#305： Lessons from the Epic Age of Flight
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Summary
While the first manned flight took place in 1903, it wasn t until World War I that aeronautical advances were made that would turn aviation into more than just a county fair spectacle. While many men contributed to moving manned flight forward, and many men lost their lives in the process, during this period there were three men in particular who stood out: Eddie Rickenbacker, Jimmy Doolittle, and Charles Lindbergh.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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While the first manned flight took place in 1903, it wouldn't be until World War I that
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aeronautical advances were made that would turn aviation into more than just a county fair
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spectacle. While many men contributed to moving manned flight forward and many men lost their
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lives in the process, during this period there were three men in particular who stood out.
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Eddie Rickenbacker, Jimmy Doolittle, and Charles Lindbergh. All three men made important contributions
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to aviation before, during, and after World War I, and all three men became financially successful,
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world-famous celebrities. When World War II erupted, all three men were middle-aged and wealthy. They
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could have easily sat out the war while younger men fought, but they all answered the call to duty
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and provided their talents as ace aviators to the allied cause. My guest today on the podcast wrote
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a history of Rickenbacker, Doolittle, and Lindbergh. His name is Winston Groom. He's authored numerous
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history and historical fiction books, including Forrest Gump, probably heard of that one, as well
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as the subject of today's show, The Aviators, in which he details the engaging history of these
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three pioneers of flight and their service to their country. Today on the show, we discuss each of
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these men and their respective heroics, from Lindbergh's famous flight across the Atlantic, to Doolittle's
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legendary raid on the Japanese, and to Rickenbacker's survival at sea for 23 days during World War II.
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We also dig into their complex characters, and specifically Lindbergh's testy relationship
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with the press, and how his initial opposition to the U.S. entering World War II got him labeled
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a traitor by FDR. Winston is a masterful storyteller, so you're in for a real treat today. You're going
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to be left both entertained and inspired by these three men. After the show's over, check out the show
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notes at aom.is slash aviators, where you can find links to resources, where you can delve deeper into this topic.
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So you are a prolific writer of history, historical fiction. I'm sure our listeners are familiar with
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Forrest Gump. One that I just read just walked away blown away, because I knew very little about this
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part of American history. The book is The Aviators, where you focus on three pioneers of aviation,
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James Doolittle, Charles Lindbergh, and Edward Rickenbacker. Before we get into these, the lives of these
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men, their contributions to aviation, I think it's important for our listeners to have a little bit of
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background to what aviation was like before they came on the scene during World War I. What was flying like
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before World War I? And I mean, did it serve any practical purpose?
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Yeah. Well, they were learning by doing. You know, there wasn't really, there was no aeronautics or anything.
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And, you know, once you get up in three dimensions, you're in a whole different scale of things.
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And there's a lot of things that go on up there that don't go on here on Earth, you know, four-wheel car.
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And so they had to learn this stuff literally seat of the pants, what to do and what not to do.
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And so a great many of these people perished. I mean, one that comes to mind that I wrote about in my
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novel El Paso is that I can't remember her name now, great aviatrix. And she died because she wasn't
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wearing a seat belt because of an argument at that point. I'm guessing around, what, 1910.
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One of the seat belts were dangerous because if you crashed and burned, you couldn't get out of the
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plane. She was an exhibition over Boston Harbor and the plane turned and both she and her passenger
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fell out, you know, three or four thousand feet into the harbor and died. So that was that kind of
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thing. It was just, it was learning by doing. Yeah. And it seems like a lot of the early
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years of aviation, a lot of it was just like barnstorming. It was just like shows. It was
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more just entertainment purposes, really. Aircraft was not reliable enough. And this,
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this actually went for after World War I as well, but it just wasn't reliable enough for passenger
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service. Uh, because you, uh, the, the, the, the weather was, it was a deciding factor and things
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like fog, it caused the pilot simply to bail out. I mean, there was no, you know, you've
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gone into a fog, you know, tell her what you're going to find because your instruments weren't,
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weren't, uh, actually enough. And did a little solve that problem. But, uh, that, that was much
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later. And so, uh, you, you know, you couldn't have to say a flight from even the Cleveland to,
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uh, Chicago because you couldn't say it with any kind of regularity, uh, whether it would get there
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or not. Um, the mail was the first, uh, test of this, uh, the U S, uh, air mail. And a lot of the
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pilots, as a matter of fact, they said it was basically a suicide club, uh, about, oh, I think
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70% of all the air mail pilots, uh, they had back in the 1920s died in crashes. So it was, it was a
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very risky business. Yeah. And because it was risky, did it draw a certain type of person?
