DARING FLYBOYS
Flagler Museum show lauds WWI aviators
Anyone seeking an example of a World War I aviator hero need look no farther than Tommy Hitchcock. Born to a wealthy South Carolina family, he was 17 when he applied to become a volunteer fighter pilot with the French air corps. Because he was under-age, he claimed to be a year older.
By December 1917, he was flying with Les Chats Noir, a squadron w ithin the Lafayette Flying Corps, on the Western front. He scored two aerial victories before he was wounded and shot down in March 1918. While being transferred between German prison
camps, the 18-year-old pilot escaped and made his way to Switzerland.
“My father loved a challenge,” said Hitchcock’s daughter, Palm Beach resident Louise Hitchcock Stephaich. “He had no fear whatsoever. He loved it. He said that the best game in the world was being a fighter pilot.”
Hitchcock was typical of the pilots celebrated in “Knights of the Air: Aviator Heroes of World War I” at the Flagler Museum. The exhibition, which marks the centennial of the American entry into the war in 1917, is the first museum show to explore how fighter pilots came to be revered as pop culture heroes during the war years.
“It’s a fascinating story with great compelling characters and it has great local connections,” chief curator Tracy Kamerer said.
There’s an entire section devoted to Hitchcock featuring items such as a letter he wrote to his mother after he escaped the Germans, the watch he was wearing when he was shot down and his citations from the French.
In the years preceding the war, aviators such as John Alexander Douglas McCurdy wowed the public with air demonstrations. A photo in the exhibition depicts him swooping over Lake Worth in 1911 with the Hotel Royal Poinciana in the background.
Because aviation was so new, it took a while for warring nations to get up to speed with how useful it could be. The planes weren’t very safe. They were made with flammable materials and often pieced together with crash remnants. Parachutes were rare. An air recruit on the Western Front was lucky to survive for six months.
“The boys flying these planes were often 17 to 20 years old,” exhibition curator Janel Trull said. “Aviation was about half their age. They were flying planes built of wood, canvas, wire and an engine.”
Many American pilots first entered the war as volunteers for the French. Among the most famous was the First Yale Unit, known as the Millionaires Unit for their wealthy origins. Photographs in the show portray them in the winter of 1917 training on Lake Worth in West Palm Beach. They initially were billeted at The Breakers.
Other famous pilots noted include Norman Prince, founder of the Lafayette Escadrille volunteer flying corps, legendary for its prowess in the sky, as well as German Ace Manfred von Richthofen, credited with 80 aerial conquests.
The show tracks the evolution of pilot warriors into icons with newspaper clippings, posters, original art for magazines and pulp fiction novels, comic strips, trading cards and advertisements. Illustrator Clayton Knight drew from a particularly informed perspective as a former World War I pilot.
Pilots’ daredevil image was nourished by films such as “Wings,” which was directed by Bill Wellman, Hitchcock’s buddy in the Black Cats squadron. The 1927 silent film was the first to win a Best Picture Academy Award.
After the war ended in 1918, former servicemen purchased the government’s surplus planes and helped establish businesses such as Pan American World Airways.
Hitchcock, whose efforts to return to the front failed, went on to become a star polo player and investment banker. He died in 1944 when his plane crashed during a test flight of a P-51 Mustang, a craft that helped the Allies defeat the Germans during World War II.