials.<\/p>\n

But even when he wasn’t dodging, out-muscling and throwing the finger directly at death, Rickenbacker was an example for the ages. \u00a0As we watch our school systems crumble, Rickenbacker was a classic example of the self-taught person, and of the power of a curious, agile mind to learn on its own. As a tireless businessman, he was perhaps one of the greatest entrepreneurs in American history – and had the conservative worldview to show for it.<\/p>\n

And as the second-generation son of immigrants, he’s one of the greatest examples of what the American spirit should<\/em> be.<\/p>\n

It’s a crime that the story of his life isn’t required learning in our schools today. \u00a0We’d be a better nation for it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a short list of people who genuinely, truly inspire me. Ernest Shackelton, we’ve talked about. Stanislaus Schmajzner is coming up shortly. \u00a0Lech Walesa will get an article soon. But today would have been the 132nd birthday of Eddie Rickenbacker. And if you’ve never heard of him, join the club. \u00a0 And yet in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history-and-its-making"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25002"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25004,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25002\/revisions\/25004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}