NONFICTION
“Enduring Courage: Ace Pilot Eddie Rickenbacker and the Dawn of the Age of Speed”
by John F. Ross
St. Martin’s Press, 400 pages, $27.99
World War I fighter ace Eddie Rickenbacker and the internal combustion engine came of age together.
Rickenbacker was a pioneering race car driver who relentlessly pursued faster speeds. He helped develop new technologies. And he survived the “world’s most dangerous sport” while many others died.
Lightweight and powerful internal combustion engines also propelled aircraft into the skies. And after the United States entered World War I, aviation, still in its infancy, attracted Rickenbacker.
Flying was a hazardous occupation even before pilots began spraying each other with machine-gun bullets. But Rickenbacker excelled at it and became America’s top fighter ace.
“Enduring Courage” tells the remarkable story of Rickenbacker’s life during an exhilarating and perilous time when inventors and daredevils — sometimes one-in-the-same — made advances that changed the world.
It also is the story of a man who was driven to overcome the shame of his past — and at times embellished it. Rickenbacker was the son of impoverished Swiss immigrants. His abusive father died in a fight with a drifter. Rickenbacker, 13 at the time, went to work instead of school on the morning after the funeral.
Rickenbacker was poorly educated but mechanically gifted. He soon found an outlet for his talents in the burgeoning automobile industry. And that led to his successful career as a race car driver.
John F. Ross at times dabbles in psychoanalysis amid descriptions of Rickenbacker’s early life, advances in automotive engineering and perils on the racetrack. Observers have noted that many race car drivers endured difficult childhoods, and racing gave them a chance “not only to impose order on something dangerous but to cast aside feelings of inadequacy,” Ross writes.
As World War I loomed, Rickenbacker faced prejudice because of his German-sounding name. He even was suspected of being a spy. He entered the Army as an enlisted man and became a driver for top brass.
Those connections — and force of will — ultimately helped Rickenbacker become an officer and a pilot, even though he was technically too old and had impaired vision in his right eye.
Ross writes that Rickenbacker was no romantic. He described combat flying as “scientific murder.”
Rickenbacker ultimately took over command of his squadron. And he continued to rack up individual aerial victories. He finished the war credited with 26 kills and the distinction of being America’s top ace.
Ross is at his best when he writes about Rickenbacker grappling with risk and adversity. That is apparent again when he writes about a 1941 commercial plane crash near Atlanta that nearly killed Rickenbacker. And when he writes about another flight in 1942 when Rickenbacker’s secret mission was interrupted by a forced ditching and more than three weeks adrift in a life raft.
Ross compresses a significant portion of Rickenbacker’s life — before, during and after World War II — into a few short chapters. Readers looking for a comprehensive biography of Rickenbacker will be disappointed. It’s also pretty clear that the author is fond of his subject, at times a little too much so.
But he does reacquaint the public to Rickenbacker, with all his faults. And the book is a riveting account of the dawn of the age of speed.
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