Ace of Aces: The Life of Captain Eddie Rickenbacker

What you see is what you get, a real American success story and a war hero of both WW1 and WW2.A Horatio Alger type success story,a poor kid of Germanic background,who drops out of 6th grade to help his widowed mother in early twentieth century Columbus,Ohio.He becomes a successful race car driver and takes up flying as the next step in his acive,high risk,lifestyle.In 1918 he becomes America's top fighter pilot and leader of the 95th squadron.Eddie is not afraid to speak his mind and criticzes the American government for being too cheap to pay for parachuttes for American fliers,this at a time when he obseves German pilots bailing out with a chute and coming back later for another crack at the allied fliers.He also was critical of the US government for not equipping the US airmen with better planes. At this time they were flying the French Nieuport which was an inferior machine by all accounts to the German Fokkers.This at a time when the French SPAD was available.Rickenbacker also defended Billy Mitchell in his outspokenness against the US government and its hesitancy to provide the country with a well equipped Airforce.Most people would have been content to rest on their laurels after such a distinguished service,instead Rickenbacker goes into the civilian aircraft industry and rises to the head of Eastern Airlines.In 1942,on a secret and dangerous mission over the Pacific he crashes and is stuck in a rubber raft for 24 days with no food or water,but he improvises and luckily survives along with most of his crew. On the down side,his men often complained that he was a "slavedriver",but the author proves that Rickenbacker would never send a man into danger without odds in favor of,or into a situation that Eddie would not himself go into. He would indeed be uncomfortable in a politically correct world,and his "gung ho" attitude reminded me of Patton.Rickenbacker was very outspoken against what would be far left Socialism and Communism as he perceived it.I could easily see him "slap face" of a hesitant recruit from a read of this book although it was never said he ever "pulled a Patton.He maintained an active life until his death in 1973,and was buried by his parents in Greemount cemetery.Columbus.Ohio.Another who's who tour of Greenmount.

This book is an engaging and human view of Eddie Rickenbacker. It includes a lot of personal information, and reveals his weaker side in some regards. The narrative moves well. It was a pleasant read and made me see Rickenbacker as a human being.

In his book "Ace of Aces: The Life of Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker", historical author H. Paul Jeffers has produced a very enjoyable, readable work on the life of this most interesting American hero. In the early chapters, we are, appropriately, presented with ample detail about Rickenbacker's upbringing by Swiss immigrant parents, the various jobs he had, and a certain amount of boyhood recklessness that leaves us wondering how he ever survived to age 14. We also discover that Rickenbacker learned valuable lessons about hard work and respect of work tools from his father. These served him well in his later exploits as a race car driver, World War I ace, president of Eastern Airlines, and survivor of a nearly month-long experience adrift on a raft in the Pacific during World War II. Jeffers supplies us with good details about the social and political climate of the times, digressing from time to time on these matters so that Rickenbacker's life in cast within this historical context. Not surprisingly, more than one third of the book focuses on Rickenbacker's WW I experiences. Especially interesting are descriptions of aeriel engagements in which Rickenbacker either emerges victorious or has another close scrape with death. Aviation buffs will no doubt enjoy this. Jeffers obviously admires Rickenbacker and, though acknowledging the man's sometimes dictatorial manner in treating underlings at Eastern Airlines board meetings and the like, does not dwell excessively on such details. Consequently, we are left with a very favorable overall impression of America's greatest WW I ace.