HEROES: Durable Man

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"Daredevil Dutchman." He was one of the first to enlist. The British government was partly responsible. He had gone to England in 1916 to consult with Sunbeam Motors, Ltd., and had discovered, to his astonishment, that his name made him an object of suspicion. The British—who had read U.S. sport pages and had discovered that he was called the "Happy Heinie," the "Daredevil Dutchman," and the "Wild Teuton"—detained him on arrival, took his shoes apart looking for messages, and scrubbed his chest with lemon juice in the hope of developing secret writing. When he returned to the U.S. a British agent followed him.

Seven weeks after the U.S. declared war, Rickenbacker was sworn in as a sergeant, went overseas as a driver attached to General Pershing's staff. He had a stroke of luck—he was assigned to drive Billy Mitchell around France in a Hudson Super-Six. He badgered the famed airman for a chance to fly. Mitchell finally gave in.

Ostracized. He lied about his age (he was almost 27—two years over the limit for airmen), took 17 days of training, soloed—grandly tearing off the whole undercarriage of his plane on his return—and got a lieutenant's commission and a pilot's wings. The dashing young college men of the 94th Aero Squadron, to which he was assigned, were not pleased. Rickenbacker was a celebrity and proud of it; he knew engines and said so; he was tough, uncouth, domineering, profane, full of advice and often oil-stained. He was pointedly ignored.

He shot down his first German plane, an Albatross single-seater, on April 29, 1918. He dove his Nieuport out of the sun until he was less than 150 yards from his quarry before he opened fire.

More victories followed. Rickenbacker hunted with coldness and logic, refusing to fight unless he had every advantage. He cruised just above stalling speed to save his fuel and engine for crucial moments. He was not a fancy pilot, but he was an awesome fighter. The race tracks had given him a marvelous judgment of speed and distances and a chilled steel nerve; in the words of one old squadron mate: "I've seen him go in so close he could hit the other ship with a baseball, before he pressed the trigger."

On the ground, he checked his engine himself. For fear of jamming his cranky guns in combat, he examined every bullet himself before he loaded his machine-gun belts. When he went on leave he engaged in some of the most spectacular binges Paris had ever seen, but when he was flying he was a strict teetotaler—even though many of his mates drank hard at night against the chances of quick death at dawn. On Sept. 24, 1918 he was commissioned a captain and put in command of the squadron. "

Recalling the event last week, Manhattan Insuranceman Reed Chambers, another immortal of the 94th, said: "By then [the squadron] had begun to love him. I don't know how to explain it. [At first] he was just an uneducated, tough bastard who threw his weight around the wrong way . . . But he developed into the most natural leader I ever saw."

Hat in the Ring. He began with a dramatic gesture. Before breakfast on his first day of command, he attacked singlehanded seven German planes and shot down two—a feat which won him the Congressional Medal of Honor.