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Oh God. Yes. You know, you know, they're devils, which there were many, you know, they, they, uh,
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uh, they, they, they were fearless people, obviously. And they, they had put aside that
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notion of self-preservation for the privilege of, you know, being up in the air like Batman
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or something. It seems like a lot of them came, they were like race car drivers. A lot of them
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were race car drivers before they got into it. Yeah. That, well, of course, certainly Rickenbacker
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was, he was the greatest race car driver, one of the greatest, uh, before he, he took to flying,
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uh, as a matter of fact, he owned the Indianapolis 500 speedway at one point.
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Yeah, that's right. We'll get into a little more detail about these, these guys, Rickenbacker
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and Lindbergh and Doolittle, and they all contributed to aviation in different ways. And we'll talk
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about the different ways they did that. But as you researched and you wrote about them,
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what, what do you think they all had in common? I mean, I'm sure fearlessness was one, but anything
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Yeah. They had a drive to not just be better, but be the best in it, that, uh, it, it sort
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of snowballed, uh, along the way as they, as they got better, they, they strive to become
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the very best and they were the very best in, in, in what they did. And I think that that
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is something that doesn't limit itself just to say aviation, but it's, uh, in, in all
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things, all matters excellence. I was just talking to having dinner with a pilot last night. He's
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a Colonel in the air force and now flies private planes. And he, he wondered about Einstein and
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what propelled him. And we started talking about it over dinner and, you know, he, he just,
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he, he, he had an obvious aptitude, I understand it for mathematics, but he wanted to, he could
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see into the future. He literally could do that and see into outer space where the rules
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don't apply. There's no Newtonian physics don't apply in outer space because there's no gravity.
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And it's, it's, it's a very special thing, uh, when you find such men, such people.
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And I thought it was interesting too, like they all, they all came from relatively humble
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beginnings as well. I mean, I guess Lindbergh might've been middle-class, but they were
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Certainly. Uh, well, they were, they were. And, and matter of fact, they were, uh, well,
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it was exceptional Lindbergh. They were lower middle-class. Uh, Doolittle was from California
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in Los Angeles area. And his father abandoned the family when he was very, very young. And he's
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raised by his mother in almost impoverished circumstances. He made his way as a boxer. He
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was a, he was a small guy. He was only about five, six, but he was a very good boxer. He actually
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turned pro pro professional boxer in California after winning the state championship. But, uh,
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he then applied himself at the university of California and got a degree in, in, uh,
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engineering. And ultimately he got a degree, he got a PhD degree in aeronautical engineering
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from MIT, which is one of the best schools, you know, engineering school, probably is the best
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engineering school in the world. And so he knew where of he spoke. Uh, Eddie Rickenbacker is very
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similar. He came from, he was from Columbus, Ohio, and his family had immigrated. The parents
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from, uh, Switzerland, they were poor German Swiss who in those times, back in the 1890s,
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I think they, they, they, they could never get out of their class, which was essentially a farmer,
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a peasants class, uh, that, that, that, that, that in Europe, that ability didn't exist. And so they
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immigrated to the United States. I think his mother came with a, with a note pinned on her,
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um, saying who she was and where she's going. She didn't speak English, but, uh, Rickenbacker's
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father was, he was killed early on in a, in a fight again, raised by the mother. I think that,
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that if I'm not mistaken, Columbus was where the original soapbox derby was run or it was
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somewhere there in Ohio. And he entered that and he won that. And then he, he took the car
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racing. He, he was fascinated with the automobile. And as we talked about a minute ago, he, he
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became, uh, I think he was third in the, in the world somewhere along the way. They measured
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that he, in, in world war one, he, he wanted to get into the war. They, he was very famous
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by then as a race car driver, somehow finagled his way into becoming a driver. They made him
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a sergeant and he was a driver of Billy Mitchell. He was a famous aviator who was court martial
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for promoting aviation too strongly. And, uh, through Billy Mitchell, he, he got to be a,
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a pilot, um, and, and then wind up shooting down more German planes than any, any other
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American at least and became the ace of aces. And Lindbergh was probably raised in a more
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financially secure position. His father was a congressman and had actually done very well,
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but then he, he lost his money. I think his father did in some agricultural adventure and
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he lost his seat in Congress and the father sort of abandoned the family. He managed to
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get a little bit of college training, but again, he, he wanted to fly. He, he watched
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these air in Minnesota or Wisconsin. I can't remember which, but he was out in the woods and
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look up in there and see an airplane and think, I want to do that. And he scraped up $500 to
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buy a, a used training plane, one of those Curtis Jennings from World War I and learn how to fly
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it himself. I mean, without any training, he just thought he knew how to do it. That's how these
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That's how, and that's how they got into flying. Well, let's talk about Rickenbacker. So he was an
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ace of ace, but he, in the process, he made a lot of contributions to aviation and was able to
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propel the force. Like what, what exactly was Rickenbacker's role in promoting or making advances
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in aeronautics during World War I? Well, I don't know that he made a lot of advances in aeronautics
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in the, in, in the first world war, but he, he certainly pushed the envelope so far as being a
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fighter pilot. He had a, if I'm not mistaken, 21 victories, which means he, he shot down 21
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enemy planes. And, uh, I remember one time he tore into a squadron of seven enemy fighter planes
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just by himself. He so terrified these people, they all, they all flew off in the other direction
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just because he was bold, but he had a, he had a way of suppressing his fears to the extent that
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he said he'd never was afraid when he was there. It was always too many things to, to watch out for
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to do. But whenever he came down and it landed, he would, uh, he was in an airdrome in France.
