By Jacques Mortane, updated by Dennis Gordon and Raoul Lufbery III
Schiffer Military 2023
Adrian Roberts, Reviewer
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| Marc Pourpe |
This volume must be the last word on Lafayette ace Raoul Lufbery and his mentor, aviation pioneer Marc Pourpe. It is 236 pages, 11 ¼ x 8 ¾ inches, and if ordered from Schiffer is $45. (Mine was a review copy!) However, it is worth it if you want to research these men in depth.
Part 1 of the book was originally written by their friend and fellow pre-WWI aviator Jacques Mortane in 1936, in French under the title Two Great Knights of Adventure. It has now been translated and a second part added with extra material, particularly on Lufbery, by Lafayette Escadrille specialist Dennis Gordon, and Lufbery’s great nephew Raoul Lufbery III.
Pourpe became involved in aviation before Lufbery but was actually two years younger, born in 1887. Lufbery’s father was American, but he was born in France to a French mother who died when he was very young. Pourpe’s father died young and his mother abandoned him, so both were brought up by maternal grandparents. Both left home in their teens and traveled around the world. Pourpe became involved in the early aviation scene and learned to fly as early as 1909, in Australia. From October 1912, he spent six months flying a Blériot in India and Indo-China (now Vietnam and Cambodia), the first person ever to do so. The book makes very clear the struggles, business sense, and determination necessary to obtain funding for his flying activities, as well as the perils and organization of flying in these primitive aeroplanes where no aviation infrastructure existed, often in very adverse climate conditions. Your interest in aviation would need to encompass more than just WWI combat to appreciate this part, but it is well worth it.
Lufbery, who had spent two years in the U.S. Army in the Philippines, met Pourpe in Calcutta in January 1913, and was taken on as a mechanic, despite needing to learn on the job. He continued to provide the ground support for Pourpe in early 1914 when the latter became the first person to fly from Cairo to Khartoum, often in sandstorms, in a Morane monoplane, a type that was notoriously unstable, requiring continuous “hands-on” flying. At the start of the Great War in August 1914, Pourpe and his aviator friends volunteered for service with the French Aviation Militaire, and Pourpe got Lufbery accepted as his mechanic despite the latter’s U.S. nationality. Pourpe joined Escadrille (roughly a squadron) MS23, flying the Morane-Saulnier Type L parasol monoplane. From mid-September until the beginning of December, he flew 27 reconnaissance flights over enemy lines, totaling 78 hours, often in appalling weather, but on 2 December 1914, his death was witnessed by Lufbery. Returning from a mission in low cloud and blustery weather, his aircraft was seen to exit a cloud “in a side-slip" and crash. Almost certainly, when cold and tired, he had had to descend through cloud in an unstable aeroplane with zero blind-flying instrumentation, became disorientated, stalled, and spun in.
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| Raoul Lufbery and Whiskey of the Lafayette Escadrille |
Lufbery vowed to avenge his friend, and applied for pilot training, on that very day according to Montane, but it was June 1915 before his training started. On completion, he flew Voisin bombers (Mortane says his squadron was VB102; other sources say VB106). His skill was recognized even at this stage, and he was awarded the Medaille Militaire. Meanwhile, N124, the Lafayette Escadrille, had been formed—a squadron of Nieuport 11 Scouts, flown by American volunteers, named after the Marquis de Lafayette, who had fought for the United States in the War of Independence. Lufbery applied to be posted to this unit, and after a month training on the Nieuport, joined in May 1916, so he was not quite a founding member and differed from most of the others in that he was already a member of the French armed forces and a combat pilot. He always considered himself more French than American and spoke English with a French accent.
Over the next 18 months he flew more patrols than any other member of the unit, and was its highest scoring pilot, with 14 victories during this period. He was awarded the French Legion of Honour and the Croix de Guerre. The book covers the official and unofficial activities of the unit well, including the pilots’ purchase of two lion cubs, Whiskey and Soda, as mascots. Whiskey especially was tame and could be played with like a dog, apart from a tendency to eat uniform caps.
The United States entered the war in April 1917, and by the end of the year the American Expeditionary Force was operational on the Western Front. The Lafayette Escadrille was disbanded in December, and the pilots were given commissions in the United States Air Service (USAS). There was a period of confusion during which some of the pilots did not even realize this. Lufbery, by now a major, was initially put to work at a desk writing operational manuals for the new service, which he hated but in fact was an appropriate use of his experience.
By February, however, he was back in action with the 94th Pursuit Squadron USAS as a combat instructor, flying the Nieuport 28, and shot down at least two more hostile aircraft. On 28 March, he led future aces Eddie Rickenbacker and Douglas Campbell on their first combat patrol. However, on 19 May 1918, he took off in pursuit of a German Rumpler two-seater that had overflown the airfield. It seems that his fuel tank was hit by return fire from the gunner, and with his flight suit on fire, he either jumped or fell to his death. He was buried first in the local American cemetery but now lies with his comrades in the Lafayette Memorial, eight miles from Paris.
Fortunately, the authors have plenty of source material for this book. I have read all too many well-meaning biographies of WWI airmen and soldiers, sometimes written by their descendants, which suffer from the fact that the men concerned left no written letters or other material. All that those authors can do is pad out the book with generic accounts of the type of training that he would have had and the records of his units. Even if the pilot was an ace, if he left no material of his own the books resort to quoting his combat reports, which are sparse and soon become tedious, the reader left with no feel for the man as a person. For this book, however, Mortane had copious correspondence with Pourpe in which he recounted his trials and adventures, and he also met Lufbery.
The more recent authors of Part 2 have been able to reproduce some lengthy articles which Lufbery wrote for the Indianapolis News about his career, shortly before his death. It has to be said that Part 2 also contains considerable material that at best comes across as “laundry list” documentation and some that may be useful as background for readers with no knowledge of WWI aviation but can seem like padding. There is a gratuitous and irrelevant photo of the body of German ace Oswald Boelcke; the caption states that he was killed flying a Fokker E.IV, whereas he was actually in an Albatros D.II, a basic error for a supposed WWI expert author, and in any case the identity of the body is disputed. There is a lengthy chapter on Marc Pourpe’s mother, whose stage name was Liane de Pougy and who led, shall we say, an unconventional life; strictly speaking this is padding, but I found it fascinating!
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| Order HERE |
Overall, however, the book is well worth it if you seek this much detail on WWI and pre-WWI aviation
Adrian Roberts, December 2025
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