Real American Heroes: Eddie Rickenbacker and Joe Foss

On the Memorial Day broadcast, Kim Monson set aside the news to honor the fallen and the men who carried the country through its wars. Col. Bill Rutledge, a retired Air Force officer now in his late nineties, told the stories of two Medal of Honor recipients most Americans have forgotten: Eddie Rickenbacker, the World War I flying ace who later built Eastern Airlines, and Joe Foss, the Marine who became the nation’s top ace over Guadalcanal. The show was pre-recorded so Kim could spend the holiday in reflection.

A World War I Ace Who Helped Build Commercial Aviation

Start listening at 2:30 – Hour 1

Col. Bill Rutledge traced Eddie Rickenbacker‘s life from a working-class start in Columbus, Ohio, where he was born in 1890 to immigrant parents from the German-speaking part of Switzerland. Rickenbacker left school at 13 after his father was killed in a work accident, apprenticed as a machinist building race cars, and grew so skilled that he rode as a riding mechanic and then became a driver. By May 1917 he was preparing a car for the Indianapolis 500 when a call from General Pershing’s staff pulled him into the American Expeditionary Force for his driving and mechanical skill.

In France he became a driver for General Billy Mitchell, repaired a stalled staff car in the mud one dangerous night, and earned a reputation as the best mechanic in the unit. He talked his way into a French flying school and then gunnery school, and after a bout of respiratory illness that cost him two months, he returned to combat and rose to squadron commander. A friendly flight surgeon had quietly altered his records to clear the age limit. Rutledge explained that after the war Rickenbacker bought and saved the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, built thousands of Rickenbacker automobiles in the 1920s, and took over what became Eastern Airlines.

Rutledge described how Rickenbacker and Charles Lindbergh both warned against President Roosevelt’s 1934 order handing commercial airmail routes to the Army Air Corps. Twelve young Army pilots died in crashes within weeks, the president reversed course, and he carried a grudge that kept both aviators off active duty in World War II. Rickenbacker still served the war effort, inspecting new air bases for Hap Arnold and flying to Russia as a technical adviser. He survived a 1941 Eastern Airlines crash near Atlanta with a fractured skull and many broken bones, walking out of the hospital in four months after doctors predicted eight. On a later wartime mission carrying an oral message to General MacArthur, his B-17 ditched in the Pacific and he drifted with seven crewmen for 22 days, once catching a seagull that landed on his head and dividing it among the men until rain and a search plane saved them.

“Within four months, Eddie had become the squadron commander and had shot down 26 German aircraft.”

Col. Bill Rutledge, retired U.S. Air Force colonel

A Marine Ace Who Turned the Tide Over Guadalcanal

Start listening at 60:22 – Hour 2

In the second hour, Rutledge turned to Joe Foss, born on a farm near Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in 1915. Foss lost his father in 1933, electrocuted by a downed power line during a storm, and became the man of the house as a high school senior. His mother, who had left school after the third grade, insisted he finish college, and Foss saved for years to pay for flying lessons, earning his license before graduating from the University of South Dakota in 1940. He joined the Marines that year, said nothing about the license he already held, and was the oldest pilot in his class at Pensacola.

Foss reached Guadalcanal in late 1942 as a flight commander in one of the first squadrons to land. Anticipating a final Japanese push that his general doubted was coming, Foss hid eight fighters in the jungle around the airfield. When roughly 50 Japanese fighters escorting troop ships arrived, he refused a hopeless head-on fight and led the enemy on a fuel-draining chase until they had to turn back, and the troop ships withdrew with them. The same general who had been angry about the hidden planes wrote up the recommendation for Foss’s Medal of Honor.

Foss finished with 26 Japanese kills, the best ace in the area and the oldest. When he rotated home for rest, he refused to leave without his men, and a Navy operations officer named Nixon, later the president, arranged passage for the whole crew. President Roosevelt presented his Medal of Honor at the White House in May 1943 with his mother looking on. The military then kept Foss out of combat and sent him across the country to boost morale and recruiting. Rutledge drew the second hour from the autobiography A Proud American. He called it “part one,” with the rest of Foss’s story to come in a later broadcast.

“But Joe hid out eight airplanes in his flight and he put them out into the jungle around the perimeter of the airfield.”

Col. Bill Rutledge, retired U.S. Air Force colonel