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It was a wall that he'd go behind the wall and, and throw up. Uh, and then he started to shake
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and then he'd go into the officer's lounge and have a drink. And that would kind of put him back
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on, on an even keel again until the next time. But that was, you know, it was a scary thing what
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he did. But then of course, afterwards, uh, you know, he became the owner and the president of
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Eastern airlines and he did a huge amount of promoting, uh, promotion of, of, uh, commercial
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flying. It was, it was just enormous. He, he, he was a world known worldwide known figure
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in commercial aviation. Everybody knew Eddie Reckenbacher.
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Yeah. I mean, that was, I, I never, this is the first time I ever heard of him, but he
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was, because of his race car driving, because of his exploits during world war one, he was
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this, yeah, he was a, he was world famous. He was a celebrity.
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Oh God. Yeah. I've got a set of glasses that belonged. I say belonged to him. He would give
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them out from Eastern airlines. And it says compliments of captain Eddie Reckenbacher.
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So he, he contributed a lot to dog fighting, like how we fight in the air and then also
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commercial. Let's talk about Doolittle because unlike Reckenbacher, who was a celebrity even
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before he became a native ace, Doolittle, he had to earn his celebrity after world war one.
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So what was it that Doolittle did that basically made modern aviation possible that we know
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Well, he, he was so good as a, as a cadet, a flying cadet that they made him, they made
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him a teacher, an instructor. He never got into the action. He was furious, but that was
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the way it was. But he stayed in the army, stayed in the military and for, for at least
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for, until the 1930s. And at one point he, of course he became, he became a household name
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because of his flying abilities as a, they used to have, uh, races. I think they still
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have a few of those, but these pilots would, would race around big pylons and the people
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went, it was a blood sport. People went to see him crash, you know, kind of like the,
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these car races they have today. But they, in fact, they did crash too much and he, he
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won all of those prizes. And at last he announced that he was getting it very publicly announced
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he was quitting. He said, I think the aviation, we've, we've done enough to promote the aviation
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in these kinds of races, but now we need to promote aviation safety. And this isn't the
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way to do it because we're losing too many people. And that was pretty much the end of
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the big time plane racing. But what he did was he realized like all of them did, like
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Lindbergh and Reagan back at that, that the aviation was so limited by the weather that
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they needed some way, uh, to overcome it. And the only way to overcome it was instruments.
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And basically what he did, what Doolittle did was he invented, because he was actually a
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professor of aeronautical engineering, with the help of the government, he invented a number
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of instruments, very basic instruments, but there's still, some form of these are still
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used in planes today that would allow you to fly blind. And to prove it, he went out one
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day on Long Island, well, out of somewhere in Long Island, when the, the big fog moved
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in and he pulled a canvas hood over the cockpit of his biplane. This was back in the late
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19, early 1930s. He taxied and he took off and he flew for about 20 miles and he came back
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and he landed in a total, under this canopy where all he could see was his instruments.
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And this was enormous. And it was the very beginning of commercial flight.
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Yeah. I mean, that's, that, I mean, it's crazy that he tested it himself. Like they, he,
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like I say, like he helped invent the altimeter, which allows you to know how high you are,
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the artificial horizon. I love how you describe the radar, because sort of the rudimentary radar
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It was a radio signal. It was simply a signal that went out and they had, you can hardly believe
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the guy would risk his life on this. There were two reeds, like you have it like an oboe
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or something, a reed. And the, they sent out a radio signal from a beam from the air, airdrome
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airport. And you could tell how far away from the airport you were by the humming of the,
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these reeds as it received the signal. And so he knew when he was getting close, when the signal was,
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was louder and louder and louder. And then he'd look at his altimeter and he'd look at his horizon.
