The Aviators: Eddie Rickenbacker, Jimmy Doolittle, Charles Lindbergh, and the Epic Age of Flight

by Winston Groom

Airmen—and a few airwomen—were just then learning what the airplane could and could not do, and about the only way to learn it was through trial and sometimes fatal error.*

All three visited Hitler’s Germany during the late 1930s and warned American military authorities of the menacing buildup of German airpower. As experienced military pilots they were acutely aware of the growing danger from Nazi Germany’s air superiority. Yet their admonitions seemed to fall on deaf ears. Airpower had not been a significant factor in the First World War, and most people, including world leaders and politicians, saw no reason why it should present a threat in the escalating crisis between Germany and the Western democracies.

This led to another epiphany, a revelation that the Lord had somehow saved him for “some special purpose,” though he knew not what. Nevertheless he decided that he must prepare himself both spiritually and physically for the challenge.7 That night, Rickenbacker said sixty years later, and every night thereafter, when he was able, he got down on his knees to pray, as his mother had taught him. To strengthen his body, Rickenbacker swore off cigarettes and alcohol (a pledge that was not long maintained) and developed a special physical exercise regimen performed for fifteen minutes every morning when he woke and every night before he went to bed. He kept this up, he claimed, well into his seventies. He