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He'd look at whatever else he had. And somehow he was able to put down on a runway and that's all he had.
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And it was an extremely bold thing to do, but he wanted to prove a point.
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Yeah. So by conquering the fog, he paved the way for aviation that we know today.
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Like we were on a jumbo jet because of Doolittle.
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Yeah. They had a, well, they had a hotelier in Paris had put up a big prize.
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I think it was like $50,000, which back then did translate today, maybe a half a million, something like that.
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Many people had tried and many people had died. And Lindbergh decided he was going to enter this,
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this contest just, just for the hell of it. See if he could do it.
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He had missed World War one, but he was in the army, run into some, some army flyers,
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I think during the war, toward the end of the war. And they said, well, why don't you go and, you know, get,
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you know, you've got a plane, you can fly it, you know, get in the army. So he did. He joined up in the reserves
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and he flew and then he decided he was going to enter this race, essentially designed his own plane
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after some fits and starts were trying to buy one and took it to the, the race was from New York to Paris.
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You know, it wasn't from New York to Ireland that had been done.
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But New York to Paris was a, you know, much longer distance.
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And just as he was getting ready to start his, his turn at it, try a handful of other planes,
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probably three or four were, were trying to do it. They all died.
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Well, actually some were grounded because they crashed and they didn't die, but they were hurt.
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The plane was hurt and so on. And he took off and he did it.
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All the characters you follow in this book, I'm sure Charles Lindbergh is the most well known.
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And what, what's interesting is, you know, he's the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic.
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But I didn't, I didn't realize this, or I should have realized this, that there was actually a race.
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Like there was multiple people trying to achieve this goal.
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I think most important, the fact that he was going to do it solo.
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That the, the, the, the bet didn't say anything about solo.
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Because he said, you fall asleep hours over the ocean and just that monotony of it.
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He decided that what he was going to do is have a modern plane.
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Everybody else said, no, you got to have a, at least a biplane in case one of the engines conked out,
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So one of the engines would stop and, you know, probably put down a field or something.
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But if you're in the middle of the Atlantic, that's not possible.
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And so he, he decided he was going to get a big, a big Curtis Wright engine and hope for the best.
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And he took every bit of weight, including, he measured it down to the, like a piece of paper,
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the weight of a piece of paper, just a sheet of paper that he would scribble something on,
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eliminate all the excess weight and use it for gasoline, for fuel.
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He, he actually couldn't even see out of the car.
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He, the way he, he had fuel tanks ahead of him.
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Like if you're sitting in a cockpit, normally you'd look out the front of the cockpit.
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Well, he couldn't do that. He had to stick his head out the side.
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And he didn't need to see what was ahead of him because he knew it was ahead of him.
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Like how was Lindbergh's approach different from these other pilots that,
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and why was he successful when these other pilots failed?
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Was it just luck or was it like the design of the plane?
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Yeah, he was doing it without, without, without those, those kinds of instruments.
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He was, and if, if he had gotten, for instance, in a, in a fog somewhere and over France,
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I mean, because, you know, fog is the most dangerous.
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I mean, I, I'm a sailor and I can tell you the fog is the most hated thing,
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anybody on the water, because you simply can't see where you are.
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There's just, you're, you're in a fog is where you are.
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Uh, so anyway, he, his luck held out and he, he, uh, flew all the way.
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And he's wondering if any place was going to be open where he could get something to eat,
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but how he was going to explain to some pension or somewhere cheap hotel,
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he could stay that he would, he would get money in the morning through American Express.
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He could see, he looked down and he, so he knew he was probably going to make it.
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But he was really worried about his circumstances where he got to Paris because he was hungry.
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And he saw these, he said, there must be some factory letting out.
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And he saw these thousands and thousands of headlights and cars.
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And he looked, he went, descended to the airfield.
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There were hundreds of thousands of people on the airdrome.
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And he said, well, he didn't know where to land.
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So he found a runway that wasn't being used and managed to land.
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And he got out of the plane and all these people ran over to him and seized him.
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And they lifted him up on their shoulders and carried around for a half an hour before
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some French pilots, uh, somehow rescued him and got him into a building.
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And then he was then taken to the American embassy and treated like a God.
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This, this fame began there and it never, ever ceased.
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Like he was the first like modern, like worldwide mega celebrity.
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I mean, like the biggest rock star, the biggest athlete.
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And you think back then, you know, we were in between the wars, the world was at peace.
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He, he was, uh, because it didn't hurt that he was a tall, handsome, good looking, well-spoken
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young man, uh, very humble and, uh, you know, uh, just a pretty much, uh, everybody said
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a good, uh, all around good guy, but he, he was a mega hero.
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Well, yeah, he, he didn't like all the celebrity after a while that, that can wear thin.
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And, uh, but he, he was not like these movie stars.
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He always had time to do these things, but he, his privacy, the trouble was, he was so
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famous that his very privacy was, was often, but he didn't have any privacy.
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And, um, you know, of course it was a horrible tragedy with his, his infant son who was kidnapped
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The press would, I mean, they would literally camp out wherever he was, no matter where he
00:24:24.940
went, uh, when he was going to get married, whenever the press would be camped out, uh,
00:24:31.940
And there was, he had always had to disguise when he went out, you know, he would lie in
00:24:36.940
the back seat of the car and that, you know, that, that can wear thin on you for after a
00:24:43.940
Well, they, these, these three men in their twenties and early thirties, they made these
00:24:47.940
fantastic contributions to aviation during and around world war one.
00:24:52.940
But what's amazing about them is that when world war two broke out and the U S entered
00:24:57.940
world war two, all three of them returned to service for their country as pilots.
00:25:05.940
I mean, they were too old to any kind of regular military service.
00:25:10.940
And, uh, they, they were certainly, uh, well, well enough established and extremely wealthy,
00:25:18.940
So they didn't have to do this, but they did it.
00:25:21.940
And I think that in the regular service, cause Doolittle, uh, was a regular army.
00:25:27.940
Well, at that point, uh, what they call army air court, then born to the, to the part of
00:25:37.940
Well, it is before the Pentagon, wherever the hell the army was based.
00:25:42.940
And Roosevelt was very, very after Pearl Harbor, extremely adamant that we needed to strike
00:25:50.940
And nobody knew how to do it because we had aircraft carriers, but they were like, you
00:25:55.940
know, we had fighter planes on them or fighter bombers, but they were not, they didn't have
00:26:01.940
the range to strike Japan and get back to the carrier.
00:26:05.940
And even if they had, they couldn't carry a payload of bombs.
00:26:08.940
It would be anything that would, that would make, be meaningful.
00:26:12.940
And one day, uh, a Naval captain discovered that the B-25 could fit on an aircraft carrier.
00:26:19.940
And B-25 was what they call a medium sized bomber, but it carried a payload.
00:26:25.940
And Hap Arnold, the head of the air force assigned Doolittle to get up a squadron of these
00:26:33.940
And he did, and he trained them and he, he did all that.
00:26:36.940
And then he announced that he was going with them.
00:26:38.940
And there's no way you're too valuable to go with them.
00:26:45.940
And it was a finagling that went on there and he wound up, uh, leading this, this bunch.
00:26:50.940
And it was an extremely bold thing that they did.
00:26:54.940
Uh, he did a little himself was, uh, because he was so educated.
00:26:59.940
He was an, uh, an odds man and he gave them himself and everybody else less than 50, 50 chance
00:27:06.940
that they were going to come back alive because they had to go and get off the carrier first
00:27:13.940
And nobody had ever done that before with a full payload of bombs of that, that, that kind
00:27:18.940
And then they had to get to Japan and it was said that Tokyo had a thousand anti-aircraft
00:27:28.940
And then they had to fly on from after that to airfields in China, um, which was supposed
00:27:34.940
to have been prepared and then weren't in fact.
00:27:40.940
They took off from the carrier under duress because they'd been spotted.
00:27:44.940
They were supposed to take off 400 miles from Japan.
00:27:51.940
They were just an awful storm and the waves were as high as a 30 story building.
00:27:59.940
But anyway, they all got off somehow, performed their mission.
00:28:03.940
They, they came in so low that the Japanese were so surprised.
00:28:09.940
And by the time they got to man their, their anti-aircraft guns to get their fighters off
00:28:14.940
the ground, doodled raiders and hit their targets and gone on.
00:28:19.940
But then the, the, the biggest problem came up with the weather turn really bad.
00:28:26.940
They were supposed to have landed in daytime because it was late.
00:28:32.940
And China, of course, is the coast is lime and it's big mountain ranges.
00:28:38.940
Nobody even knew how, how high they were because the maps couldn't be trusted.
00:28:42.940
But they flew on and finally, uh, do a little radio there.
00:28:46.940
The planes just fly until you run out of gas and jump out.
00:28:52.940
Because half of China was, was occupied by the Japanese and they knew probably if they
00:28:57.940
were caught by Japanese, uh, they were going to be, uh, executed on the spot or taken to
00:29:05.940
But most of them, they jumped out and there were 16 planes and I think about 80 flyers.
00:29:16.940
And a couple, a half dozen more were captured by the Japanese and some of those were executed.
00:29:22.940
But the majority of them by hook or by crook, somehow with the help of the Chinese people
00:29:29.940
were taken back to the U.S. lines there and flown home.
00:29:32.940
And do a little, he, he was mortified because he thought he was going to be court marshaled
00:29:37.940
because he lost all the planes and the whole squadron.
00:29:44.940
Finally, there's a big security route to India.
00:29:49.940
And general Marshall, he was the chief of staff of the army.
00:29:53.940
I called him in and he said, we're going to the white house.
00:29:58.940
He said, the president is going to give you the Congressional Medal of Honor, which he did.
00:30:04.940
Of course, Doolittle became very, very famous after that.
00:30:09.940
Well, the interesting thing about Doolittle is, and the reason I wrote this book the way I did,
00:30:18.940
He wrote an autobiography, but I got about a third of the way into it.
00:30:24.940
And I said, now I know why nobody's done a biography of Doolittle.
00:30:27.940
Because the raid itself, which happened in 1942, was the biggest thing in the biography.
00:30:36.940
Even though, interesting enough, he became the commanding general of every air force we had in the Atlantic theater.
00:30:46.940
When we invaded North Africa, he was the commander of the 12th Air Force.
00:30:51.940
When we invaded Italy, he was the commander of the 15th Air Force.
00:30:55.940
When we invaded Normandy, the European continent, he was the commander of the 8th Air Force.
00:31:03.940
And the problem with it was, Eisenhower had forbade him to fly because he knew about Ultra,
00:31:10.940
which was the top-secret code-breaking operation going on in Great Britain.
00:31:15.940
And they were afraid that if the Germans got him to somehow torture him and cause him to reveal this,
00:31:24.940
And so his work was basically administrative, even though it was great work.
00:31:29.940
But then also, he lived on until he was like 95.
00:31:33.940
And so I got right, and I said, you know, this book, I can't write this book.
00:31:38.940
I said, I wish the heck he had crashed in the Pacific like Eddie Rickenbacker had.
00:31:43.940
And then I thought, wait a minute, I started having an epiphany.
00:31:46.940
And I said, wait a minute, how about if I write about Doolittle and Rickenbacker?
00:31:49.940
And then I had another epiphany right on top of that.
00:31:53.940
If I had Lindbergh, I got the three greatest flyers of the 20th century.
00:31:59.940
They were all World War I products one way or the other.
00:32:02.940
And they all did, you know, their thing early on in their 20s.
00:32:07.940
Well, except for Doolittle, but he did, he raised and did all that then.
00:32:19.940
And like going to Rickenbacker, like that was phenomenal too.
00:32:22.940
Like he was this celebrity, hero, wealthy, went back and he got shot down in the Pacific.
00:32:28.940
And he was a castaway, like in the middle of the ocean in a lifeboat.
00:32:34.940
He was in a B-17 and they were going to, he had some special message to tell General MacArthur,
00:32:40.940
who was in New Guinea and they took off on his B-17.
00:32:45.940
And, um, for a variety of reasons, including some, some navigational problems, they ran out of gas.
00:32:51.940
And they had to put a B-17 down in an ocean with 12 foot seas.
00:32:56.940
It was never been done before successfully anyway.
00:32:59.940
And they got out in these little life rafts and the plane sunk almost immediately.
00:33:05.940
And this was early on in the war before the air corps realized what they needed to put in the life rafts.
00:33:11.940
And so they had like, they had some fishing poles and hooks, but no bait.
00:33:15.940
They had no water, no food, no, just the best stuff.
00:33:21.940
And they, it was kind of a life raft where one guy has to turn over, everybody's going to turn over.
00:33:25.940
And so they went for like a week with no food, no water.
00:33:30.940
And then all of a sudden Rookerback is sitting there and a seagull landed on his head.
00:33:34.940
And because everybody stared, they're looking at that seagull, that's lunch.
00:33:38.940
And he slowly, slowly reached back as carefully as he could.
00:33:43.940
He seized that bird and blowing its neck and they, they divided it up.
00:33:48.940
He had a good sense, though, to keep the entrails for bait.
00:33:51.940
And so they then began to catch some fish and that got them through.
00:33:55.940
But on they went for week after week until the Air Force was going to give up the search
00:34:02.940
because they don't, they have a certain amount of time.
00:34:06.940
And Mrs. Rickenbacker stormed down from New York to Washington
00:34:12.940
She's the head of the Air Force and don't you dare give up this search.
00:34:15.940
And so they put it on for another week or however long it was.
00:34:19.940
And suddenly one of these search planes looked down and he saw the, saw these life rafts.
00:34:27.940
Finally, they, you know, emaciated and sunburned,
00:34:32.940
the sores that you get when you're in that kind of situation.
00:34:35.940
But Rickenbacker spent a week putting himself back together.
00:34:38.940
And then he flew on back to New, out to New Guinea to give MacArthur his message.
00:34:44.940
So again, it's that tenacity, tenacity that he, they had from the get go.
00:34:48.940
And he was, again, he was in his forties when this was going on too.
00:35:00.940
He could have been just enjoying the high life.
00:35:04.940
He kept on going and he would go out to North Africa.
00:35:08.940
His solid job, they offered him a rank of Lieutenant General.
00:35:16.940
He said, I don't want to get in the military with all that hierarchy.
00:35:19.940
People, even Lieutenant General said, people tell him what to do.
00:35:25.940
And his job was, he would go out to these various pilots units and these were all young
00:35:33.940
They were young men in their twenties who had taken a pilot training, but he was, you
00:35:38.940
know, Rickenbacker was, he was one of the gods, like a little in Lindbergh.
00:35:42.940
And he would go there to various bases and he knew how to give a pep talk.
00:35:50.940
Well, let's talk about Lindbergh because he is an interesting case because it took him a
00:35:53.940
while to come to his country service during World War II, both Rickenbacker and Doolittle,
00:35:59.940
even before World War II, were making a big push for aviation in the military, which kind
00:36:06.940
So can you talk a little bit about Lindbergh and why it took him a bit to come to his country's
00:36:13.940
He, well, you know, he was a Colonel by that time in the, in the, the army and he was
00:36:21.940
He, he was very much opposed to the U S entry into World War II.
00:36:26.940
And I think some of that was a product of his upbringing as essentially an isolationist.
00:36:32.940
And that sprang from World War one, where we sent, you know, two or 3 million troops to
00:36:49.940
Um, he just said, is that the Europe have its own problems.
00:36:53.940
And so he joined an organization called America first.
00:36:57.940
Rickenbacker was in the same organization for a long time.
00:37:03.940
And what, what that meant was that they said, spend their defense money, but spend it on
00:37:10.940
So that if Germany does, in fact, which it appeared, this, uh, do you look now?
00:37:18.940
It appeared that Germany was going to take over all of Europe.
00:37:22.940
From 39 on, early 40 on, Great Britain was the only ally there was.
00:37:31.940
France and all the lowland countries and Scandinavia.
00:37:35.940
Everybody was under the thumb of the Germans except for the Soviet Union.
00:37:39.940
And Lindbergh had been there a number of times, been to Germany, been to, to Great Britain.
00:37:45.940
And he was of the opinion looking at the German air force that they were far superior to anything
00:37:53.940
He became one of the major spokesmen for this America first, which infuriated Roosevelt, President Roosevelt.
00:38:03.940
And Roosevelt had cast doubts on his loyalty because, of course, he was of German extraction.
00:38:10.940
And that caused Lindbergh to renounce his colonelcy in the army.
00:38:15.940
He said, I can't serve for a man who thinks I'm disloyal.
00:38:21.940
In any case, when the war came, when we got in the war at Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt had a long memory.
00:38:31.940
I wouldn't say begged, but he asked very politely.
00:38:39.940
And it not only came his commission, but even where he worked.
00:38:44.940
And wherever he worked, the Roosevelt administration had threatened to pull the government contracts from these companies.
00:38:51.940
And the only person that Roosevelt couldn't stand up to was Henry Ford, who at that point had the largest aircraft manufacturing operation in the world at Willow Run, making warplanes.
00:39:05.940
And so they hired Lindbergh on, as he was a technician.
00:39:13.940
And he did things that very few pilots, with the exception to say, would have done.
00:39:19.940
I mean, high-altitude stuff and pushing the limits on planes.
00:39:24.940
And finally, in 1943, I believe it was, he went to Henry Ford and said, look, I've done all I can do here with testing these aircraft.
00:39:36.940
He said, I need to go and test them under the conditions on which they were designed, meaning combat conditions.
00:39:43.940
And in particular, he wanted to test two airplanes they did.
00:39:48.940
The Navy had a single-engine fighter plane that they used off aircraft carriers and off the islands with the Marine Corps.
00:39:57.940
And the Army was using a twin-engine plane, a P-40, two booms, and it's a funny-looking thing.
00:40:04.940
But that's what the Army was using in MacArthur.
00:40:09.940
He went out and they gave him a, there was a special kind of designation.
00:40:16.940
He was, he dressed up with an officer's uniform.
00:40:21.940
And he was recorded, you know, officer's privileges, very much like a newspaper reporter.
00:40:28.940
And so he went to, of all places, Guala Canal, and studied planes.
00:40:37.940
And he then went up Island to Bougainville and all those places.
00:40:43.940
He flew with some of, with Foss, who was the most famous Marine Corps ace in World War II.
00:40:48.940
And he started flying combat missions with them.
00:40:53.940
And he gave them a lot of good tips and things.
00:40:57.940
So he was, again, the most famous aviator of his age.
00:41:06.940
And they flew with the best known air group that was, I can't remember the name of it, 434th or something like that.
00:41:16.940
And there was the commander who was probably in his twenties.
00:41:29.940
He said, I want to fly with your group and study your aircraft.
00:41:35.940
And so he waited for about four, five, six minutes.
00:41:38.940
And finally, the colonel said, now, what do you say your name was?
00:42:00.940
And he showed them something that they didn't know.
00:42:03.940
How to change the mixture of the fuel that would give them an extra 600-mile range.
00:42:09.940
Everybody was extremely appreciative of this because that was part of the problem with these islands being distant.
00:42:15.940
You know, MacArthur was moving up from New Guinea toward the Philippines and later Japan.
00:42:20.940
In order to send his bombers, his B-17 bombers, they needed escorts.
00:42:25.940
And the fighters just didn't have the fuel range.
00:42:28.940
Well, suddenly, Lindbergh had given him a range.
00:42:31.940
And then one day, a notice comes to him to immediately report to MacArthur's headquarters.
00:42:40.940
Because he's not supposed to be flying with these people.
00:42:51.940
And MacArthur greets him like a long-lost brother.
00:42:54.940
And he told him he's given him this enormous range that they get 600 more miles.
00:43:08.940
But anyway, he continued to do that and actually flew more missions.
00:43:13.940
And he shot down a Jap Zero and almost got shot down himself.
00:43:17.940
And he flew more than was required by the Army.
00:43:28.940
As you were researching and writing about these men, did you pick up any life lessons
00:43:35.940
And you do it in all the histories that I've written.
00:43:39.940
It's somehow the ability to put your own life on the line.
00:43:45.940
The ability to somehow conquer fear, put the fear, compartmentalize it, put it somewhere else.
00:43:50.940
Because all these things require a certain amount of fortitude.
00:43:55.940
And once you conquer that, once you get that under control, then it's perseverance.
00:44:00.940
It's because none of these things are easy that these guys did.
00:44:03.940
I mean, do you think it do a little putting himself in that situation?
00:44:08.940
When he's got a canvas cover over his cockpit, he can't see anything but the instrument panel is looking right at him.
00:44:18.940
And he's going to take that thing up in the air that way?
00:44:21.940
And that required a lot of fortitude, but also it took him years.
00:44:26.940
I can't remember many, many years because he had a lot of help from the Bureau of Standards and other things.
00:44:35.940
I mean, he went out to the finest watchmakers and other people who knew how to do precision instruments
00:44:45.940
It was a big risk, but it was also the years that it took him to get those things just right.
00:44:54.940
All these guys, there's a very thin margin in aviation between life and death.
00:45:00.940
My conversation with my friend, the fighter pilot, last night, he'd just been in Afghanistan.
00:45:09.940
And a lot of unknowables, like, who's going to shoot at you?
00:45:14.940
You know, and when, but those are risks that you take.
00:45:19.940
These guys were willing to take the risk and willing to put their lives on the line,
00:45:23.940
but they were also very smart guys who had great instincts for self-preservation,
00:45:30.940
but also great instincts as to what it took to be an American.
00:45:35.940
And I think that that is a trait that is not necessarily unique to this country,
00:45:41.940
but it's unique to a lot more people in this country, and it seems to be any other place in the world.
00:45:48.940
Well, Winston Groom, this has been a fantastic conversation.
00:45:59.940
He's got a ton of them on there, including history books and historical fiction.
00:46:02.940
You can find more information about his work at winstongroom.com.
00:46:05.940
The book we talked about today was Aviators, and his latest historical fiction book is El Paso.
00:46:11.940
Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash aviators,
00:46:14.940
where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic.
00:46:17.940
Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
00:46:27.940
For more manly tips and advice, make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com.
00:46:31.940
If you enjoy this show, I'd appreciate if you take one or two minutes to give us a review on iTunes, Stitcher, Pocket Cat,
00:46:36.940
whatever it is you usually listen to podcasts, please give us a review.
00:46:39.940
As always, thank you for your continued support.
00:46:40.940
And until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay manly.